Susan went straight downstairs, and, with as little self- consciousness as if the house had been on fire, tapped at and opened the door of Stephen Bocqueraz's study. He half rose, with a smile of surprise and pleasure, as she came in, but his own face instantly reflected the concern and distress on hers, and he came to her, and took her hand in his.
"What is it, Susan?" he asked, sharply.
Susan had closed the door behind her. Now she drew him swiftly to the other side of the room, as far from the hall as possible. They stood in the window recess, Susan holding tight to the author's hand; Stephen eyeing her anxiously and eagerly.
"My very dear little girl, what IS it?"
"Kenneth wants me to marry him," Susan said panting. "He's got to go to France, you know. They want me to go with him."
"What?" Bocqueraz asked slowly. He dropped her hands.
"Oh, don't!" Susan said, stung by his look. "Would I have come straight to you, if I had agreed?"
"You said 'no'?" he asked quickly.
"I didn't say anything!" she answered, almost with anger. "I don't know what to do--or what to say!" she finished forlornly.
"You don't know what to do?" echoed Stephen, in his clear, decisive tones. "What do you mean? Of course, it's monstrous! Ella never should have permitted it. There's only one thing for you to do?"
"It's not so easy as that," Susan said.
"How do you mean that it's not easy? You can't care for him?"
"Care for him!" Susan's scornful voice was broken by tears. "Of course I don't care for him!" she said. "But--can't you see? If I displease them, if I refuse to do this, that they've all thought out evidently, and planned, I'll have to go back to my aunt's!"
Stephen Bocqueraz, his hands in his coat-pockets, stood silently watching her.
"And fancy what it would mean to Auntie," Susan said, beginning to pace the floor in agony of spirit. "Comfort for the rest of her life! And everything for the girls! I would do anything else in the world," she said distressfully, "for one tenth the money, for one twentieth of it! And I believe he would be kind to me, and he SAYS he is positively going to stop--and it isn't as if you and I--you and-I---" she stopped short, childishly.