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Title: Desperate Remedies

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release date: October 2, 2004 [eBook #3044]
Most recently updated: January 27, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3044

Credits: Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESPERATE
REMEDIES ***

DESPERATE REMEDIES

By Thomas Hardy

CONTENTS

PREFATORY NOTE

I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS

II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT

III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS

IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS

VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS

X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT

XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS

XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS

XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

XIV. THE EVENTS OF FIVE WEEKS

XV. THE EVENTS OF THREE WEEKS

XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK

XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY

XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS

XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT

XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS

XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS

SEQUEL

PREFATORY NOTE
The following story, the first published by the author, was written
nineteen years ago, at a time when he was feeling his way to a method. The
principles observed in its composition are, no doubt, too exclusively those
in which mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moral obliquity are depended
on for exciting interest; but some of the scenes, and at least one of the
characters, have been deemed not unworthy of a little longer preservation;
and as they could hardly be reproduced in a fragmentary form the novel is
reissued complete—the more readily that it has for some considerable time
been reprinted and widely circulated in America. January 1889.
To the foregoing note I have only to add that, in the present edition of
‘Desperate Remedies,’ some Wessex towns and other places that are
common to the scenes of several of these stories have been called for the
first time by the names under which they appear elsewhere, for the
satisfaction of any reader who may care for consistency in such matters.
This is the only material change; for, as it happened that certain
characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story were
present in this my first—published in 1871, when there was no French
name for them it has seemed best to let them stand unaltered.
T.H. February 1896.

I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS
1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36

In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance which
renders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye, Edward
Springrove, and others, the first event directly influencing the issue was a
Christmas visit.
In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young architect
who had just begun the practice of his profession in the midland town of
Hocbridge, to the north of Christminster, went to London to spend the
Christmas holidays with a friend who lived in Bloomsbury. They had gone
up to Cambridge in the same year, and, after graduating together, Huntway,
the friend, had taken orders.
Graye was handsome, frank, and gentle. He had a quality of thought
which, exercised on homeliness, was humour; on nature, picturesqueness;
on abstractions, poetry. Being, as a rule, broadcast, it was all three.
Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover evil in a
new friend is to most people only an additional experience: to him it was
ever a surprise.
While in London he became acquainted with a retired officer in the Navy
named Bradleigh, who, with his wife and their daughter, lived in a street not
far from Russell Square. Though they were in no more than comfortable
circumstances, the captain’s wife came of an ancient family whose
genealogical tree was interlaced with some of the most illustrious and well-
known in the kingdom.
The young lady, their daughter, seemed to Graye by far the most
beautiful and queenly being he had ever beheld. She was about nineteen or
twenty, and her name was Cytherea. In truth she was not so very unlike
country girls of that type of beauty, except in one respect. She was perfect
in her manner and bearing, and they were not. A mere distinguishing
peculiarity, by catching the eye, is often read as the pervading characteristic,
and she appeared to him no less than perfection throughout—transcending

her rural rivals in very nature. Graye did a thing the blissfulness of which
was only eclipsed by its hazardousness. He loved her at first sight.
His introductions had led him into contact with Cytherea and her parents
two or three times on the first week of his arrival in London, and accident
and a lover’s contrivance brought them together as frequently the week
following. The parents liked young Graye, and having few friends (for their
equals in blood were their superiors in position), he was received on very
generous terms. His passion for Cytherea grew not only strong, but
ineffably exalted: she, without positively encouraging him, tacitly assented
to his schemes for being near her. Her father and mother seemed to have
lost all confidence in nobility of birth, without money to give effect to its
presence, and looked upon the budding consequence of the young people’s
reciprocal glances with placidity, if not actual favour.
Graye’s whole impassioned dream terminated in a sad and unaccountable
episode. After passing through three weeks of sweet experience, he had
arrived at the last stage—a kind of moral Gaza—before plunging into an
emotional desert. The second week in January had come round, and it was
necessary for the young architect to leave town.
Throughout his acquaintanceship with the lady of his heart there had
been this marked peculiarity in her love: she had delighted in his presence
as a sweetheart should do, yet from first to last she had repressed all
recognition of the true nature of the thread which drew them together,
blinding herself to its meaning and only natural tendency, and appearing to
dread his announcement of them. The present seemed enough for her
without cumulative hope: usually, even if love is in itself an end, it must be
regarded as a beginning to be enjoyed.
In spite of evasions as an obstacle, and in consequence of them as a spur,
he would put the matter off no longer. It was evening. He took her into a
little conservatory on the landing, and there among the evergreens, by the
light of a few tiny lamps, infinitely enhancing the freshness and beauty of
the leaves, he made the declaration of a love as fresh and beautiful as they.
‘My love—my darling, be my wife!’
She seemed like one just awakened. ‘Ah—we must part now!’ she
faltered, in a voice of anguish. ‘I will write to you.’ She loosened her hand
and rushed away.

In a wild fever Graye went home and watched for the next morning. Who
shall express his misery and wonder when a note containing these words
was put into his hand?
‘Good-bye; good-bye for ever. As recognized lovers something divides
us eternally. Forgive me—I should have told you before; but your love was
sweet! Never mention me.’
That very day, and as it seemed, to put an end to a painful condition of
things, daughter and parents left London to pay off a promised visit to a
relative in a western county. No message or letter of entreaty could wring
from her any explanation. She begged him not to follow her, and the most
bewildering point was that her father and mother appeared, from the tone of
a letter Graye received from them, as vexed and sad as he at this sudden
renunciation. One thing was plain: without admitting her reason as valid,
they knew what that reason was, and did not intend to reveal it.
A week from that day Ambrose Graye left his friend Huntway’s house
and saw no more of the Love he mourned. From time to time his friend
answered any inquiry Graye made by letter respecting her. But very poor
food to a lover is intelligence of a mistress filtered through a friend.
Huntway could tell nothing definitely. He said he believed there had been
some prior flirtation between Cytherea and her cousin, an officer of the line,
two or three years before Graye met her, which had suddenly been
terminated by the cousin’s departure for India, and the young lady’s
travelling on the Continent with her parents the whole of the ensuing
summer, on account of delicate health. Eventually Huntway said that
circumstances had rendered Graye’s attachment more hopeless still.
Cytherea’s mother had unexpectedly inherited a large fortune and estates in
the west of England by the rapid fall of some intervening lives. This had
caused their removal from the small house in Bloomsbury, and, as it
appeared, a renunciation of their old friends in that quarter.
Young Graye concluded that his Cytherea had forgotten him and his love.
But he could not forget her.
2. FROM 1843 TO 1861
Eight years later, feeling lonely and depressed—a man without relatives,
with many acquaintances but no friends—Ambrose Graye met a young lady
of a different kind, fairly endowed with money and good gifts. As to caring
very deeply for another woman after the loss of Cytherea, it was an absolute

impossibility with him. With all, the beautiful things of the earth become
more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the
one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever.
This second young lady and Graye were married. That he did not, first or
last, love his wife as he should have done, was known to all; but few knew
that his unmanageable heart could never be weaned from useless repining at
the loss of its first idol.
His character to some extent deteriorated, as emotional constitutions will
under the long sense of disappointment at having missed their imagined
destiny. And thus, though naturally of a gentle and pleasant disposition, he
grew to be not so tenderly regarded by his acquaintances as it is the lot of
some of those persons to be. The winning and sanguine receptivity of his
early life developed by degrees a moody nervousness, and when not
picturing prospects drawn from baseless hope he was the victim of
indescribable depression. The practical issue of such a condition was
improvidence, originally almost an unconscious improvidence, for every
debt incurred had been mentally paid off with a religious exactness from the
treasures of expectation before mentioned. But as years revolved, the same
course was continued from the lack of spirit sufficient for shifting out of an
old groove when it has been found to lead to disaster.
In the year 1861 his wife died, leaving him a widower with two children.
The elder, a son named Owen, now just turned seventeen, was taken from
school, and initiated as pupil to the profession of architect in his father’s
office. The remaining child was a daughter, and Owen’s junior by a year.
Her christian name was Cytherea, and it is easy to guess why.
3. OCTOBER THE TWELFTH, 1863
We pass over two years in order to reach the next cardinal event of these
persons’ lives. The scene is still the Grayes’ native town of Hocbridge, but
as it appeared on a Monday afternoon in the month of October.
The weather was sunny and dry, but the ancient borough was to be seen
wearing one of its least attractive aspects. First on account of the time. It
was that stagnant hour of the twenty-four when the practical garishness of
Day, having escaped from the fresh long shadows and enlivening newness
of the morning, has not yet made any perceptible advance towards
acquiring those mellow and soothing tones which grace its decline. Next, it
was that stage in the progress of the week when business—which, carried

on under the gables of an old country place, is not devoid of a romantic
sparkle—was well-nigh extinguished. Lastly, the town was intentionally
bent upon being attractive by exhibiting to an influx of visitors the local
talent for dramatic recitation, and provincial towns trying to be lively are
the dullest of dull things.
Little towns are like little children in this respect, that they interest most
when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious of beholders.
Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to be entertaining by
putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable caricatures which spoil them.
The weather-stained clock-face in the low church tower standing at the
intersection of the three chief streets was expressing half-past two to the
Town Hall opposite, where the much talked-of reading from Shakespeare
was about to begin. The doors were open, and those persons who had
already assembled within the building were noticing the entrance of the
new-comers—silently criticizing their dress—questioning the genuineness
of their teeth and hair—estimating their private means.
Among these later ones came an exceptional young maiden who glowed
amid the dulness like a single bright-red poppy in a field of brown stubble.
She wore an elegant dark jacket, lavender dress, hat with grey strings and
trimmings, and gloves of a colour to harmonize. She lightly walked up the
side passage of the room, cast a slight glance around, and entered the seat
pointed out to her.
The young girl was Cytherea Graye; her age was now about eighteen.
During her entry, and at various times whilst sitting in her seat and listening
to the reader on the platform, her personal appearance formed an interesting
subject of study for several neighbouring eyes.
Her face was exceedingly attractive, though artistically less perfect than
her figure, which approached unusually near to the standard of
faultlessness. But even this feature of hers yielded the palm to the
gracefulness of her movement, which was fascinating and delightful to an
extreme degree.
Indeed, motion was her speciality, whether shown on its most extended
scale of bodily progression, or minutely, as in the uplifting of her eyelids,
the bending of her fingers, the pouting of her lip. The carriage of her head—
motion within motion—a glide upon a glide—was as delicate as that of a
magnetic needle. And this flexibility and elasticity had never been taught

