as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband.
It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it
was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had
subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless,
helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan
Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter.

"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the
chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if,
when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give
me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not
speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast
I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know
how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can
never know what you seem to me."

And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told
him her story.

"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were
very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy
such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and
discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the
city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now
and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to
me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I
feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since
then."

She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too