"We must sell the house, the furniture, and there are some jewels." Susannah looked slowly round the handsome room with its rich appointments. "Until Marius comes will you tell me what to do?" He bent his head. "I will wait on you later." "I thank you, sir." With an instinctive, courteous sweetness she smiled at him and came to the door, and when, with some murmured words, he had gone, she came back into the room and sat down at the table. So, she would not see him this afternoon. The tremendous fact seemed hidden by the trivial one. And there was no need now to write to Selina Boyle; she would never know that he could not be faithful. Susannah looked again round the chamber at the paintings, at the carvings, and every small detail seemed invested with unbearable meaning. She leant back in her chair; she stared at the sunlight that shone through the crevices of the shutters; she rose and walked up and down the room; she seemed to see everything, to touch everything through a distorting mirror; her own body felt numb and strange. She repeated his name. "Rose--Rose Lyndwood," and the fantastic sound of it was beyond credence. The house began to stir, there came to Susannah the noise of opening shutters, of the servants on the stairs; she heard the milk girl calling without and the clatter of her pails. "Rose--Rose Lyndwood." Someone whistled in the street and a dog barked in the distance. Miss Chressham left the room and went upstairs to tell my lady. CHAPTER V THE VISIT TO MY LORD "A lady to see me?" asked Susannah, shrinking. She could not bring herself to face the sympathy or curiosity of acquaintances. The address of their present quiet lodging had not been published abroad, and the house in the Haymarket was in the hands of my lord's creditors. She could not imagine who, with any other motive but that of inquisitiveness, this might be inquiring for her. She thought there was none to take any interest in the survivors of the fallen house of Lyndwood. "A lady," the little slim maid repeated. "Her name, madam, is Miss Boyle." "Oh, Selina!" Susannah caught her breath. "Bring her here." The servant closed the door and Miss Chressham gave a little shudder. The dreary, heavily furnished room, the outlook through the long bare windows on to the blank houses opposite, the strangeness of everything, even to her own plain dark dress, were a fitting background to her secret tragedy. She wondered dully how she could bear it, and shuddered again. But there were others to think of, as there always were in the life of Susannah Chressham. She went to the folding doors at the back of the room and softly opened them on to a darkened bedchamber. "Do you want anything, Aunt Agatha?" she asked gently. From the curtained bed came a muffled answer. "No, no." Susannah looked pityingly at the outline of my lady's slight figure huddled on the tumbled pillows.