Susan’s visit to Mrs Lynd and Mrs Grant the following morning was not made without some trepidation. If truth were told, she had been less than honest with her aunt Bertram as to the identity of her new acquaintances, describing them merely as a Mrs Lynd and her ailing sister. Yet how could she have told the whole truth without injuring her aunt’s peace of mind? Without raking up old sorrows to no present effect? Moreover, what evil could there be in a visit to two highly respectable widowed ladies?
Fanny’s voice in her head threatened to read her chapter and verse upon the matter. Fortunately, however, having grown up in a tumultuous house, Susan was quite equal to the task of ignoring a sister, particularly one with so soft a voice as Fanny.
She knocked upon the door of a genteel resid