her by rule, nor even been acquired by observation, but, nullo cultu, had
naturally developed itself with her years. In childhood, a stone or stalk in
the way, which had been the inevitable occasion of a fall to her playmates,
had usually left her safe and upright on her feet after the narrowest escape
by oscillations and whirls for the preservation of her balance. At mixed
Christmas parties, when she numbered but twelve or thirteen years, and was
heartily despised on that account by lads who deemed themselves men, her
apt lightness in the dance covered this incompleteness in her womanhood,
and compelled the self-same youths in spite of resolutions to seize upon her
childish figure as a partner whom they could not afford to contemn. And in
later years, when the instincts of her sex had shown her this point as the
best and rarest feature in her external self, she was not found wanting in
attention to the cultivation of finish in its details.
Her hair rested gaily upon her shoulders in curls and was of a shining
corn yellow in the high lights, deepening to a definite nut-brown as each
curl wound round into the shade. She had eyes of a sapphire hue, though
rather darker than the gem ordinarily appears; they possessed the
affectionate and liquid sparkle of loyalty and good faith as distinguishable
from that harder brightness which seems to express faithfulness only to the
object confronting them.
But to attempt to gain a view of her—or indeed of any fascinating
woman—from a measured category, is as difficult as to appreciate the effect
of a landscape by exploring it at night with a lantern—or of a full chord of
music by piping the notes in succession. Nevertheless it may readily be
believed from the description here ventured, that among the many winning
phases of her aspect, these were particularly striking:—

During pleasant doubt, when her eyes brightened stealthily and
smiled (as eyes will smile) as distinctly as her lips, and in the
space of a single instant expressed clearly the whole round of
degrees of expectancy which lie over the wide expanse between Yea
and Nay.

During the telling of a secret, which was involuntarily
accompanied by a sudden minute start, and ecstatic pressure of
the listener’s arm, side, or neck, as the position and degree
of intimacy dictated.

When anxiously regarding one who possessed her affections.

She suddenly assumed the last-mentioned bearing in the progress of the
present entertainment. Her glance was directed out of the window.

Why the particulars of a young lady’s presence at a very mediocre
performance were prevented from dropping into the oblivion which their
intrinsic insignificance would naturally have involved—why they were
remembered and individualized by herself and others through after years—
was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon the extreme
posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the real meaning of Taking
Thought had never been known. It was the last hour of experience she ever
enjoyed with a mind entirely free from a knowledge of that labyrinth into
which she stepped immediately afterwards—to continue a perplexed course
along its mazes for the greater portion of twenty-nine subsequent months.
The Town Hall, in which Cytherea sat, was a building of brown stone,
and through one of the windows could be seen from the interior of the room
the housetops and chimneys of the adjacent street, and also the upper part of
a neighbouring church spire, now in course of completion under the
superintendence of Miss Graye’s father, the architect to the work.
That the top of this spire should be visible from her position in the room
was a fact which Cytherea’s idling eyes had discovered with some interest,
and she was now engaged in watching the scene that was being enacted
about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cage of
scaffolding against the blue sky, and upon this stood five men—four in
clothes as white as the new erection close beneath their hands, the fifth in
the ordinary dark suit of a gentleman.
The four working-men in white were three masons and a mason’s
labourer. The fifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been giving
directions as it seemed, and retiring as far as the narrow footway allowed,
stood perfectly still.
The picture thus presented to a spectator in the Town Hall was curious
and striking. It was an illuminated miniature, framed in by the dark margin
of the window, the keen-edged shadiness of which emphasized by contrast
the softness of the objects enclosed.
The height of the spire was about one hundred and twenty feet, and the
five men engaged thereon seemed entirely removed from the sphere and
experiences of ordinary human beings. They appeared little larger than
pigeons, and made their tiny movements with a soft, spirit-like silentness.
One idea above all others was conveyed to the mind of a person on the
ground by their aspect, namely, concentration of purpose: that they were

indifferent to—even unconscious of—the distracted world beneath them,
and all that moved upon it. They never looked off the scaffolding.
Then one of them turned; it was Mr. Graye. Again he stood motionless,
with attention to the operations of the others. He appeared to be lost in
reflection, and had directed his face towards a new stone they were lifting.
‘Why does he stand like that?’ the young lady thought at length—up to
that moment as listless and careless as one of the ancient Tarentines, who,
on such an afternoon as this, watched from the Theatre the entry into their
Harbour of a power that overturned the State.
She moved herself uneasily. ‘I wish he would come down,’ she
whispered, still gazing at the skybacked picture. ‘It is so dangerous to be
absent-minded up there.’
When she had done murmuring the words her father indecisively laid
hold of one of the scaffold-poles, as if to test its strength, then let it go and
stepped back. In stepping, his foot slipped. An instant of doubling forward
and sideways, and he reeled off into the air, immediately disappearing
downwards.
His agonized daughter rose to her feet by a convulsive movement. Her
lips parted, and she gasped for breath. She could utter no sound. One by one
the people about her, unconscious of what had happened, turned their heads,
and inquiry and alarm became visible upon their faces at the sight of the
poor child. A moment longer, and she fell to the floor.
The next impression of which Cytherea had any consciousness was of
being carried from a strange vehicle across the pavement to the steps of her
own house by her brother and an older man. Recollection of what had
passed evolved itself an instant later, and just as they entered the door—
through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few
instants before—her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and,
without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a rift in
a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes that are
simultaneous—however foreign in essence these scenes may be—as
chemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after that time any
mental agony brought less vividly to Cytherea’s mind the scene from the
Town Hall windows than sunlight streaming in shaft-like lines.
4. OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH

When death enters a house, an element of sadness and an element of
horror accompany it. Sadness, from the death itself: horror, from the clouds
of blackness we designedly labour to introduce.
The funeral had taken place. Depressed, yet resolved in his demeanour,
Owen Graye sat before his father’s private escritoire, engaged in turning out
and unfolding a heterogeneous collection of papers—forbidding and
inharmonious to the eye at all times—most of all to one under the influence
of a great grief. Laminae of white paper tied with twine were
indiscriminately intermixed with other white papers bounded by black
edges—these with blue foolscap wrapped round with crude red tape.
The bulk of these letters, bills, and other documents were submitted to a
careful examination, by which the appended particulars were ascertained:—

First, that their father’s income from professional sources had
been very small, amounting to not more than half their expenditure;
and that his own and his wife’s property, upon which he had relied
for the balance, had been sunk and lost in unwise loans to
unscrupulous men, who had traded upon their father’s too
open-hearted trustfulness.

Second, that finding his mistake, he had endeavoured to regain
his standing by the illusory path of speculation. The most notable
instance of this was the following. He had been induced, when at
Plymouth in the autumn of the previous year, to venture all his
spare capital on the bottomry security of an Italian brig which
had put into the harbour in distress. The profit was to be
considerable, so was the risk. There turned out to be no security
whatever. The circumstances of the case tendered it the most
unfortunate speculation that a man like himself—ignorant of all
such matters—could possibly engage in. The vessel went down, and
all Mr. Graye’s money with it.

Third, that these failures had left him burdened with debts he
knew not how to meet; so that at the time of his death even the few
pounds lying to his account at the bank were his only in name.

Fourth, that the loss of his wife two years earlier had
awakened him to a keen sense of his blindness, and of his duty by
his children. He had then resolved to reinstate by unflagging zeal
in the pursuit of his profession, and by no speculation, at least a
portion of the little fortune he had let go.

Cytherea was frequently at her brother’s elbow during these
examinations. She often remarked sadly—
‘Poor papa failed to fulfil his good intention for want of time, didn’t he,
Owen? And there was an excuse for his past, though he never would claim
it. I never forget that original disheartening blow, and how that from it

sprang all the ills of his life—everything connected with his gloom, and the
lassitude in business we used so often to see about him.’
‘I remember what he said once,’ returned the brother, ‘when I sat up late
with him. He said, “Owen, don’t love too blindly: blindly you will love if
you love at all, but a little care is still possible to a well-disciplined heart.
May that heart be yours as it was not mine,” father said. “Cultivate the art
of renunciation.” And I am going to, Cytherea.’
‘And once mamma said that an excellent woman was papa’s ruin,
because he did not know the way to give her up when he had lost her. I
wonder where she is now, Owen? We were told not to try to find out
anything about her. Papa never told us her name, did he?’
‘That was by her own request, I believe. But never mind her; she was not
our mother.’
The love affair which had been Ambrose Graye’s disheartening blow was
precisely of that nature which lads take little account of, but girls ponder in
their hearts.
5. FROM OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH TO JULY THE NINTH
Thus Ambrose Graye’s good intentions with regard to the reintegration of
his property had scarcely taken tangible form when his sudden death put
them for ever out of his power.
Heavy bills, showing the extent of his obligations, tumbled in
immediately upon the heels of the funeral from quarters previously unheard
and unthought of. Thus pressed, a bill was filed in Chancery to have the
assets, such as they were, administered by the Court.
‘What will become of us now?’ thought Owen continually.
There is in us an unquenchable expectation, which at the gloomiest time
persists in inferring that because we are ourselves, there must be a special
future in store for us, though our nature and antecedents to the remotest
particular have been common to thousands. Thus to Cytherea and Owen
Graye the question how their lives would end seemed the deepest of
possible enigmas. To others who knew their position equally well with
themselves the question was the easiest that could be asked—‘Like those of
other people similarly circumstanced.’
Then Owen held a consultation with his sister to come to some decision
on their future course, and a month was passed in waiting for answers to

