it either."

"Well--we must talk of a plan for keeping her in her present belief, and
getting matters straight in spite of it. You have heard I am in a large
way of business here--that I am Mayor of the town, and churchwarden, and
I don't know what all?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"These things, as well as the dread of the girl discovering our
disgrace, makes it necessary to act with extreme caution. So that I
don't see how you two can return openly to my house as the wife and
daughter I once treated badly, and banished from me; and there's the rub
o't."

"We'll go away at once. I only came to see--"

"No, no, Susan; you are not to go--you mistake me!" he said with kindly
severity. "I have thought of this plan: that you and Elizabeth take a
cottage in the town as the widow Mrs. Newson and her daughter; that I
meet you, court you, and marry you. Elizabeth-Jane coming to my house as
my step-daughter. The thing is so natural and easy that it is half done
in thinking o't. This would leave my shady, headstrong, disgraceful life
as a young man absolutely unopened; the secret would be yours and mine
only; and I should have the pleasure of seeing my own only child under
my roof, as well as my wife."

"I am quite in your hands, Michael," she said meekly. "I came here
for the sake of Elizabeth; for myself, if you tell me to leave again
to-morrow morning, and never come near you more, I am content to go."