“I wish,” said Susan, slowly, “that you would come and stay awhile with me.  Your home is so far away, and I don’t know when I shall see you again.”

“Oh, Susan,” she murmured, “it’s awfully good of you, but I’m afraid—­I couldn’t.”

She walked to the window, and stood looking out for a moment at the budding trees.  Her heart was beating faster, and she was strangely uncomfortable.

“I really don’t expect to go to the sea, Susan,” she said.  “You see, my aunt and uncle are all alone in St. Louis, and I ought to go back to them.  If—­if my father had lived, it might have been different.  He died, and my mother, when I was little more than a year old.”

Susan was all sympathy.  She slipped her hand into Honora’s.

“Where did he live?” she asked.

“Abroad,” answered Honora.  “He was consul at Nice, and had a villa there when he died.  And people said he had an unusually brilliant career before him.  My aunt and uncle brought me up, and my cousin, Mrs. Hanbury, Edith’s mother, and Mary’s, sent me here to school.”

Honora breathed easier after this confession, but it was long before sleep came to her that night.  She wondered what it would be like to visit at a great country house such as Silverdale, what it would be like to live in one.  It seemed a strange and cruel piece of irony on the part of the fates that Susan, instead of Honora, should have been chosen for such a life:  Susan, who would have been quite as happy spending her summers in St. Louis, and taking excursions in the electric cars:  Susan, who had never experienced that dreadful, vacuum-like feeling, who had no ambitious craving to be satisfied.  Mingled with her flushes of affection for Susan was a certain queer feeling of contempt, of which Honora was ashamed.

Nevertheless, in the days that followed, a certain metamorphosis seemed to have taken place in Susan.  She was still the same modest, self-effacing, helpful roommate, but in Honora’s eyes she had changed —­Honora could no longer separate her image from the vision of Silverdale.  And, if the naked truth must be told, it was due to Silverdale that Susan owes the honour of her first mention in those descriptive letters from Sutcliffe, which Aunt Mary has kept to this day.

Four days later Susan had a letter from her mother containing an astonishing discovery.  There could be no mistake,—­Mrs. Holt had brought Honora to this country as a baby.

“Why, Susan,” cried Honora, “you must have been the other baby.”

“But you were the beautiful one,” replied Susan, generously.  “I have often heard mother tell about it, and how every one on the ship noticed you, and how Hortense cried when your aunt and uncle took you away.  And to think we have been rooming together all these months and did not know that we were really—­old friends.

“And Honora, mother says you must come to Silverdale to pay us a visit when school closes.  She wants to see you.  I think,” added Susan, smiling, “I think she feels responsible, for you.  She says that you must give me your aunts address, and that she will write to her.”