letters, and in the examination of schemes more or less futile. Sudden hopes
that were rainbows to the sight proved but mists to the touch. In the
meantime, unpleasant remarks, disguise them as some well-meaning people
might, were floating around them every day. The undoubted truth, that they
were the children of a dreamer who let slip away every farthing of his
money and ran into debt with his neighbours—that the daughter had been
brought up to no profession—that the son who had, had made no progress
in it, and might come to the dogs—could not from the nature of things be
wrapped up in silence in order that it might not hurt their feelings; and as a
matter of fact, it greeted their ears in some form or other wherever they
went. Their few acquaintances passed them hurriedly. Ancient pot-
wallopers, and thriving shopkeepers, in their intervals of leisure, stood at
their shop-doors—their toes hanging over the edge of the step, and their
obese waists hanging over their toes—and in discourses with friends on the
pavement, formulated the course of the improvident, and reduced the
children’s prospects to a shadow-like attenuation. The sons of these men
(who wore breastpins of a sarcastic kind, and smoked humorous pipes)
stared at Cytherea with a stare unmitigated by any of the respect that had
formerly softened it.
Now it is a noticeable fact that we do not much mind what men think of
us, or what humiliating secret they discover of our means, parentage, or
object, provided that each thinks and acts thereupon in isolation. It is the
exchange of ideas about us that we dread most; and the possession by a
hundred acquaintances, severally insulated, of the knowledge of our
skeleton-closet’s whereabouts, is not so distressing to the nerves as a chat
over it by a party of half-a-dozen—exclusive depositaries though these may
be.
Perhaps, though Hocbridge watched and whispered, its animus would
have been little more than a trifle to persons in thriving circumstances. But
unfortunately, poverty, whilst it is new, and before the skin has had time to
thicken, makes people susceptible inversely to their opportunities for
shielding themselves. In Owen was found, in place of his father’s
impressibility, a larger share of his father’s pride, and a squareness of idea
which, if coupled with a little more blindness, would have amounted to
positive prejudice. To him humanity, so far as he had thought of it at all,
was rather divided into distinct classes than blended from extreme to
extreme. Hence by a sequence of ideas which might be traced if it were

worth while, he either detested or respected opinion, and instinctively
sought to escape a cold shade that mere sensitiveness would have endured.
He could have submitted to separation, sickness, exile, drudgery, hunger
and thirst, with stoical indifference, but superciliousness was too incisive.
After living on for nine months in attempts to make an income as his
father’s successor in the profession—attempts which were utterly fruitless
by reason of his inexperience—Graye came to a simple and sweeping
resolution. They would privately leave that part of England, drop from the
sight of acquaintances, gossips, harsh critics, and bitter creditors of whose
misfortune he was not the cause, and escape the position which galled him
by the only road their great poverty left open to them—that of his obtaining
some employment in a distant place by following his profession as a
humble under-draughtsman.
He thought over his capabilities with the sensations of a soldier grinding
his sword at the opening of a campaign. What with lack of employment,
owing to the decrease of his late father’s practice, and the absence of direct
and uncompromising pressure towards monetary results from a pupil’s
labour (which seems to be always the case when a professional man’s pupil
is also his son), Owen’s progress in the art and science of architecture had
been very insignificant indeed. Though anything but an idle young man, he
had hardly reached the age at which industrious men who lack an external
whip to send them on in the world, are induced by their own common sense
to whip on themselves. Hence his knowledge of plans, elevations, sections,
and specifications, was not greater at the end of two years of probation than
might easily have been acquired in six months by a youth of average ability
—himself, for instance—amid a bustling London practice.
But at any rate he could make himself handy to one of the profession—
some man in a remote town—and there fulfil his indentures. A tangible
inducement lay in this direction of survey. He had a slight conception of
such a man—a Mr. Gradfield—who was in practice in Budmouth Regis, a
seaport town and watering-place in the south of England.
After some doubts, Graye ventured to write to this gentleman, asking the
necessary question, shortly alluding to his father’s death, and stating that his
term of apprenticeship had only half expired. He would be glad to complete
his articles at a very low salary for the whole remaining two years, provided
payment could begin at once.

The answer from Mr. Gradfield stated that he was not in want of a pupil
who would serve the remainder of his time on the terms Mr. Graye
mentioned. But he would just add one remark. He chanced to be in want of
some young man in his office—for a short time only, probably about two
months—to trace drawings, and attend to other subsidiary work of the kind.
If Mr. Graye did not object to occupy such an inferior position as these
duties would entail, and to accept weekly wages which to one with his
expectations would be considered merely nominal, the post would give him
an opportunity for learning a few more details of the profession.
‘It is a beginning, and, above all, an abiding-place, away from the
shadow of the cloud which hangs over us here—I will go,’ said Owen.
Cytherea’s plan for her future, an intensely simple one, owing to the even
greater narrowness of her resources, was already marked out. One
advantage had accrued to her through her mother’s possession of a fair
share of personal property, and perhaps only one. She had been carefully
educated. Upon this consideration her plan was based. She was to take up
her abode in her brother’s lodging at Budmouth, when she would
immediately advertise for a situation as governess, having obtained the
consent of a lawyer at Aldbrickham who was winding up her father’s
affairs, and who knew the history of her position, to allow himself to be
referred to in the matter of her past life and respectability.
Early one morning they departed from their native town, leaving behind
them scarcely a trace of their footsteps.
Then the town pitied their want of wisdom in taking such a step.
‘Rashness; they would have made a better income in Hocbridge, where they
are known! There is no doubt that they would.’
But what is Wisdom really? A steady handling of any means to bring
about any end necessary to happiness.
Yet whether one’s end be the usual end—a wealthy position in life—or
no, the name of wisdom is seldom applied but to the means to that usual
end.

II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT
1. THE NINTH OF JULY

The day of their departure was one of the most glowing that the climax of
a long series of summer heats could evolve. The wide expanse of landscape
quivered up and down like the flame of a taper, as they steamed along
through the midst of it. Placid flocks of sheep reclining under trees a little
way off appeared of a pale blue colour. Clover fields were livid with the
brightness of the sun upon their deep red flowers. All waggons and carts
were moved to the shade by their careful owners, rain-water butts fell to
pieces; well-buckets were lowered inside the covers of the well-hole, to
preserve them from the fate of the butts, and generally, water seemed
scarcer in the country than the beer and cider of the peasantry who toiled or
idled there.
To see persons looking with children’s eyes at any ordinary scenery, is a
proof that they possess the charming faculty of drawing new sensations
from an old experience—a healthy sign, rare in these feverish days—the
mark of an imperishable brightness of nature.
Both brother and sister could do this; Cytherea more noticeably. They
watched the undulating corn-lands, monotonous to all their companions; the
stony and clayey prospect succeeding those, with its angular and abrupt
hills. Boggy moors came next, now withered and dry—the spots upon
which pools usually spread their waters showing themselves as circles of
smooth bare soil, over-run by a net-work of innumerable little fissures.
Then arose plantations of firs, abruptly terminating beside meadows cleanly
mown, in which high-hipped, rich-coloured cows, with backs horizontal
and straight as the ridge of a house, stood motionless or lazily fed. Glimpses
of the sea now interested them, which became more and more frequent till
the train finally drew up beside the platform at Budmouth.
‘The whole town is looking out for us,’ had been Graye’s impression
throughout the day. He called upon Mr. Gradfield—the only man who had
been directly informed of his coming—and found that Mr. Gradfield had
forgotten it.

However, arrangements were made with this gentleman—a stout, active,
grey-bearded burgher of sixty—by which Owen was to commence work in
his office the following week.
The same day Cytherea drew up and sent off the advertisement
appended:—

‘A YOUNG LADY is desirous of meeting with an engagement as
governess or companion. She is competent to teach English,
French, and Music. Satisfactory references—Address, C. G.,
Post-Office, Budmouth.’

It seemed a more material existence than her own that she saw thus
delineated on the paper. ‘That can’t be myself; how odd I look!’ she said,
and smiled.
2. JULY THE ELEVENTH
On the Monday subsequent to their arrival in Budmouth, Owen Graye
attended at Mr. Gradfield’s office to enter upon his duties, and his sister was
left in their lodgings alone for the first time.
Despite the sad occurrences of the preceding autumn, an unwonted
cheerfulness pervaded her spirit throughout the day. Change of scene—and
that to untravelled eyes—conjoined with the sensation of freedom from
supervision, revived the sparkle of a warm young nature ready enough to
take advantage of any adventitious restoratives. Point-blank grief tends
rather to seal up happiness for a time than to produce that attrition which
results from griefs of anticipation that move onward with the days: these
may be said to furrow away the capacity for pleasure.
Her expectations from the advertisement began to be extravagant. A
thriving family, who had always sadly needed her, was already definitely
pictured in her fancy, which, in its exuberance, led her on to picturing its
individual members, their possible peculiarities, virtues, and vices, and
obliterated for a time the recollection that she would be separated from her
brother.
Thus musing, as she waited for his return in the evening, her eyes fell on
her left hand. The contemplation of her own left fourth finger by symbol-
loving girlhood of this age is, it seems, very frequently, if not always,
followed by a peculiar train of romantic ideas. Cytherea’s thoughts, still
playing about her future, became directed into this romantic groove. She
leant back in her chair, and taking hold of the fourth finger, which had

attracted her attention, she lifted it with the tips of the others, and looked at
the smooth and tapering member for a long time.
She whispered idly, ‘I wonder who and what he will be?
‘If he’s a gentleman of fashion, he will take my finger so, just with the
tips of his own, and with some fluttering of the heart, and the least
trembling of his lip, slip the ring so lightly on that I shall hardly know it is
there—looking delightfully into my eyes all the time.
‘If he’s a bold, dashing soldier, I expect he will proudly turn round, take
the ring as if it equalled her Majesty’s crown in value, and desperately set it
on my finger thus. He will fix his eyes unflinchingly upon what he is doing
—just as if he stood in battle before the enemy (though, in reality, very fond
of me, of course), and blush as much as I shall.
‘If he’s a sailor, he will take my finger and the ring in this way, and deck
it out with a housewifely touch and a tenderness of expression about his
mouth, as sailors do: kiss it, perhaps, with a simple air, as if we were
children playing an idle game, and not at the very height of observation and
envy by a great crowd saying, “Ah! they are happy now!”
‘If he should be rather a poor man—noble-minded and affectionate, but
still poor—’
Owen’s footsteps rapidly ascending the stairs, interrupted this fancy-free
meditation. Reproaching herself, even angry with herself for allowing her
mind to stray upon such subjects in the face of their present desperate
condition, she rose to meet him, and make tea.
Cytherea’s interest to know how her brother had been received at Mr.
Gradfield’s broke forth into words at once. Almost before they had sat down
to table, she began cross-examining him in the regular sisterly way.
‘Well, Owen, how has it been with you to-day? What is the place like—
do you think you will like Mr. Gradfield?’
‘O yes. But he has not been there to-day; I have only had the head
draughtsman with me.’
Young women have a habit, not noticeable in men, of putting on at a
moment’s notice the drama of whosoever’s life they choose. Cytherea’s
interest was transferred from Mr. Gradfield to his representative.
‘What sort of a man is he?’

