In the mean time, Mr. Falconer’s next pay-day was approaching.  With a dreadful kind of fascination Susan counted the hours that must bring the interview with him.  She longed yet dreaded to meet him.  Would he look changed to her? would she seem changed to him?  How should she behave? how would he behave?  Would she be able to maintain a calm coldness, or would her conscious manner betray her mistrust, her wounded heart?  So great, at times, grew her dread of the meeting that she was tempted to absent herself, and to ask her mother or Tom to see Mr. Falconer and receive the rent-money.  But she did not dare trust either of these.  Tom might take that opportunity of conveying the insult with which he had threatened Mr. Falconer, while the plain-spoken mother would be certain to forbid him Gertrude’s society, and probably give him notice to vacate Susan’s house.  No, she must stay at home and abide the meeting; and, after all, what would she not rather do and suffer than miss it?

But an interview with Mr. Falconer came sooner than Susan had anticipated.  It was in the early evening, immediately after tea, that the servant brought her Mr. Falconer’s card, on which was written, “An emergency!  May I see you immediately?”

Susan hid the card in her dress-pocket, and went wondering and blundering down stairs and into the parlor.

Mr. Falconer rose and came quickly forward.  His manner was nervous and hurried; “I thank you for this prompt response to my appeal, Miss Summerhaze.  You can do a great kindness for me; and not for me only—­you can serve a woman who is in sore need of a friend.”

Susan’s heart was ready to leap from her bosom.  Was she to be asked to befriend this woman toward whom people’s eyes were turning in mistrust, and about whom their lips were whispering?

“May I depend on you?” Mr. Falconer asked.

“Go on,” said Susan vaguely.

“But may I depend upon you? upon your secresy?”

“In all that is honest you may depend upon me,” she replied.

“Briefly, then.  The lady for whom I rented your house is my sister.  I could never tell you her story:  it ought never to be told.  But the man she married betrayed all her trust, and made her life one long nightmare of horrors.  At length, in a drunken fury one wretched autumn night, in the rain and sleet, he turned her and her baby into the street at midnight, and bolted the doors against them.  Then she resolved to fly from him and be rid of him for ever.  A train was about leaving the depot, some three blocks distant.  Without bonnet or shawl, the damp ice in her hair and on her garments, she entered the car, the only woman in it.  She came to me.  Thank God! she had me to come to!”

Mr. Falconer was crying; so was Susan.