And Susie once more left her friend without saying a word of the anxieties which were becoming more and more urgent in her own life. She had not yet been told what was the true state of the case, but many alarms had filled her mind, terrors which she would not acknowledge to herself. It did not seem credible that she should be dethroned from her own household place, which she had filled so long, to make way for a stranger, “a strange woman,” as Susie, like Mrs Ogilvy, said; nor that the children should be taken out of her hands, and her home be no longer hers. But all other apprehensions and alarms had been confusedly deepened and increased, she could scarcely tell how, by the sudden interference of her father in behalf of an old lover long ago rejected, whose repeated proposals had become the jest of the family, a man whom nobody for years had taken seriously. Mr Logan had suddenly taken up his cause, and pressed it hotly and injudiciously, filling Susie with consternation and indignant distress. The minister had naturally employed the most unpalatable arguments. He had bidden her to remember that her time was running short, that she had probably out-stayed her market, that a wooer was not to be found by every dykeside, and that at her age it was no longer possible to pick and choose, but to take what you could get. Exasperated by all this, Susie had rushed to her friend to ask what was the interpretation of it. But the appearance of Robert had driven every other thought out of her mind, and now again, more than ever, his story, the danger he was in, the reason why his return was not published abroad and rejoiced in. To Susie’s simple and straightforward mind this was the only point in the whole matter that was to be deplored. She found no fault with Robbie’s appearance, with his mid-day sleep, with the failure of his career--even with the ill company and dreadful associations of which Mrs Ogilvy’s faltering story had told her. She was ready to wipe all that record out with one tear of tenderness and pity. He had been led away; he had come back. That he had come back was enough to atone for all the rest. But there should be no secret, no concealing of him, no silence as to this great event. She accepted the bond, but it was heavy on her soul, and went home, her mind full of Robert, only vexed and discouraged that she must not speak of Robert, forgetting every other trouble and all the changes that seemed to threaten herself. Me! who is caring about me? Susie said to herself proudly, as Mrs Ogilvy said it. These women scorned fate when it was but themselves that were threatened by it.