"I have been your prisoner the entire morning," said Mrs. Hilyard, with an attempt at her old manner, which scarcely could have deceived the minister had he preserved his wits sufficiently to notice it, but at the same time betraying a little surprise, recognising instinctively that here she had come face to face with those blind forces of nature upon which no arguments can tell. "You were in much less doubt about your power of saving souls the last time I heard you, Mr. Vincent. Sit down, please. It is not long since we met, but many things have happened. It is kind of you to give me so early an opportunity of talking them over.

I am sorry to see you look excited--but after such exertions, it is natural, I suppose----"

"You are my prisoner," repeated Vincent, without taking any notice of what she said. He was no match for her in any pa.s.sage of arms. Her words fell upon his ears without any meaning. Only a dull determination possessed him. He locked the door, while she, somewhat startled in her turn, stood looking on; then he went to the window, threw it open, and called to some one below--any one--he did not care who. "Fetch a policeman--quick--lose no time!" cried Vincent. Then he closed the window, turned round, and confronted her again. At last a little agitation was visible in this invulnerable woman. For an instant her head moved with a spasmodic thrill, and her countenance changed. She gave a rapid glance round as if to see whether any outlet was left.

Vincent's eye followed hers.

"You cannot escape--you shall not escape," he said, slowly; "don't think it--nothing you can do or say will help you now."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Hilyard, with a startled, panting breath. "You have come to the inexorable," she said, after a moment; "most men do, one time or another. You decline meeting us on our ground, and take to your own.

Very well," she continued, seating herself by the table where she had already laid down one of the Salem hymn-books; "till this arrival happens, we may have a little conversation, Mr. Vincent. I was about to tell you something which ought to be good news. Though you don't appreciate my regard for you, I will tell it you all the same. What noise is that? Oh, the boys, I suppose, rushing off for your policeman.

I hope you know what you are going to say to that functionary when he comes. In the mean time, wait a little--you must hear my news."

The only answer Vincent made was to look out again from the window, under which a little group of gazers had already collected. His companion heard the sounds below with a thrill of alarm more real than she had ever felt before. She sat rigidly, with her hand upon the hymn-book, preserving her composure by a wonderful effort, intensely alive and awake to everything, and calculating her chances with a certain desperation. This one thing alone of all that had happened, the Back Grove Street needlewoman, confident in her own powers and influence, had not foreseen.

"Listen!" she cried, with an excitement and haste which she could not quite conceal. "That man is not dead, you know. Come here--shut the window! Young man, do you hear what I say to you? Am I likely to indulge in vain talk now? Come here--here! and understand what I have to say."

"It does not matter," said Vincent, closing the window. "What you say can make no difference. There is but one thing possible now."

"Yes, you are a man!" cried the desperate woman, clasping her hands tight, and struggling with herself to keep down all appearance of her anxiety. "You are deaf, blind! You have turned your back upon reason.

That is what it always comes to. Hush! come here--closer; they make so much noise in the street. I believe," she said, with a dreadful smile, "you are afraid of me. You think I will stab you, or something. Don't entertain such vulgar imaginations, Mr. Vincent. I have told you before, you have fine manners, though you are only a Dissenting minister. I have something to tell you--something you will be glad to know----"

Here she made another pause for breath--merely for breath--not for any answer, for there was no answer in her companion's face. He was listening for the footsteps in the street--the steps of his returning messengers. And so was she, as she drew in that long breath, expanding her forlorn bosom with air, which the quick throbs of her heart so soon exhausted. She looked in his eyes with an eager fire in her own, steadily, without once shifting her gaze. The two had changed places. It was he, in his inexorableness, close shut up against any appeal or argument, that was the superior now.

"When you hear what I have to say, you will not be so calm," she went on, with another involuntary heave of her breast. "Listen! your sister is safe. Yes, you may start, but what I say is true. Don't go to the window yet. Stop, hear me! I tell you your sister is safe. Yes, it may be the people you have sent for. Never mind, this is more important. You have locked the door, and n.o.body can come in. I tell you again and again, your sister is safe. That man is not dead--you know he is not dead. And yesterday--hush! never mind!--yesterday," she said, rising up as Vincent moved, and detaining him with her hand upon his arm, which she clutched with desperate fingers, "he made a declaration that it was not she; a declaration before the magistrates," continued Mrs. Hilyard, gasping as her strength failed her, and following him, holding his arm as he moved to the window, "that it was not she--not she! do you understand me--not she! He swore to it. He said it was another, and not that girl. Do you hear me?" she cried, raising her voice, and shaking his arm wildly in the despair of the moment, but repeating her words with the clearness of desperation--"He said on his oath it was not she."