‘He seems a very nice fellow indeed; though of course I can hardly tell to
a certainty as yet. But I think he’s a very worthy fellow; there’s no nonsense
in him, and though he is not a public school man he has read widely, and
has a sharp appreciation of what’s good in books and art. In fact, his
knowledge isn’t nearly so exclusive as most professional men’s.’
‘That’s a great deal to say of an architect, for of all professional men they
are, as a rule, the most professional.’
‘Yes; perhaps they are. This man is rather of a melancholy turn of mind, I
think.’
‘Has the managing clerk any family?’ she mildly asked, after a while,
pouring out some more tea.
‘Family; no!’
‘Well, dear Owen, how should I know?’
‘Why, of course he isn’t married. But there happened to be a conversation
about women going on in the office, and I heard him say what he should
wish his wife to be like.’
‘What would he wish his wife to be like?’ she said, with great apparent
lack of interest.
‘O, he says she must be girlish and artless: yet he would be loth to do
without a dash of womanly subtlety, ‘tis so piquant. Yes, he said, that must
be in her; she must have womanly cleverness. “And yet I should like her to
blush if only a cock-sparrow were to look at her hard,” he said, “which
brings me back to the girl again: and so I flit backwards and forwards. I
must have what comes, I suppose,” he said, “and whatever she may be,
thank God she’s no worse. However, if he might give a final hint to
Providence,” he said, “a child among pleasures, and a woman among pains
was the rough outline of his requirement.”’
‘Did he say that? What a musing creature he must be.’
‘He did, indeed.’
3. FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE FIFTEENTH OF JULY
As is well known, ideas are so elastic in a human brain, that they have no
constant measure which may be called their actual bulk. Any important idea
may be compressed to a molecule by an unwonted crowding of others; and
any small idea will expand to whatever length and breadth of vacuum the

mind may be able to make over to it. Cytherea’s world was tolerably vacant
at this time, and the young architectural designer’s image became very
pervasive. The next evening this subject was again renewed.
‘His name is Springrove,’ said Owen, in reply to her. ‘He is a thorough
artist, but a man of rather humble origin, it seems, who has made himself so
far. I think he is the son of a farmer, or something of the kind.’
‘Well, he’s none the worse for that, I suppose.’
‘None the worse. As we come down the hill, we shall be continually
meeting people going up.’ But Owen had felt that Springrove was a little the
worse nevertheless.
‘Of course he’s rather old by this time.’
‘O no. He’s about six-and-twenty—not more.’
‘Ah, I see.... What is he like, Owen?’
‘I can’t exactly tell you his appearance: ‘tis always such a difficult thing
to do.’
‘A man you would describe as short? Most men are those we should
describe as short, I fancy.’
‘I should call him, I think, of the middle height; but as I only see him
sitting in the office, of course I am not certain about his form and figure.’
‘I wish you were, then.’
‘Perhaps you do. But I am not, you see.’
‘Of course not, you are always so provoking. Owen, I saw a man in the
street to-day whom I fancied was he—and yet, I don’t see how it could be,
either. He had light brown hair, a snub nose, very round face, and a peculiar
habit of reducing his eyes to straight lines when he looked narrowly at
anything.’
‘O no. That was not he, Cytherea.’
‘Not a bit like him in all probability.’
‘Not a bit. He has dark hair—almost a Grecian nose, regular teeth, and an
intellectual face, as nearly as I can recall to mind.’
‘Ah, there now, Owen, you have described him! But I suppose he’s not
generally called pleasing, or—’
‘Handsome?’

‘I scarcely meant that. But since you have said it, is he handsome?’
‘Rather.’
‘His tout ensemble is striking?’
‘Yes—O no, no—I forgot: it is not. He is rather untidy in his waistcoat,
and neck-ties, and hair.’
‘How vexing!... it must be to himself, poor thing.’
‘He’s a thorough bookworm—despises the pap-and-daisy school of verse
—knows Shakespeare to the very dregs of the foot-notes. Indeed, he’s a
poet himself in a small way.’
‘How delicious!’ she said. ‘I have never known a poet.’
‘And you don’t know him,’ said Owen dryly.
She reddened. ‘Of course I don’t. I know that.’
‘Have you received any answer to your advertisement?’ he inquired.
‘Ah—no!’ she said, and the forgotten disappointment which had showed
itself in her face at different times during the day, became visible again.
Another day passed away. On Thursday, without inquiry, she learnt more
of the head draughtsman. He and Graye had become very friendly, and he
had been tempted to show her brother a copy of some poems of his—some
serious and sad—some humorous—which had appeared in the poets’ corner
of a magazine from time to time. Owen showed them now to Cytherea, who
instantly began to read them carefully and to think them very beautiful.
‘Yes—Springrove’s no fool,’ said Owen sententiously.
‘No fool!—I should think he isn’t, indeed,’ said Cytherea, looking up
from the paper in quite an excitement: ‘to write such verses as these!’
‘What logic are you chopping, Cytherea? Well, I don’t mean on account
of the verses, because I haven’t read them; but for what he said when the
fellows were talking about falling in love.’
‘Which you will tell me?’
‘He says that your true lover breathlessly finds himself engaged to a
sweetheart, like a man who has caught something in the dark. He doesn’t
know whether it is a bat or a bird, and takes it to the light when he is cool to
learn what it is. He looks to see if she is the right age, but right age or
wrong age, he must consider her a prize. Sometime later he ponders
whether she is the right kind of prize for him. Right kind or wrong kind—he

has called her his, and must abide by it. After a time he asks himself, “Has
she the temper, hair, and eyes I meant to have, and was firmly resolved not
to do without?” He finds it is all wrong, and then comes the tussle—’
‘Do they marry and live happily?’
‘Who? O, the supposed pair. I think he said—well, I really forget what he
said.’
‘That is stupid of you!’ said the young lady with dismay.
‘Yes.’
‘But he’s a satirist—I don’t think I care about him now.’
‘There you are just wrong. He is not. He is, as I believe, an impulsive
fellow who has been made to pay the penalty of his rashness in some love
affair.’
Thus ended the dialogue of Thursday, but Cytherea read the verses again
in private. On Friday her brother remarked that Springrove had informed
him he was going to leave Mr. Gradfield’s in a fortnight to push his fortunes
in London.
An indescribable feeling of sadness shot through Cytherea’s heart. Why
should she be sad at such an announcement as that, she thought, concerning
a man she had never seen, when her spirits were elastic enough to rebound
after hard blows from deep and real troubles as if she had scarcely known
them? Though she could not answer this question, she knew one thing, she
was saddened by Owen’s news.
4. JULY THE TWENTY-FIRST
A very popular local excursion by steamboat to Lulstead Cove was
announced through the streets of Budmouth one Thursday morning by the
weak-voiced town-crier, to start at six o’clock the same day. The weather
was lovely, and the opportunity being the first of the kind offered to them,
Owen and Cytherea went with the rest.
They had reached the Cove, and had walked landward for nearly an hour
over the hill which rose beside the strand, when Graye recollected that two
or three miles yet further inland from this spot was an interesting mediaeval
ruin. He was already familiar with its characteristics through the medium of
an archaeological work, and now finding himself so close to the reality, felt
inclined to verify some theory he had formed respecting it. Concluding that
there would be just sufficient time for him to go there and return before the

boat had left the shore, he parted from Cytherea on the hill, struck
downwards, and then up a heathery valley.
She remained on the summit where he had left her till the time of his
expected return, scanning the details of the prospect around. Placidly spread
out before her on the south was the open Channel, reflecting a blue intenser
by many shades than that of the sky overhead, and dotted in the foreground
by half-a-dozen small craft of contrasting rig, their sails graduating in hue
from extreme whiteness to reddish brown, the varying actual colours varied
again in a double degree by the rays of the declining sun.
Presently the distant bell from the boat was heard, warning the
passengers to embark. This was followed by a lively air from the harps and
violins on board, their tones, as they arose, becoming intermingled with,
though not marred by, the brush of the waves when their crests rolled over
—at the point where the check of the shallows was first felt—and then
thinned away up the slope of pebbles and sand.
She turned her face landward and strained her eyes to discern, if possible,
some sign of Owen’s return. Nothing was visible save the strikingly
brilliant, still landscape. The wide concave which lay at the back of the hill
in this direction was blazing with the western light, adding an orange tint to
the vivid purple of the heather, now at the very climax of bloom, and free
from the slightest touch of the invidious brown that so soon creeps into its
shades. The light so intensified the colours that they seemed to stand above
the surface of the earth and float in mid-air like an exhalation of red. In the
minor valleys, between the hillocks and ridges which diversified the
contour of the basin, but did not disturb its general sweep, she marked
brakes of tall, heavy-stemmed ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-
green dress—a broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding
like a stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of the hill, and
delivered up the path to its grassy area. Among the ferns grew holly bushes
deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole surface of the
scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and here and there were round
ponds, now dry, and half overgrown with rushes.
The last bell of the steamer rang. Cytherea had forgotten herself, and
what she was looking for. In a fever of distress lest Owen should be left
behind, she gathered up in her hand the corners of her handkerchief,
containing specimens of the shells, plants, and fossils which the locality

