The whole situation had in it a dreary tragi-comedy, half pitiful, half laughable; a great deal of intense feeling veiled by external circumstances of the homeliest order, such as is often to be found in comfortable, unlovely _bourgeois_ households. How it was, in such a matter-of-fact interior, that the great temptation of her life should have flashed across Miss Susan’s mind, I cannot tell. She glanced from the young wife, very soon to be a mother, who leant over the old lady’s chair, to the dark shadow in the corner, who had never stirred from her seat. It was all done in a moment--thought, plan, execution. A sudden excitement took hold upon her. She drew her chair close to the old woman, and bent forward till her lips almost touched her ear. “L’autre est--la même--que elle?” “Que voulez-vous dire, madame?” The old lady looked up at her bewildered, but, caught by the glitter of excitement in Miss Susan’s eye, and the panting breath, which bore evidence to some sudden fever in her, stopped short. Her wondering look turned into something more keen and impassioned--a kind of electric spark flashed between the two women. It was done in a moment; so rapidly, that at least (as Miss Susan thought after, a hundred times, and a hundred to that) it was without premeditation; so sudden, that it was scarcely their fault. Miss Susan’s eyes gleaming, said something to those of the old Flamande, whom she had never seen before, Guillaume Austin’s wife. A curious thrill ran through both--the sting, the attraction, the sharp movement, half pain, half pleasure, of temptation and guilty intention; for there was a sharp and stinging sensation of pleasure in it, and something which made them giddy. They stood on the edge of a precipice, and looked at each other a second time before they took the plunge. Then Miss Susan laid her hand upon the other’s arm, gripping it in her passion. “Venez quelque part pour parler,” she said, in her bad French. CHAPTER VIII.