She had followed him to the window, not pleading for herself by a single word, but with her desperate hand upon his arm, her face pinched and pale to the lips, and a horrible anxiety gleaming in the eyes which she never removed from his face. The two stood together there for a moment in that silent encounter; he looking down at the group of people below, she watching his face with her eyes, clutching his arm with her hand, appealing to him with a speechless suspense and terror, which no words can describe. Her fate hung upon the merest thread, and she knew it. She had no more power to move him in her own person that any one of the ragged children who stood gazing up at the window. There he stood, silent, blank, immovable; and she, suffering no expression of her dreadful suspense to escape her, stood clutching his arm, seeing, as she had never seen before, a pale vision of prisons, scaffolds, judgments, obscuring earth and heaven. She was brave, and had dared them all wittingly in the crisis of her fate, but the reality caught the labouring breath from her lips, and turned her heart sick. This morning she had woke with a great burden taken off her mind, and, daring as she was, had faced the only man who had any clue to her secret, confident in his generous nature and her own power over him. But this confidence had failed her utterly, and in the very ease and relief of her mind--a relief more blessed and grateful than she could have acknowledged to any mortal--lo! here arose before her close and real the spectre which she had defied. It approached step by step, while she gazed with wild eyes and panting breath upon the inexorable man who had it in his power to deliver her over to law and justice. She dared not say a word of entreaty to him; she could only watch his eyes, those eyes which never lighted upon her, with speechless dread and anxiety. Many evils she had borne in her life--many she had confronted and overcome--obstinate will and unscrupulous resolution had carried her one way or other through all former dangers. Here for the first time she stood helpless, watching with an indescribable agony the face of the young man at whom she had so often smiled. Some sudden unforeseen touch might still set her free. Her breath came quick in short gasps--her breast heaved--her fate was absolutely beyond her own control, in Vincent's hands.

Just then there came into the narrow street a sound of carriage-wheels.

Instinctively Vincent started. The blank of his determination was broken by this distant noise. Somehow it came naturally into the silence of this room and woke up the echoes of the past in his mind; the past--that past in which Lady Western's carriage was the celestial chariot, and she the divinest lady of life. Like a gleam of light there suddenly dawned around him a remembrance of the times he had seen her here--the times he had seen her anywhere; the last time--the sweet hand she had laid upon his arm. Vincent's heart awoke under that touch. With a start he looked down upon the hand which was at this moment on his arm,--not the hand of love,--fingers with the blood pressed down to the very tips, holding with desperation that arm which had the power of life and death. A hurried exclamation came from his lips; he looked at the woman by him, and read vaguely in her face all the pa.s.sion and agony there. Vaguely it occurred to him that to save or to sacrifice her was in his hands, and that he had but a moment now to decide. The carriage-wheels came nearer, nearer, ringing delicious promises in his ears--nearer too came the servants of that justice he had invoked; and what plea was it, what strange propitiation, which his companion had put forth to him to stay his avenging hand? Only a moment now; he shook her hand off his arm, and in his turn took hold of hers; he held her fast while she faced him in an agony of restrained suspense and terror. How her worn bosom panted with that quick coming breath! Her life was in his hands.

"What was that you said?" asked Vincent, with the haste and brevity of pa.s.sion, suddenly perceiving how much had to be done in this moment of fate.

The long-restrained words burst from his companion's lips almost before he had done speaking. "I said your sister was safe!" she cried; "I said he had declared her innocent on his oath. It was not she--he has sworn it, all a man could do. To sacrifice another," she went on breathlessly with a strong momentary shudder, pausing to listen, "will do nothing for her--nothing! You hear what I say. It was not she; he has sworn upon his solemn oath. Do as you will. She is safe--safe!--as safe as--as--G.o.d help me--as safe as my child,--and it was for her sake----"

She stopped--words would serve her no further--and just then there came a summons to the locked door. Vincent dropped her arm, and she recoiled from him with an involuntary movement; unawares she clasped her thin hands and gave one wild look into his face. Not even now could she tell what he was going to do, this dreadful arbiter of fate. The key, as he turned it in the door, rang in her ears like thunder; and his hand trembled as he set open the entrance of the needlewoman's mean apartment. On the threshold stood no vulgar messenger of fate, but a bright vision, sad, yet sweeter than anything else in earth or almost in heaven to Vincent. He fell back without saying anything before the startled look of that beautiful face. He let in, not law and justice, but love and pity, to this miserable room.