produced, started off to the sands, and mingled with the knots of visitors
there congregated from other interesting points around; from the inn, the
cottages, and hired conveyances that had returned from short drives inland.
They all went aboard by the primitive plan of a narrow plank on two wheels
—the women being assisted by a rope. Cytherea lingered till the very last,
reluctant to follow, and looking alternately at the boat and the valley
behind. Her delay provoked a remark from Captain Jacobs, a thickset man
of hybrid stains, resulting from the mixed effects of fire and water, peculiar
to sailors where engines are the propelling power.
‘Now then, missy, if you please. I am sorry to tell ‘ee our time’s up. Who
are you looking for, miss?’
‘My brother—he has walked a short distance inland; he must be here
directly. Could you wait for him—just a minute?’
‘Really, I am afraid not, m’m.’ Cytherea looked at the stout, round-faced
man, and at the vessel, with a light in her eyes so expressive of her own
opinion being the same, on reflection, as his, and with such resignation, too,
that, from an instinctive feeling of pride at being able to prove himself more
humane than he was thought to be—works of supererogation are the only
sacrifices that entice in this way—and that at a very small cost, he delayed
the boat till some among the passengers began to murmur.
‘There, never mind,’ said Cytherea decisively. ‘Go on without me—I
shall wait for him.’
‘Well, ‘tis a very awkward thing to leave you here all alone,’ said the
captain. ‘I certainly advise you not to wait.’
‘He’s gone across to the railway station, for certain,’ said another
passenger.
‘No—here he is!’ Cytherea said, regarding, as she spoke, the half hidden
figure of a man who was seen advancing at a headlong pace down the
ravine which lay between the heath and the shore.
‘He can’t get here in less than five minutes,’ a passenger said. ‘People
should know what they are about, and keep time. Really, if—’
‘You see, sir,’ said the captain, in an apologetic undertone, ‘since ‘tis her
brother, and she’s all alone, ‘tis only nater to wait a minute, now he’s in
sight. Suppose, now, you were a young woman, as might be, and had a
brother, like this one, and you stood of an evening upon this here wild

lonely shore, like her, why you’d want us to wait, too, wouldn’t you, sir? I
think you would.’
The person so hastily approaching had been lost to view during this
remark by reason of a hollow in the ground, and the projecting cliff
immediately at hand covered the path in its rise. His footsteps were now
heard striking sharply upon the flinty road at a distance of about twenty or
thirty yards, but still behind the escarpment. To save time, Cytherea
prepared to ascend the plank.
‘Let me give you my hand, miss,’ said Captain Jacobs.
‘No—please don’t touch me,’ said she, ascending cautiously by sliding
one foot forward two or three inches, bringing up the other behind it, and so
on alternately—her lips compressed by concentration on the feat, her eyes
glued to the plank, her hand to the rope, and her immediate thought to the
fact of the distressing narrowness of her footing. Steps now shook the lower
end of the board, and in an instant were up to her heels with a bound.
‘O, Owen, I am so glad you are come!’ she said without turning. ‘Don’t,
don’t shake the plank or touch me, whatever you do.... There, I am up.
Where have you been so long?’ she continued, in a lower tone, turning
round to him as she reached the top.
Raising her eyes from her feet, which, standing on the firm deck,
demanded her attention no longer, she acquired perceptions of the new-
comer in the following order: unknown trousers; unknown waistcoat;
unknown face. The man was not her brother, but a total stranger.
Off went the plank; the paddles started, stopped, backed, pattered in
confusion, then revolved decisively, and the boat passed out into deep
water.
One or two persons had said, ‘How d’ye do, Mr. Springrove?’ and looked
at Cytherea, to see how she bore her disappointment. Her ears had but just
caught the name of the head draughtsman, when she saw him advancing
directly to address her.
‘Miss Graye, I believe?’ he said, lifting his hat.
‘Yes,’ said Cytherea, colouring, and trying not to look guilty of a
surreptitious knowledge of him.
‘I am Mr. Springrove. I passed Corvsgate Castle about an hour ago, and
soon afterwards met your brother going that way. He had been deceived in

the distance, and was about to turn without seeing the ruin, on account of a
lameness that had come on in his leg or foot. I proposed that he should go
on, since he had got so near; and afterwards, instead of walking back to the
boat, get across to Anglebury Station—a shorter walk for him—where he
could catch the late train, and go directly home. I could let you know what
he had done, and allay any uneasiness.’
‘Is the lameness serious, do you know?’
‘O no; simply from over-walking himself. Still, it was just as well to ride
home.’
Relieved from her apprehensions on Owen’s score, she was able slightly
to examine the appearance of her informant—Edward Springrove—who
now removed his hat for a while, to cool himself. He was rather above her
brother’s height. Although the upper part of his face and head was
handsomely formed, and bounded by lines of sufficiently masculine
regularity, his brows were somewhat too softly arched, and finely pencilled
for one of his sex; without prejudice, however, to the belief which the sum
total of his features inspired—that though they did not prove that the man
who thought inside them would do much in the world, men who had done
most of all had had no better ones. Across his forehead, otherwise perfectly
smooth, ran one thin line, the healthy freshness of his remaining features
expressing that it had come there prematurely.
Though some years short of the age at which the clear spirit bids good-
bye to the last infirmity of noble mind, and takes to house-hunting and
investments, he had reached the period in a young man’s life when episodic
periods, with a hopeful birth and a disappointing death, have begun to
accumulate, and to bear a fruit of generalities; his glance sometimes
seeming to state, ‘I have already thought out the issue of such conditions as
these we are experiencing.’ At other times he wore an abstracted look: ‘I
seem to have lived through this moment before.’
He was carelessly dressed in dark grey, wearing a rolled-up black
kerchief as a neck-cloth; the knot of which was disarranged, and stood
obliquely—a deposit of white dust having lodged in the creases.
‘I am sorry for your disappointment,’ he continued, glancing into her
face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together,
and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such
a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from

each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which
carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest
compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the
conviction, ‘A tie has begun to unite us.’
Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in
each other’s thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his
sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect.
A conversation began, which was none the less interesting to the parties
engaged because it consisted only of the most trivial and commonplace
remarks. Then the band of harps and violins struck up a lively melody, and
the deck was cleared for dancing; the sun dipping beneath the horizon
during the proceeding, and the moon showing herself at their stern. The sea
was so calm, that the soft hiss produced by the bursting of the innumerable
bubbles of foam behind the paddles could be distinctly heard. The
passengers who did not dance, including Cytherea and Springrove, lapsed
into silence, leaning against the paddle-boxes, or standing aloof—noticing
the trembling of the deck to the steps of the dance—watching the waves
from the paddles as they slid thinly and easily under each other’s edges.
Night had quite closed in by the time they reached Budmouth harbour,
sparkling with its white, red, and green lights in opposition to the
shimmering path of the moon’s reflection on the other side, which reached
away to the horizon till the flecked ripples reduced themselves to sparkles
as fine as gold dust.
‘I will walk to the station and find out the exact time the train arrives,’
said Springrove, rather eagerly, when they had landed.
She thanked him much.
‘Perhaps we might walk together,’ he suggested hesitatingly. She looked
as if she did not quite know, and he settled the question by showing the
way.
They found, on arriving there, that on the first day of that month the
particular train selected for Graye’s return had ceased to stop at Anglebury
station.
‘I am very sorry I misled him,’ said Springrove.
‘O, I am not alarmed at all,’ replied Cytherea.

‘Well, it’s sure to be all right—he will sleep there, and come by the first
in the morning. But what will you do, alone?’
‘I am quite easy on that point; the landlady is very friendly. I must go
indoors now. Good-night, Mr. Springrove.’
‘Let me go round to your door with you?’ he pleaded.
‘No, thank you; we live close by.’
He looked at her as a waiter looks at the change he brings back. But she
was inexorable.
‘Don’t—forget me,’ he murmured. She did not answer.
‘Let me see you sometimes,’ he said.
‘Perhaps you never will again—I am going away,’ she replied in
lingering tones; and turning into Cross Street, ran indoors and upstairs.
The sudden withdrawal of what was superfluous at first, is often felt as
an essential loss. It was felt now with regard to the maiden. More, too, after
a meeting so pleasant and so enkindling, she had seemed to imply that they
would never come together again.
The young man softly followed her, stood opposite the house and
watched her come into the upper room with the light. Presently his gaze
was cut short by her approaching the window and pulling down the blind—
Edward dwelling upon her vanishing figure with a hopeless sense of loss
akin to that which Adam is said by logicians to have felt when he first saw
the sun set, and thought, in his inexperience, that it would return no more.
He waited till her shadow had twice crossed the window, when, finding
the charming outline was not to be expected again, he left the street, crossed
the harbour-bridge, and entered his own solitary chamber on the other side,
vaguely thinking as he went (for undefined reasons),

‘One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother.’

III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS
1. FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-
SEVENTH OF JULY

But things are not what they seem. A responsive love for Edward
Springrove had made its appearance in Cytherea’s bosom with all the
fascinating attributes of a first experience, not succeeding to or displacing
other emotions, as in older hearts, but taking up entirely new ground; as
when gazing just after sunset at the pale blue sky we see a star come into
existence where nothing was before.
His parting words, ‘Don’t forget me,’ she repeated to herself a hundred
times, and though she thought their import was probably commonplace, she
could not help toying with them,—looking at them from all points, and
investing them with meanings of love and faithfulness,—ostensibly
entertaining such meanings only as fables wherewith to pass the time, yet in
her heart admitting, for detached instants, a possibility of their deeper truth.
And thus, for hours after he had left her, her reason flirted with her fancy as
a kitten will sport with a dove, pleasantly and smoothly through easy
attitudes, but disclosing its cruel and unyielding nature at crises.
To turn now to the more material media through which this story moves,
it so happened that the very next morning brought round a circumstance
which, slight in itself, took up a relevant and important position between the
past and the future of the persons herein concerned.
At breakfast time, just as Cytherea had again seen the postman pass
without bringing her an answer to the advertisement, as she had fully
expected he would do, Owen entered the room.
‘Well,’ he said, kissing her, ‘you have not been alarmed, of course.
Springrove told you what I had done, and you found there was no train?’
‘Yes, it was all clear. But what is the lameness owing to?’
‘I don’t know—nothing. It has quite gone off now... Cytherea, I hope you
like Springrove. Springrove’s a nice fellow, you know.’

