At last I begged her to stop chattering and sent her away. I can't understand her. Susan has always been unsophisticated, but it's something fresh for her to be vulgarly stupid and thick-headed.
The outlook is disconcerting. My letter-writing on her behalf gives Ruddington a false notion of her knowledge and her mental power. So long as she retains her charming simplicity no great harm will be done; for, after he is disillusionized about her brains, he can easily fall in love afresh with her _naïveté_. But this flat-footed, Hodge-like, charmless stupidity is quite another story.
She's too stupid even to ask about the little side-bits.
It may be that the fears which kept Susan awake last night have frozen her wits. She has the air of dreading close quarters with this affair; of wanting to thrust it off an arm's-length while she gets time to think. I mustn't be too hard on her. The girl is passing through an ordeal; and I am a poor substitute for a mother or even for a bosom friend.
There's been too much Ruddington. The inroads he makes on my Normandy rest-cure are absurd. I get my sun-bath and sea-bath every day; and that's all. It's time to put down my foot.
Fortunately, Susan agrees with me. She does not tell me why she has so suddenly fallen out of love with the idea of being raised to the peerage. It may be that she quails and shrinks from a destiny that is altogether out of scale with her nature. More probably it is some trifle, such as Ruddington's moustachelessness. But, although she gives no reasons, she agrees with me that it will be best to take the thing less busily for the next fortnight. I've pointed out to her that she knows as much about him now as she needs to know. It isn't as though she has to decide, here at Sainte Véronique, whether she will marry Lord Ruddington. She has only to settle whether she will let him see her next month face to face--whether she will let him press in person a suit which she will still be free to refuse.
We have decided that I shall write him a letter to-day such as will keep him quiet, and stop him bothering us. Then I shall be able to take a deep draught of my Normandy, as I take deep draughts of the cider. I have been here well over a week, and I hardly seem to have had one day free of him.