"Oh, Rachel! where have you been? have you seen him? have you heard of him? where have you been?" cried the visitor, going up to the pallid woman, whose eyes were still fixed on Vincent. Mrs. Hilyard could not speak. She dropped upon her knees by the table, shivering and crouching like a stricken creature. She leaned her head upon the hymn-book which lay there so strangely at variance with everything else around it. Pale with fright and horror, Lady Western appealed to Vincent. "She is ill, she is fainting--oh, Mr. Vincent, what have you been saying to her? She was not to blame," cried the new-comer, in her ignorance. Vincent attempted no reply, offered no help. In his heart he could have s.n.a.t.c.hed away those beautiful hands which embraced and comforted his "prisoner,"

thus rescued out of his grasp. It was hard to see her touch that guilty conscious woman whom his own heart refused to pity. He stood by looking on, watching her still; the instinct of vengeance had been awakened within him. He was reluctant to let her go.

"You have been saying something to her," said Lady Western, with tears in her eyes; "and how could she be to blame? Rachel! Oh, I wonder, I wonder if she loved him after all?" cried the beautiful creature, in the bewilderment of her innocence and ignorance. She stood bending over the kneeling figure, troubled, perplexed almost more than her strange sister-in-law had ever yet perplexed her. She could not account for this extraordinary access of agitation. It was nohow explainable, except upon that supposition which opened at once the warmest sympathies of the gentle young woman's heart.

"Rachel, dear!" she cried, kissing softly the thin hands worn with toil that covered Mrs. Hilyard's face--"he is still living, there is hope; perhaps he will get better; and he is showing a better mind too," she added, after a little tremulous pause. "I came to see if you had come home to tell you; he has sworn that it was not--oh, Mr. Vincent, I sent you word immediately when I got the message--he says it was not your sister; she had nothing to do with it, he says. Now I can look you in the face again. The first thing he was able to do when he came to himself was to clear her; and now she will get better--and your dear mother?"--said Lady Western, looking wistfully into the young man's face. In that moment, while her attention was directed otherwise, Mrs.

Hilyard rose up and took her seat again; took her seat because she was not able to stand, and scarcely able, by all the power of her will, to compose the nerves which, for the first time in her life, had utterly got the better of her. She wiped off the heavy moisture from her face with a furtive hand before the young Dowager turned her eyes again that way. She grasped fast hold of the only thing on the table, the Salem hymn-book, and with a vast effort regained some degree of self-command.

For that precious moment she was free from observation, for nothing in the world could have prevented Vincent from returning with his own fascinated eyes the look which Lady Western turned upon him. While the two looked at each other, she was safe; she collected her scattered forces in that invaluable instant. She was herself again when Lady Western looked round, somewhat nervous and embarra.s.sed, from the gaze of pa.s.sion with which her look of deprecation and sympathy had been met. If a slight shiver now and then thrilled over Mrs. Hilyard's figure, it was as like to be cold as emotion. Otherwise, she sat with her arm resting on the table and her hand clenched upon the hymn-book, her thin lips clinging spasmodically to each other, and her face pallid, but to an uncritical observer scarcely changed from the grey and vigilant composure of her usual appearance. So many storms had pa.s.sed over that countenance, that the momentary agony of horror and fright from which she had scarcely yet emerged did not tell as it would have done on a face less worn. Her voice was sharp and strained when she spoke, and she watched Vincent's eye with a keenness of which he was vividly conscious; but Lady Western, who did not go deep into looks and meanings, found nothing very unusual in what she said.