‘Yes. I think he is, except that—’
‘It happened just to the purpose that I should meet him there, didn’t it?
And when I reached the station and learnt that I could not get on by train
my foot seemed better. I started off to walk home, and went about five miles
along a path beside the railway. It then struck me that I might not be fit for
anything to-day if I walked and aggravated the bothering foot, so I looked
for a place to sleep at. There was no available village or inn, and I
eventually got the keeper of a gate-house, where a lane crossed the line, to
take me in.’
They proceeded with their breakfast. Owen yawned.
‘You didn’t get much sleep at the gate-house last night, I’m afraid,
Owen,’ said his sister.
‘To tell the truth, I didn’t. I was in such very close and narrow quarters.
Those gate-houses are such small places, and the man had only his own bed
to offer me. Ah, by-the-bye, Cythie, I have such an extraordinary thing to
tell you in connection with this man!—by Jove, I had nearly forgotten it!
But I’ll go straight on. As I was saying, he had only his own bed to offer
me, but I could not afford to be fastidious, and as he had a hearty manner,
though a very queer one, I agreed to accept it, and he made a rough pallet
for himself on the floor close beside me. Well, I could not sleep for my life,
and I wished I had not stayed there, though I was so tired. For one thing,
there were the luggage trains rattling by at my elbow the early part of the
night. But worse than this, he talked continually in his sleep, and
occasionally struck out with his limbs at something or another, knocking
against the post of the bedstead and making it tremble. My condition was
altogether so unsatisfactory that at last I awoke him, and asked him what he
had been dreaming about for the previous hour, for I could get no sleep at
all. He begged my pardon for disturbing me, but a name I had casually let
fall that evening had led him to think of another stranger he had once had
visit him, who had also accidentally mentioned the same name, and some
very strange incidents connected with that meeting. The affair had occurred
years and years ago; but what I had said had made him think and dream
about it as if it were but yesterday. What was the word? I said. “Cytherea,”
he said. What was the story? I asked then. He then told me that when he
was a young man in London he borrowed a few pounds to add to a few he
had saved up, and opened a little inn at Hammersmith. One evening, after

the inn had been open about a couple of months, every idler in the
neighbourhood ran off to Westminster. The Houses of Parliament were on
fire.
‘Not a soul remained in his parlour besides himself, and he began picking
up the pipes and glasses his customers had hastily relinquished. At length a
young lady about seventeen or eighteen came in. She asked if a woman was
there waiting for herself—Miss Jane Taylor. He said no; asked the young
lady if she would wait, and showed her into the small inner room. There
was a glass-pane in the partition dividing this room from the bar to enable
the landlord to see if his visitors, who sat there, wanted anything. A curious
awkwardness and melancholy about the behaviour of the girl who called,
caused my informant to look frequently at her through the partition. She
seemed weary of her life, and sat with her face buried in her hands,
evidently quite out of her element in such a house. Then a woman much
older came in and greeted Miss Taylor by name. The man distinctly heard
the following words pass between them:—
‘“Why have you not brought him?”
‘“He is ill; he is not likely to live through the night.”
‘At this announcement from the elderly woman, the young lady fell to the
floor in a swoon, apparently overcome by the news. The landlord ran in and
lifted her up. Well, do what they would they could not for a long time bring
her back to consciousness, and began to be much alarmed. “Who is she?”
the innkeeper said to the other woman. “I know her,” the other said, with
deep meaning in her tone. The elderly and young woman seemed allied, and
yet strangers.
‘She now showed signs of life, and it struck him (he was plainly of an
inquisitive turn), that in her half-bewildered state he might get some
information from her. He stooped over her, put his mouth to her ear, and
said sharply, “What’s your name?” “To catch a woman napping is difficult,
even when she’s half dead; but I did it,” says the gatekeeper. When he asked
her her name, she said immediately—
‘“Cytherea”—and stopped suddenly.’
‘My own name!’ said Cytherea.
‘Yes—your name. Well, the gateman thought at the time it might be
equally with Jane a name she had invented for the occasion, that they might

not trace her; but I think it was truth unconsciously uttered, for she added
directly afterwards: “O, what have I said!” and was quite overcome again—
this time with fright. Her vexation that the woman now doubted the
genuineness of her other name was very much greater than that the
innkeeper did, and it is evident that to blind the woman was her main
object. He also learnt from words the elderly woman casually dropped, that
meetings of the same kind had been held before, and that the falseness of
the soi-disant Miss Jane Taylor’s name had never been suspected by this
dependent or confederate till then.
‘She recovered, rested there for an hour, and first sending off her
companion peremptorily (which was another odd thing), she left the house,
offering the landlord all the money she had to say nothing about the
circumstance. He has never seen her since, according to his own account. I
said to him again and again, “Did you find any more particulars
afterwards?” “Not a syllable,” he said. O, he should never hear any more of
that! too many years had passed since it happened. “At any rate, you found
out her surname?” I said. “Well, well, that’s my secret,” he went on.
“Perhaps I should never have been in this part of the world if it hadn’t been
for that. I failed as a publican, you know.” I imagine the situation of
gateman was given him and his debts paid off as a bribe to silence; but I
can’t say. “Ah, yes!” he said, with a long breath. “I have never heard that
name mentioned since that time till to-night, and then there instantly rose to
my eyes the vision of that young lady lying in a fainting fit.” He then
stopped talking and fell asleep. Telling the story must have relieved him as
it did the Ancient Mariner, for he did not move a muscle or make another
sound for the remainder of the night. Now isn’t that an odd story?’
‘It is indeed,’ Cytherea murmured. ‘Very, very strange.’
‘Why should she have said your most uncommon name?’ continued
Owen. ‘The man was evidently truthful, for there was not motive sufficient
for his invention of such a tale, and he could not have done it either.’
Cytherea looked long at her brother. ‘Don’t you recognize anything else
in connection with the story?’ she said.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Do you remember what poor papa once let drop—that Cytherea was the
name of his first sweetheart in Bloomsbury, who so mysteriously renounced
him? A sort of intuition tells me that this was the same woman.’

‘O no—not likely,’ said her brother sceptically.
‘How not likely, Owen? There’s not another woman of the name in
England. In what year used papa to say the event took place?’
‘Eighteen hundred and thirty-five.’
‘And when were the Houses of Parliament burnt?—stop, I can tell you.’
She searched their little stock of books for a list of dates, and found one in
an old school history.
‘The Houses of Parliament were burnt down in the evening of the
sixteenth of October, eighteen hundred and thirty-four.’
‘Nearly a year and a quarter before she met father,’ remarked Owen.
They were silent. ‘If papa had been alive, what a wonderful absorbing
interest this story would have had for him,’ said Cytherea by-and-by. ‘And
how strangely knowledge comes to us. We might have searched for a clue
to her secret half the world over, and never found one. If we had really had
any motive for trying to discover more of the sad history than papa told us,
we should have gone to Bloomsbury; but not caring to do so, we go two
hundred miles in the opposite direction, and there find information waiting
to be told us. What could have been the secret, Owen?’
‘Heaven knows. But our having heard a little more of her in this way (if
she is the same woman) is a mere coincidence after all—a family story to
tell our friends if we ever have any. But we shall never know any more of
the episode now—trust our fates for that.’
Cytherea sat silently thinking.
‘There was no answer this morning to your advertisement, Cytherea?’ he
continued.
‘None.’
‘I could see that by your looks when I came in.’
‘Fancy not getting a single one,’ she said sadly. ‘Surely there must be
people somewhere who want governesses?’
‘Yes; but those who want them, and can afford to have them, get them
mostly by friends’ recommendations; whilst those who want them, and
can’t afford to have them, make use of their poor relations.’
‘What shall I do?’

‘Never mind it. Go on living with me. Don’t let the difficulty trouble
your mind so; you think about it all day. I can keep you, Cythie, in a plain
way of living. Twenty-five shillings a week do not amount to much truly;
but then many mechanics have no more, and we live quite as sparingly as
journeymen mechanics... It is a meagre narrow life we are drifting into,’ he
added gloomily, ‘but it is a degree more tolerable than the worrying
sensation of all the world being ashamed of you, which we experienced at
Hocbridge.’
‘I couldn’t go back there again,’ she said.
‘Nor I. O, I don’t regret our course for a moment. We did quite right in
dropping out of the world.’ The sneering tones of the remark were almost
too laboured to be real. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘something better for me is
sure to turn up soon. I wish my engagement here was a permanent one
instead of for only two months. It may, certainly, be for a longer time, but
all is uncertain.’
‘I wish I could get something to do; and I must too,’ she said firmly.
‘Suppose, as is very probable, you are not wanted after the beginning of
October—the time Mr. Gradfield mentioned—what should we do if I were
dependent on you only throughout the winter?’
They pondered on numerous schemes by which a young lady might be
supposed to earn a decent livelihood—more or less convenient and feasible
in imagination, but relinquished them all until advertising had been once
more tried, this time taking lower ground. Cytherea was vexed at her
temerity in having represented to the world that so inexperienced a being as
herself was a qualified governess; and had a fancy that this presumption of
hers might be one reason why no ladies applied. The new and humbler
attempt appeared in the following form:—

‘NURSERY GOVERNESS OR USEFUL COMPANION. A young person wishes to
hear of a situation in either of the above capacities. Salary very
moderate. She is a good needle-woman—Address G., 3 Cross Street,
Budmouth.’

