"Yes, Miss. I mean, I'm not sure yet, Miss. But I'm sure that I shall be sure before long."
I could get no more out of her, and in the end I turned surlier and snappier than I care to remember. Susan went to bed looking miserable.
This morning my conscience woke up as early as I did. Earlier: for it was wide awake while I was still half asleep, and I groped out into consciousness with a sense of recent meanness and unkindness to Susan. The more I woke, the clearlier I saw how natural it was of Susan, who knows no French and can speak with nobody here save me, to want to talk frocks.
When she came in at seven o'clock to open the curtains, I said in my friendliest tone:
"Well, Susan, I suppose you've decided to be married in white, with orange-blossoms and a veil?"
To my consternation she remained at the window, and did not turn round. Then she plunged for the door into her own room, and as she seized the handle, I heard a sob.
I jumped up and followed her to the threshold.
"Come, come, Susan!" I said. "You mustn't have such a thin skin. I never meant to hurt your feelings."
"You haven't, Miss," sobbed Susan, standing near me, but not showing her face. "It isn't you, Miss. But I can't bear it!"
"All of it, Miss. None of it. I woke up and thought about it in the night. It's dreadful!"
I couldn't guess what Susan couldn't bear, or what it was that was dreadful, and it didn't seem wise to press her. So I said nothing.
"You'll take cold, Miss," she cried, when she cast her first glance at me. And she bundled me back into bed.
I told her that she needn't have her breakfast with Georgette, and that she ought to drink chocolate instead of coffee.
"You'd better have a quiet day," I added. "This matter is getting on your brain. Give it a rest. That was one reason why I wanted you to wait a whole month. There's no need to brood over it day and night. The month has still three weeks to run."
She dried her eyes and was ever so grateful. But I am puzzled. Last night she seemed (as she has seemed all along) to take it as a matter of course that she will marry Ruddington. Her attitude has been that of a pretty, honest, modest, prosaic girl with an eye on the main chance. To find her suddenly all sensibility is a surprise.