"I think Mr. Vincent was doubtful of my information," she said. "I heard it last night from Langridge, the groom, who once belonged to my family, you know, Alice; and--and lets me know if anything more than usual happens," she said, abruptly stopping to draw breath. "I travelled all night to get here to-day. Mr. Vincent was doubtful of me. Now this matter is cleared up, I daresay he will understand me when I say that I never could have allowed things to go further. I am only a needle-woman, and live in Back Grove Street," continued Mrs. Hilyard, recovering gradually as she spoke; "but I have certain things still in my power. Mr. Vincent will understand what I mean," she went on, fixing her eyes upon him, and unable to repress an occasional gasp which interrupted her words, "when I say that I should not have suffered it to go further. I should not have shrunk from any sacrifice. My dear, I have been a little shaken and agitated, as you perceive. Mr. Vincent wants to keep his eye upon me. Take me with you, Alice," said the bold woman, once more looking Vincent full in the face; "take charge of me, keep me prisoner until all this is cleared up. I am about tired of living a disguised princess. Send up your people for my possessions here, and take me with you. You will find me safe, Mr. Vincent, when you happen to want me, with Lady Western in Grange Lane."

"Oh, Rachel, I am so glad!" cried Lady Western; "I cannot for my life imagine what you mean by keeping you my prisoner, and all that; but Mr.

Vincent may be very sure you will be safe with me;--since he has so much interest in your movements," continued the young Dowager, turning her perplexed eyes from one to the other. She had not the remotest idea what it all meant. She was perhaps a little surprised to perceive that, after all, Vincent's interest was less with herself than with this strange woman, whose calmness and agitation were equally confusing and unintelligible. "We shall, of course, always be happy to see Mr. Vincent in Grange Lane," she concluded, with a somewhat stately courtesy. He did not look at her; he was looking at the other, whose eyes were fixed upon his face. Between these eyes Lady Western, much amazed, could perceive a secret communication pa.s.sing. What could it mean? The consciousness of this mystery between them which she did not know, annoyed her, notwithstanding her sweet temper. She withdrew her hand instinctively from Mrs. Hilyard's, which she had taken in momentary enthusiasm, and watched their looks of intelligence with half-offended eyes.

"Yes," said the needlewoman, speaking with her eyes fixed upon Vincent, though she did not address him, and making a desperate effort after her usual manner; "I do not think Back Grove Street will do any longer. One may as well take advantage of the accident which has brought our family affairs before the world to come alive again. It is a thing one must do sooner or later. So, if your carriage is close, Alice, I will go home with you. I shall miss Salem," said the audacious woman, "though you are so much less sure about doing good than you used to be, Mr. Vincent. If my soul happens to be saved, however," she continued, with a strange softening of her fixed and gleaming eyes--"if that is of much importance, or has any merit in it--you will have had some share in the achievement. You will?" She said the words with a keen sharpness of interrogation, much unlike their more obvious meaning. "You will," she repeated again, more softly--"you will!" Her thin hands came together for a moment in a clasp of mute supplication; her eyes, always. .h.i.therto looking down upon him from heights of dark knowledge and experience, looked up in his face with an anguish of entreaty which startled Vincent. Just at that moment the sounds in the street grew louder, and a voice of authority was audible ordering some one to clear the way. Mrs.

Hilyard did not speak, but she put out her hand and touched Lady Western's shawl, lifting its long fringes, and twisting them round those fingers on which the marks of her long labour were still visible. She withdrew as she did this her eyes from his face. Her fate was absolutely in his hands.

"Ladies," said Vincent, hoa.r.s.ely, after vainly trying to clear his agitated voice, "it is better you should leave this place at once. I will see you to your carriage. If I do wrong, the consequences will fall hardest on me. Don't say anything; either way, talking will do little good. You are her shield and defence," he said, looking at Lady Western, with an excitement which he could not quite keep under. "When she touches you, she becomes sacred. You will keep her safe--safe? you will not let her go?"

"Yes; I will keep her safe," said the beauty, opening her lovely astonished eyes. "Is she in danger? Oh, Mr. Vincent, your trouble has been too much for you! remember your sister is safe now."

"Is she?" said the minister; he was bitter in his heart, even though that hand was once more laid on his arm, "Safe!--with a broken heart and a ruined life; but what does that matter? It is all we are good for; though we may go mad and die."

"Oh, not you! not you!" said Lady Western, gazing at him with the tenderest pity in her sweet eyes. "You must not say so; I should be so unhappy." Her beautiful hand pressed his arm with the lightest momentary pressure. She could not help herself; to see suffering and not to do what was in her to soothe it was not possible to her soft heart.

Whatever harm that temporary opiate might do, nothing in the world could have prevented her gentle kindness from administering it. She went down the humble stairs leaning on his arm, with Mrs. Hilyard following close.