In the evening they went to post the letter, and then walked up and down
the Parade for a while. Soon they met Springrove, said a few words to him,
and passed on. Owen noticed that his sister’s face had become crimson.
Rather oddly they met Springrove again in a few minutes. This time the
three walked a little way together, Edward ostensibly talking to Owen,

though with a single thought to the reception of his words by the maiden at
the farther side, upon whom his gaze was mostly resting, and who was
attentively listening—looking fixedly upon the pavement the while. It has
been said that men love with their eyes; women with their ears.
As Owen and himself were little more than acquaintances as yet, and as
Springrove was wanting in the assurance of many men of his age, it now
became necessary to wish his friends good-evening, or to find a reason for
continuing near Cytherea by saying some nice new thing. He thought of a
new thing; he proposed a pull across the bay. This was assented to. They
went to the pier; stepped into one of the gaily painted boats moored
alongside and sheered off. Cytherea sat in the stern steering.
They rowed that evening; the next came, and with it the necessity of
rowing again. Then the next, and the next, Cytherea always sitting in the
stern with the tiller ropes in her hand. The curves of her figure welded with
those of the fragile boat in perfect continuation, as she girlishly yielded
herself to its heaving and sinking, seeming to form with it an organic whole.
Then Owen was inclined to test his skill in paddling a canoe. Edward did
not like canoes, and the issue was, that, having seen Owen on board,
Springrove proposed to pull off after him with a pair of sculls; but not
considering himself sufficiently accomplished to do finished rowing before
a parade full of promenaders when there was a little swell on, and with the
rudder unshipped in addition, he begged that Cytherea might come with
him and steer as before. She stepped in, and they floated along in the wake
of her brother. Thus passed the fifth evening on the water.
But the sympathetic pair were thrown into still closer companionship,
and much more exclusive connection.
2. JULY THE TWENTY-NINTH
It was a sad time for Cytherea—the last day of Springrove’s management
at Gradfield’s, and the last evening before his return from Budmouth to his
father’s house, previous to his departure for London.
Graye had been requested by the architect to survey a plot of land nearly
twenty miles off, which, with the journey to and fro, would occupy him the
whole day, and prevent his returning till late in the evening. Cytherea made
a companion of her landlady to the extent of sharing meals and sitting with
her during the morning of her brother’s absence. Mid-day found her restless
and miserable under this arrangement. All the afternoon she sat alone,

looking out of the window for she scarcely knew whom, and hoping she
scarcely knew what. Half-past five o’clock came—the end of Springrove’s
official day. Two minutes later Springrove walked by.
She endured her solitude for another half-hour, and then could endure no
longer. She had hoped—while affecting to fear—that Edward would have
found some reason or other for calling, but it seemed that he had not.
Hastily dressing herself she went out, when the farce of an accidental
meeting was repeated. Edward came upon her in the street at the first
turning, and, like the Great Duke Ferdinand in ‘The Statue and the Bust’—

‘He looked at her as a lover can;
She looked at him as one who awakes—
The past was a sleep, and her life began.’

‘Shall we have a boat?’ he said impulsively.
How blissful it all is at first. Perhaps, indeed, the only bliss in the course
of love which can truly be called Eden-like is that which prevails
immediately after doubt has ended and before reflection has set in—at the
dawn of the emotion, when it is not recognized by name, and before the
consideration of what this love is, has given birth to the consideration of
what difficulties it tends to create; when on the man’s part, the mistress
appears to the mind’s eye in picturesque, hazy, and fresh morning lights,
and soft morning shadows; when, as yet, she is known only as the wearer of
one dress, which shares her own personality; as the stander in one special
position, the giver of one bright particular glance, and the speaker of one
tender sentence; when, on her part, she is timidly careful over what she says
and does, lest she should be misconstrued or under-rated to the breadth of a
shadow of a hair.
‘Shall we have a boat?’ he said again, more softly, seeing that to his first
question she had not answered, but looked uncertainly at the ground, then
almost, but not quite, in his face, blushed a series of minute blushes, left off
in the midst of them, and showed the usual signs of perplexity in a matter of
the emotions.
Owen had always been with her before, but there was now a force of
habit in the proceeding, and with Arcadian innocence she assumed that a
row on the water was, under any circumstances, a natural thing. Without
another word being spoken on either side, they went down the steps. He

carefully handed her in, took his seat, slid noiselessly off the sand, and
away from the shore.
They thus sat facing each other in the graceful yellow cockle-shell, and
his eyes frequently found a resting-place in the depths of hers. The boat was
so small that at each return of the sculls, when his hands came forward to
begin the pull, they approached so near to her that her vivid imagination
began to thrill her with a fancy that he was going to clasp his arms round
her. The sensation grew so strong that she could not run the risk of again
meeting his eyes at those critical moments, and turned aside to inspect the
distant horizon; then she grew weary of looking sideways, and was driven
to return to her natural position again. At this instant he again leant forward
to begin, and met her glance by an ardent fixed gaze. An involuntary
impulse of girlish embarrassment caused her to give a vehement pull at the
tiller-rope, which brought the boat’s head round till they stood directly for
shore.
His eyes, which had dwelt upon her form during the whole time of her
look askance, now left her; he perceived the direction in which they were
going.
‘Why, you have completely turned the boat, Miss Graye?’ he said,
looking over his shoulder. ‘Look at our track on the water—a great
semicircle, preceded by a series of zigzags as far as we can see.’
She looked attentively. ‘Is it my fault or yours?’ she inquired. ‘Mine, I
suppose?’
‘I can’t help saying that it is yours.’
She dropped the ropes decisively, feeling the slightest twinge of vexation
at the answer.
‘Why do you let go?’
‘I do it so badly.’
‘O no; you turned about for shore in a masterly way. Do you wish to
return?’
‘Yes, if you please.’
‘Of course, then, I will at once.’
‘I fear what the people will think of us—going in such absurd directions,
and all through my wretched steering.’

‘Never mind what the people think.’ A pause. ‘You surely are not so weak
as to mind what the people think on such a matter as that?’
Those words might almost be called too firm and hard to be given by him
to her; but never mind. For almost the first time in her life she felt the
charming sensation, although on such an insignificant subject, of being
compelled into an opinion by a man she loved. Owen, though less yielding
physically, and more practical, would not have had the intellectual
independence to answer a woman thus. She replied quietly and honestly—
as honestly as when she had stated the contrary fact a minute earlier—
‘I don’t mind.’
‘I’ll unship the tiller that you may have nothing to do going back but to
hold your parasol,’ he continued, and arose to perform the operation,
necessarily leaning closely against her, to guard against the risk of capsizing
the boat as he reached his hands astern. His warm breath touched and crept
round her face like a caress; but he was apparently only concerned with his
task. She looked guilty of something when he seated himself. He read in her
face what that something was—she had experienced a pleasure from his
touch. But he flung a practical glance over his shoulder, seized the oars, and
they sped in a straight line towards the shore.
Cytherea saw that he noted in her face what had passed in her heart, and
that noting it, he continued as decided as before. She was inwardly
distressed. She had not meant him to translate her words about returning
home so literally at the first; she had not intended him to learn her secret;
but more than all she was not able to endure the perception of his learning it
and continuing unmoved.
There was nothing but misery to come now. They would step ashore; he
would say good-night, go to London to-morrow, and the miserable She
would lose him for ever. She did not quite suppose what was the fact, that a
parallel thought was simultaneously passing through his mind.
They were now within ten yards, now within five; he was only now
waiting for a ‘smooth’ to bring the boat in. Sweet, sweet Love must not be
slain thus, was the fair maid’s reasoning. She was equal to the occasion—
ladies are—and delivered the god—
‘Do you want very much to land, Mr. Springrove?’ she said, letting her
young violet eyes pine at him a very, very little.

‘I? Not at all,’ said he, looking an astonishment at her inquiry which a
slight twinkle of his eye half belied. ‘But you do?’
‘I think that now we have come out, and it is such a pleasant evening,’
she said gently and sweetly, ‘I should like a little longer row if you don’t
mind? I’ll try to steer better than before if it makes it easier for you. I’ll try
very hard.’
It was the turn of his face to tell a tale now. He looked, ‘We understand
each other—ah, we do, darling!’ turned the boat, and pulled back into the
Bay once more.
‘Now steer wherever you will,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Never mind the
directness of the course—wherever you will.’
‘Shall it be Creston Shore?’ she said, pointing to a stretch of beach
northward from Budmouth Esplanade.
‘Creston Shore certainly,’ he responded, grasping the sculls. She took the
strings daintily, and they wound away to the left.
For a long time nothing was audible in the boat but the regular dip of the
oars, and their movement in the rowlocks. Springrove at length spoke.
‘I must go away to-morrow,’ he said tentatively.
‘Yes,’ she replied faintly.
‘To endeavour to advance a little in my profession in London.’
‘Yes,’ she said again, with the same preoccupied softness.
‘But I shan’t advance.’
‘Why not? Architecture is a bewitching profession. They say that an
architect’s work is another man’s play.’
‘Yes. But worldly advantage from an art doesn’t depend upon mastering
it. I used to think it did; but it doesn’t. Those who get rich need have no
skill at all as artists.’
‘What need they have?’
‘A certain kind of energy which men with any fondness for art possess
very seldom indeed—an earnestness in making acquaintances, and a love
for using them. They give their whole attention to the art of dining out, after
mastering a few rudimentary facts to serve up in conversation. Now after
saying that, do I seem a man likely to make a name?’
‘You seem a man likely to make a mistake.’

‘What’s that?’
‘To give too much room to the latent feeling which is rather common in
these days among the unappreciated, that because some remarkably
successful men are fools, all remarkably unsuccessful men are geniuses.’
‘Pretty subtle for a young lady,’ he said slowly. ‘From that remark I
should fancy you had bought experience.’
She passed over the idea. ‘Do try to succeed,’ she said, with wistful
thoughtfulness, leaving her eyes on him.
Springrove flushed a little at the earnestness of her words, and mused.
‘Then, like Cato the Censor, I shall do what I despise, to be in the fashion,’
he said at last... ‘Well, when I found all this out that I was speaking of, what
ever do you think I did? From having already loved verse passionately, I
went on to read it continually; then I went rhyming myself. If anything on
earth ruins a man for useful occupation, and for content with reasonable
success in a profession or trade, it is the habit of writing verses on
emotional subjects, which had much better be left to die from want of
nourishment.’
‘Do you write poems now?’ she said.
‘None. Poetical days are getting past with me, according to the usual rule.
Writing rhymes is a stage people of my sort pass through, as they pass
through the stage of shaving for a beard, or thinking they are ill-used, or
saying there’s nothing in the world worth living for.’
‘Then the difference between a common man and a recognized poet is,
that one has been deluded, and cured of his delusion, and the other
continues deluded all his days.’
‘Well, there’s just enough truth in what you say, to make the remark
unbearable. However, it doesn’t matter to me now that I “meditate the
thankless Muse” no longer, but....’ He paused, as if endeavouring to think
what better thing he did.
Cytherea’s mind ran on to the succeeding lines of the poem, and their
startling harmony with the present situation suggested the fancy that he was
‘sporting’ with her, and brought an awkward contemplativeness to her face.
Springrove guessed her thoughts, and in answer to them simply said
‘Yes.’ Then they were silent again.

