in the last three months to propose it to you; but I did not like to. I was afraid you would not want to go and would think you must go for my sake."
"Why should n't I want to go?" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton, wonderingly.
"Oh, I was afraid you might not feel like it," was Susan's evasive reply. She did not like to betray to Mrs. Lawton that she had doubted whether she would be willing to leave her parents, now both very old; also whether her afflictions were not yet too fresh in her mind to permit her full enjoyment of travel. Neither of these considerations having entered into Mrs. Lawton's mind, she did not suspect any hidden meaning in Susan's words, and went eagerly on in the discussion of their plans.
Nothing is easier than for two women of large fortunes and assured incomes to set off on a delightful tour of foreign travel. All paths become easy, thus smoothed by money, and so Mrs. Lawton and Susan Sweetser found. Probably no two women ever had a "better time" in the world than did these two for the next three years. I pass by all details of these years spent abroad, because I am not telling the story of Susan's life, only of two days in her life—of an escape she had. This two days' story is worth telling, partly because each hour of the two days was dramatic, partly because there is in the story a lesson—a moral—which any two who love may sometime come to need.
There are several years now of Susan's life to be
