When Susan stopped crying she was less tractable. I suppose she resented my catechising her about Gibson. After all, I shouldn't have liked it myself. As soon as she was dry-eyed, she became a little more dry-hearted, and a good deal more dry-witted as well. She was more defiant, less dependent: much more the prospective lady of the Towers and much less the actual lady's-maid at the Grange. I noticed this in her answer to my first remark after her tears had ceased to flow.
"Susan," I said, "this is a matter which won't be any the worse of a night's delay. I will sleep on it, and so must you. Understand, I say _sleep_. I don't mean that you're to lie awake and let it worry you. We shall write Lord Ruddington a better answer to-morrow than we can to-day. Meanwhile, it won't do him any harm to be kept waiting a few hours longer."
"No," said Susan, "it won't. I've always heard it said that it does them no good to throw yourself at their heads."
For once she did not call me "Miss," and both the matter and the manner of her speech jarred on me. From Susan it sounded hard and vulgar. It was as if my rare and sweet Susan had suddenly descended to live a moment of her life two or three planes lower down.
I sent her off with some messages about dinner, and with enough plain work to occupy her for the rest of the day. And, now that I have put the whole thing down in black and white, I begin to understand how cordially I dislike it.
Such a wretched night! I hope Lord Ruddington has had a still worse one. He deserves it, and I don't. Besides, he has something to gain (or thinks he has), while I only have something to lose. Even if he rushes out of his infatuation as precipitately as he rushed into it, Susan can never be the same nice girl again.
I have thought about it all the many hours of this blessed night that I have been awake; and I have dreamt about it all the few nightmarish minutes I have been asleep--twisty, scary, jumpy dreams that I can't half remember.
Heaven knows I was vexed enough when Alice would persist in teasing me last Sunday about Lord Ruddington. What would Alice not have said if she had known that he was hardly three miles away at the very time she was plaguing me? On Wednesday, at the station, her last words were, "Gertie, don't be a fool." From Alice's point of view, Gertie will be a fool if Gertie doesn't so play her cards as to become Lady Ruddington.