These reflections were interrupted by the servant, who announced a visitor.  Susan laid down her work and went into the parlor, and there found Isaac Levi.  She greeted him with open arms and heightened color, and never for a moment suspected that he was come there full of suspicions of her.

After the first greeting a few things of little importance were said on either side.  Isaac watching to see whether Mr. Meadows had succeeded in supplanting George, and too cunning to lead the conversation that way himself, lay patiently in wait like a sly old fox.  However, he soon found he was playing the politician superfluously, for Susan laid bare her whole heart to the simplest capacity.  Instead of waiting for the skillful, subtle, almost invisible cross-examination which the descendant of Maimonides was preparing for her, she answered all his questions before they were asked.  It came out that her thought by day and night was George, that she had been very dull, and very unhappy.  “But I am better now, Mr. Levi, thank God.  He has been very good to me:  he has sent me a friend, a clergyman, or an angel in the dress of one, I sometimes think.  He knows all about me and George, sir; so that makes me feel quite at home with him, and I can—­and now Mr. Meadows stops an hour on market-days, and he is so kind as to tell me all about Australia, and you may guess I like to hear about—­Mr. Levi, come and see us some market evening.  Mr. Meadows is capital company; to hear him you would think he had passed half his life in Australia.  Were you ever in Australia, sir, if you please?”

“Never, but I shall.”

“Shall you, sir?”

“Yes; the old Jew is not to die till he has drifted to every part in the globe.  In my old days I shall go back toward the East, and there methinks I shall lay these wandering bones.”

“Oh, sir, inquire after George and show him some kindness, and don’t see him wronged, he is very simple.  No! no! no! you are too old; you must not cross the seas at your age; don’t think of it; stay quiet at home till you leave us for a better world.”

“At home!” said the old man sorrowfully; “I have no home.  I had a home, but the man Meadows has driven me out of it.”

“Mr. Meadows!  La, sir, as how?”

“He bought the house I live in, and next Lady-day, as the woman-worshiper calls it, he turns me to the door.”

“But he won’t if you ask him.  He is a very good-natured man.  You go and ask him to be so good as let you stay; he won’t gainsay you, you take my word.”

“Susannah!” replied Isaac, “you are good and innocent; you cannot fathom the hearts of the wicked.  This Meadows is a man of Belial.  I did beseech him; I bowed these gray hairs to him to let me stay in the house where I lived so happily with my Leah twenty years, where my children were born to me and died from me, where my Leah consoled me for their loss a while, but took no comfort herself and left me, too.”