She went into the house without speaking or looking at William.  William was sorry she did not speak to him; however he stood disconsolately by the cart, asking himself what he could do next for her and George.  Presently he heard a slight rustle, and it was Susan coming back along the passage.  “She has left something in the cart,” thought he, and he began to look in the straw.

She came like one still in a dream, and put her hand out to William, and it appeared that was what she had come back for.

William took her hand and pressed it to his bosom a moment.  At this Susan gave a hysterical sob or two, and crept away again to her own room.

What she suffered in that room the first month after George’s departure I could detail perhaps as well as any man living; but I will not.  There is a degree of anguish one shrinks from intruding upon too familiarly in person; and even on paper the microscope should spare sometimes these beatings of the bared heart.  It will be enough if I indicate by-and-by her state, after time and religion and good habits had begun to struggle, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing, against the tide of sorrow.  For the present let us draw gently back and leave her, for she is bowed to the earth—­fallen on her knees, her head buried in the curtains of her bed; dark, faint and leaden, on the borders of despair—­a word often lightly used through ignorance.  Heaven keep us all from a single hour, here or hereafter, of the thing the Word stands for; and Heaven comfort all true and loving hearts that read me, when their turn shall come to drain the bitter cup like Susan Merton.

CHAPTER V.

THE moment George Fielding was out of sight, Mr. Meadows went to the public-house, flung himself on his powerful black mare, and rode homeward without a word.

One strong passion after another swept across his troubled mind.  He burned with love, he was sick with jealousy, cold with despondency, and for the first time smarted with remorse.  George Fielding was gone, gone of his own accord; but like the flying Parthian he had shot his keenest arrow in the moment of defeat.

“What the better am I?” thus ran this man’s thoughts.  “I have opened my own eyes, and Susan seems farther from me than ever now—­my heart is like a lump of lead here—­I wish I had never been born!—­so much for scheming—­I would have given a thousand pounds for this, and now I’d give double to be as I was before; I had honest hopes then; now where are they?  How lucky it seemed all to go, too.  Ah! that is it—­’May all your good luck turn to wormwood!’ that was his word—­his very word—­and my good luck is wormwood; so much for lifting a hand against gray hairs, Jew or Gentile.  Why did the old heathen provoke me, then?  I’d as soon die as live this day.  That’s right, start at a handful of straw; lie down in it one minute and tremble at the sight of it the next, ye idiot.  Oh, Susan!  Susan!