The young man put aside the little crowd he himself had collected, and put them in the carriage. He saw them drive away with a kind of despairing exaltation and excitement, and turned to the difficulties which remained to him--to explain himself and send the tardy ministers of justice away. He explained, as he best could, that he had been mistaken, and once more emptied his scanty purse, where there was now little enough left. When he had got rid of the disappointed group about the door, he went home slowly in the reaction of his violence and haste.

Susan was safe; was she safe? delivered from this dreadful accusation--allowed to drop back at least with her broken heart into the deep silences of privacy and uninvadable domestic life. Well, it was a mercy, a great mercy, though he could not realise it. He went home slowly, tingling with the strain of these strange hours; was it Sunday still? was it only an hour ago that Salem had thrilled to the discourse in which his pa.s.sion and despair had found vent? Vincent neither comprehended himself nor the hours, full of strange fate, which were gliding over him. He went home exhausted, as if with a great conflict; conscious of some relief in his heart, but half unwilling to confess to it, or to realise the means by which it had dawned upon him.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN Vincent entered the house, the sensation of quiet in it struck him with a vague consolation which he could scarcely explain. Perhaps only because it was Sunday, but there was no reproachful landlady, no distracting sound from above--all quiet, Sunday leisure, Sunday decorum, as of old. When he went up hurriedly to his sitting-room, he found two letters lying on his table--one a telegraphic despatch from Dover, the other a dainty little note, which he opened as a man opens the first written communication he receives from the woman of all women. He knew what was in it; but he read it as eagerly as if he expected to find something new in the mild little epistle, with its gentle attempt at congratulation. The news was true. Either remorse had seized upon Mildmay in the prospect of death, or the lingering traditions of honour in his heart had a.s.serted themselves on Susan's behalf. He had declared her entirely innocent; he had even gone farther, he had sworn that it was only as the companion of his daughter that Susan had accompanied them, and as such that he had treated her. The deposition taken by the magistrates was sent to Vincent in an abridged form, but what it conveyed was clear beyond dispute. So far as the words of this apparently dying man could be received, Susan was spotless--without blood on her hand, or speck upon her good fame. The lesser and the greater guilt were both cleared from that young head which had not been strong enough to wait for this vindication. Though he said, Thank G.o.d, from the bottom of his heart, an unspeakable bitterness filled Vincent's soul as he read. Here was a deliverance, full, lavish, unlooked for; but who could tell that the poor girl, crazed with misery, would ever be any the better for it? who could tell whether this vindication might be of any further use than to lighten the cloud upon Susan's grave?

With this thought in his mind he went to the sick-room, where everything seemed quiet, not quite sure that his mother, absorbed as she was in Susan's present danger, could be able to realise the wonderful deliverance which had come to them. But matters were changed there as elsewhere. Between the door and the bed on which Susan lay, a large folding-screen had been set up, and in the darkened s.p.a.ce between this and the door sat Mrs. Vincent, with Dr. Rider and his wife on each side, evidently persuading and arguing with her on some point which she was reluctant to yield to them. They were talking in whispers under their breath, and a certain air of stillness, of calm and repose, which Vincent could scarcely comprehend, was in the hushed room.

"I a.s.sure you, on my word," said Dr. Rider, lifting his eyes as Vincent opened the door, and beckoning him softly to come in, "that this change is more than I dared hope for. The chances are she will wake up out of danger. Nothing can be done for her but to keep her perfectly quiet; and my wife will watch, if you will rest;--for our patient's sake!" said the anxious doctor, still motioning Vincent forward, and appealing to him with his eyes.

"Mr. Vincent has something to tell you," said the quick little woman, impetuous even in her whisper, who was Dr. Rider's wife. "He must not come and talk here. He might wake her. Take him away. Edward, take them both away. Mrs. Vincent, you must go and hear what he has to say."

"Oh, Arthur! my dear boy," cried his mother, looking up to him with moist eyes. "It is I who have something to tell. My child is perhaps to get well, Arthur. Oh! my own boy, after all, she is going to get better.

We shall have Susan again. Hush! doctor, please let me go back again; something stirred--I think something stirred; and perhaps she might want something, and the nurse would not observe. Tired?--no, no; I am not tired. I have always watched them when they were ill, all their lives.

