come; and as she spoke, she read the workings of her sister's face. That
part of the secret grew clear almost at the first glance. Susan loved,--
loved William Mainwaring; but was it not a love hopeless and unreturned?
Might not this be the cause that had made Mainwaring so reserved? He
might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not sought; and hence,
with manly delicacy, he had avoided naming Susan to Lucretia; and now,
perhaps, sought the excuses which at times had chafed and wounded her for
not joining the household circle. If one of those who glance over these
pages chances to be a person more than usually able and acute,--a person
who has loved and been deceived,--he or she, no matter which, will
perhaps recall those first moments when the doubt, long put off, insisted
to be heard. A weak and foolish heart gives way to the doubt at once;
not so the subtler and more powerful,--it rather, on the contrary,
recalls all the little circumstances that justify trust and make head
against suspicion; it will not render the citadel at the mere sound of
the trumpet; it arms all its forces, and bars its gates on the foe.
Hence it is that the persons most easy to dupe in matters of affection
are usually those most astute in the larger affairs of life. Moliere,
reading every riddle in the vast complexities of human character, and
clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate wife, is a type of
a striking truth. Still, a foreboding, a warning instinct withheld
Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her own fears. So
horrible was the thought that she had been deceived, that rather than
face it, she would have preferred to deceive herself. This poor, bad
heart shrank from inquiry, it trembled at the idea of condemnation. She
hailed, with a sentiment of release that partook of rapture, Susan's
abrupt announcement one morning that she had accepted an invitation from
some relations of her father to spend some time with them at their villa
near Hampstead; she was to go the end of the week. Lucretia hailed it,
though she saw the cause,--Susan shrank from the name of Mainwaring on