She should have to be clear as to how a dove would
act. She settled it, she thought, well enough this
morning by quite readopting her plan in respect to
Sir Luke Strett. That, she was pleased to reflect,
had originally been pitched in the key of a merely iri
descent drab; and although Mrs. Stringham, after
breakfast, began by staring at it as if it had been a
priceless Persian carpet suddenly unrolled at her
feet, she had no scruple, at the end of five minutes,
in leaving her to make the best of it. " Sir Luke
Strett comes, by appointment, to see me at eleven,
but I'm going out on purpose. He's to be told,
please, deceptively, that I'm at home, and, you, as
my representative, when he comes up, are to see him
instead. He will like that, this time, better. So do
be nice to him." It had taken, naturally, more ex
planation, and the mention, above all, of the fact that
the visitor was the greatest of doctors; yet when
once the key had been offered Susie slipped it on her
bunch, and her young friend could again feel her
lovely imagination operate. It operated in truth
very much as Mrs. Lowder s, at the last, had done
the night before: it made the air heavy once more
with the extravagance of assent. It might, afresh,
almost have frightened our young woman to see how
people rushed to meet her: had she then so little
time to live that the road must always be spared her?
It was as if they were helping her to take it out on
the spot. Susie she couldn't deny, and didn't pre
tend to might, of a truth, on her side, have treated

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p310 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p311w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p312

v?