They never had any nurse in sickness but their mother. Arthur, you know I am not tired. Oh! doctor, perhaps you would order something while he is here, for my son; he has been agitated and anxious, and he is not so strong--not nearly so strong as I am; but, my dear," said the widow, looking up in her son's face with a wistful eagerness, "when Susan gets better, all will be--well."

She said the last words with a trembling, prolonged sigh. Poor mother, in that very moment she had recalled almost for the first time how far from well everything would be. Her face darkened over piteously as she spoke. She rose up, stung into new energy by this dreadful thought, which had been hitherto mercifully obscured by Susan's danger. "Let me go back--don't say anything. n.o.body can watch my child but me," said the heartbroken woman; and once more she looked in her son's face. She wanted to read there what had happened--to ascertain from him, without any one else being the wiser, all the dreadful particulars which now, in the first relief of Susan's recovery, had burst into sudden shape upon her sight. "Doctor, we will not detain you; her brother and I will watch my child," said Mrs. Vincent. The light forsook her eyes as she rose in that new and darker depth of anxiety; her little figure tottered trying to stand as she held out her hand to her son. "You and me--only you and me, Arthur--we must never leave her; though everybody is so kind----"

said the minister's mother, turning with her smile of martyrdom, though her eyes were blind and she could not see them, to Dr. Rider and his wife.

Vincent took his mother's hands and put her tenderly back in her chair.

"I have good news, too," he said; "all will be well, mother dear. This man who has wrought us so much trouble is not dead. I told you, but you did not understand it; and he declares that Susan----"

"Arthur!" cried Mrs. Vincent, with a sharp outcry of alarm and remonstrance. "Oh, G.o.d forgive me! I shall wake my child. Arthur! The doctor is very good," added the widow, looking round upon them always with the instinct of conciliating Arthur's friends; "and so is Mrs.

Rider; but every family has its private affairs," she concluded, with a wistful, deprecating smile, all the time making signs to Arthur to stop him in his indiscreet revelations. "My dear, you will tell me presently when we are alone."

"Ah, mother," said Vincent, with a suppressed groan, "there is nothing private now in our family affairs. Hush! listen--Susan is cleared; he swears she had nothing to do with it; he swears that she was his daughter's companion only. Mother! Good heavens! doctor, what has happened? She looks as if she were dying. Mother! What have I done? I have killed her with my good news."

"Hush, hush--she has fainted--all will come right; let us get her away,"

cried Dr. Rider under his breath. Between them the two young men carried her out of the room, which Mrs. Rider closed after them with a certain triumph. The widow was not in so deep a faint but the fresher air outside and the motion revived her. It was more a sudden failing of her faculties in the height of emotion than actual insensibility. She made a feeble effort to resist and return into Susan's room. "You will wake her," said Dr. Rider in her ear; and the poor mother sank back in their arms, fixing her wistful misty eyes, in which everything swam, upon her son. Her lips moved as she looked at him, though he could not hear her say a word; but the expression in her face, half awakened only from the incomprehension of her swoon, was not to be mistaken or resisted.

Vincent bent down over her, and repeated what he had said as he carried her to another room. "Susan is safe--Susan is innocent. It is all over; mother, you understand me?" he said, repeating it again and again. Mrs.

Vincent leaned back upon his shoulder with a yielding of all her fatigued frame and worn-out mind. She understood him, not with her understanding as yet, but with her heart, which melted into unspeakable relief and comfort without knowing why. She closed her eyes in that wonderful consciousness of some great mercy that had happened to her; the first time she had closed them voluntarily for many nights and days.

When they laid her down on the bed which had been hurriedly prepared for her, her eyes were still closed, and tears stealing softly out under the lids. She could not break out into expressions of thankfulness--the joy went to her heart.

Dr. Rider thought it judicious to leave her so, and retired from the bedside with Vincent, not without some anxious curiosity in his own mind to hear all "the rights" of the matter. Perhaps the hum of their voices, quietly though they spoke, aroused her from her trance of silent grat.i.tude. When she called Arthur faintly, and when they both hurried to her, Mrs. Vincent was sitting up in her bed wiping off the tears from her cheeks. "Arthur dear," said the widow, "I am quite sure Dr. Rider will understand that what he has heard is in the strictest confidence; for to be sure," she continued, with a faint smile breaking over her wan face, "n.o.body could have any doubt about my Susan. It only had to be set right--and I knew when my son came home he would set it right,"