‘If I had known an Amaryllis was coming here, I should not have made
arrangements for leaving,’ he resumed.
Such levity, superimposed on the notion of ‘sport’, was intolerable to
Cytherea; for a woman seems never to see any but the serious side of her
attachment, though the most devoted lover has all the time a vague and dim
perception that he is losing his old dignity and frittering away his time.
‘But will you not try again to get on in your profession? Try once more;
do try once more,’ she murmured. ‘I am going to try again. I have
advertised for something to do.’
‘Of course I will,’ he said, with an eager gesture and smile. ‘But we must
remember that the fame of Christopher Wren himself depended upon the
accident of a fire in Pudding Lane. My successes seem to come very slowly.
I often think, that before I am ready to live, it will be time for me to die.
However, I am trying—not for fame now, but for an easy life of reasonable
comfort.’
It is a melancholy truth for the middle classes, that in proportion as they
develop, by the study of poetry and art, their capacity for conjugal love of
the highest and purest kind, they limit the possibility of their being able to
exercise it—the very act putting out of their power the attainment of means
sufficient for marriage. The man who works up a good income has had no
time to learn love to its solemn extreme; the man who has learnt that has
had no time to get rich.
‘And if you should fail—utterly fail to get that reasonable wealth,’ she
said earnestly, ‘don’t be perturbed. The truly great stand upon no middle
ledge; they are either famous or unknown.’
‘Unknown,’ he said, ‘if their ideas have been allowed to flow with a
sympathetic breadth. Famous only if they have been convergent and
exclusive.’
‘Yes; and I am afraid from that, that my remark was but discouragement,
wearing the dress of comfort. Perhaps I was not quite right in—’
‘It depends entirely upon what is meant by being truly great. But the long
and the short of the matter is, that men must stick to a thing if they want to
succeed in it—not giving way to over-much admiration for the flowers they
see growing in other people’s borders; which I am afraid has been my case.’
He looked into the far distance and paused.

Adherence to a course with persistence sufficient to ensure success is
possible to widely appreciative minds only when there is also found in them
a power—commonplace in its nature, but rare in such combination—the
power of assuming to conviction that in the outlying paths which appear so
much more brilliant than their own, there are bitternesses equally great—
unperceived simply on account of their remoteness.
They were opposite Ringsworth Shore. The cliffs here were formed of
strata completely contrasting with those of the further side of the Bay,
whilst in and beneath the water hard boulders had taken the place of sand
and shingle, between which, however, the sea glided noiselessly, without
breaking the crest of a single wave, so strikingly calm was the air. The
breeze had entirely died away, leaving the water of that rare glassy
smoothness which is unmarked even by the small dimples of the least aerial
movement. Purples and blues of divers shades were reflected from this
mirror accordingly as each undulation sloped east or west. They could see
the rocky bottom some twenty feet beneath them, luxuriant with weeds of
various growths, and dotted with pulpy creatures reflecting a silvery and
spangled radiance upwards to their eyes.
At length she looked at him to learn the effect of her words of
encouragement. He had let the oars drift alongside, and the boat had come
to a standstill. Everything on earth seemed taking a contemplative rest, as if
waiting to hear the avowal of something from his lips. At that instant he
appeared to break a resolution hitherto zealously kept. Leaving his seat
amidships he came and gently edged himself down beside her upon the
narrow seat at the stern.
She breathed more quickly and warmly: he took her right hand in his own
right: it was not withdrawn. He put his left hand behind her neck till it came
round upon her left cheek: it was not thrust away. Lightly pressing her, he
brought her face and mouth towards his own; when, at this the very brink,
some unaccountable thought or spell within him suddenly made him halt—
even now, and as it seemed as much to himself as to her, he timidly
whispered ‘May I?’
Her endeavour was to say No, so denuded of its flesh and sinews that its
nature would hardly be recognized, or in other words a No from so near the
affirmative frontier as to be affected with the Yes accent. It was thus a
whispered No, drawn out to nearly a quarter of a minute’s length, the O

making itself audible as a sound like the spring coo of a pigeon on
unusually friendly terms with its mate. Though conscious of her success in
producing the kind of word she had wished to produce, she at the same time
trembled in suspense as to how it would be taken. But the time available for
doubt was so short as to admit of scarcely more than half a pulsation:
pressing closer he kissed her. Then he kissed her again with a longer kiss.
It was the supremely happy moment of their experience. The ‘bloom’ and
the ‘purple light’ were strong on the lineaments of both. Their hearts could
hardly believe the evidence of their lips.
‘I love you, and you love me, Cytherea!’ he whispered.
She did not deny it; and all seemed well. The gentle sounds around them
from the hills, the plains, the distant town, the adjacent shore, the water
heaving at their side, the kiss, and the long kiss, were all ‘many a voice of
one delight,’ and in unison with each other.
But his mind flew back to the same unpleasant thought which had been
connected with the resolution he had broken a minute or two earlier. ‘I
could be a slave at my profession to win you, Cytherea; I would work at the
meanest, honest trade to be near you—much less claim you as mine; I
would—anything. But I have not told you all; it is not this; you don’t know
what there is yet to tell. Could you forgive as you can love?’ She was
alarmed to see that he had become pale with the question.
‘No—do not speak,’ he said. ‘I have kept something from you, which has
now become the cause of a great uneasiness. I had no right—to love you;
but I did it. Something forbade—’
‘What?’ she exclaimed.
‘Something forbade me—till the kiss—yes, till the kiss came; and now
nothing shall forbid it! We’ll hope in spite of all... I must, however, speak of
this love of ours to your brother. Dearest, you had better go indoors whilst I
meet him at the station, and explain everything.’
Cytherea’s short-lived bliss was dead and gone. O, if she had known of
this sequel would she have allowed him to break down the barrier of mere
acquaintanceship—never, never!
‘Will you not explain to me?’ she faintly urged. Doubt—indefinite,
carking doubt had taken possession of her.

‘Not now. You alarm yourself unnecessarily,’ he said tenderly. ‘My only
reason for keeping silence is that with my present knowledge I may tell an
untrue story. It may be that there is nothing to tell. I am to blame for haste
in alluding to any such thing. Forgive me, sweet—forgive me.’ Her heart
was ready to burst, and she could not answer him. He returned to his place
and took to the oars.
They again made for the distant Esplanade, now, with its line of houses,
lying like a dark grey band against the light western sky. The sun had set,
and a star or two began to peep out. They drew nearer their destination,
Edward as he pulled tracing listlessly with his eyes the red stripes upon her
scarf, which grew to appear as black ones in the increasing dusk of evening.
She surveyed the long line of lamps on the sea-wall of the town, now
looking small and yellow, and seeming to send long tap-roots of fire
quivering down deep into the sea. By-and-by they reached the landing-
steps. He took her hand as before, and found it as cold as the water about
them. It was not relinquished till he reached her door. His assurance had not
removed the constraint of her manner: he saw that she blamed him mutely
and with her eyes, like a captured sparrow. Left alone, he went and seated
himself in a chair on the Esplanade.
Neither could she go indoors to her solitary room, feeling as she did in
such a state of desperate heaviness. When Springrove was out of sight she
turned back, and arrived at the corner just in time to see him sit down. Then
she glided pensively along the pavement behind him, forgetting herself to
marble like Melancholy herself as she mused in his neighbourhood unseen.
She heard, without heeding, the notes of pianos and singing voices from the
fashionable houses at her back, from the open windows of which the lamp-
light streamed to join that of the orange-hued full moon, newly risen over
the Bay in front. Then Edward began to pace up and down, and Cytherea,
fearing that he would notice her, hastened homeward, flinging him a last
look as she passed out of sight. No promise from him to write: no request
that she herself would do so—nothing but an indefinite expression of hope
in the face of some fear unknown to her. Alas, alas!
When Owen returned he found she was not in the small sitting-room, and
creeping upstairs into her bedroom with a light, he discovered her there
lying asleep upon the coverlet of the bed, still with her hat and jacket on.
She had flung herself down on entering, and succumbed to the unwonted

oppressiveness that ever attends full-blown love. The wet traces of tears
were yet visible upon her long drooping lashes.

‘Love is a sowre delight, and sugred griefe,
A living death, and ever-dying life.’

‘Cytherea,’ he whispered, kissing her. She awoke with a start, and vented
an exclamation before recovering her judgment. ‘He’s gone!’ she said.
‘He has told me all,’ said Graye soothingly. ‘He is going off early to-
morrow morning. ‘Twas a shame of him to win you away from me, and
cruel of you to keep the growth of this attachment a secret.’
‘We couldn’t help it,’ she said, and then jumping up—‘Owen, has he told
you all?’
‘All of your love from beginning to end,’ he said simply.
Edward then had not told more—as he ought to have done: yet she could
not convict him. But she would struggle against his fetters. She tingled to
the very soles of her feet at the very possibility that he might be deluding
her.
‘Owen,’ she continued, with dignity, ‘what is he to me? Nothing. I must
dismiss such weakness as this—believe me, I will. Something far more
pressing must drive it away. I have been looking my position steadily in the
face, and I must get a living somehow. I mean to advertise once more.’
‘Advertising is no use.’
‘This one will be.’ He looked surprised at the sanguine tone of her
answer, till she took a piece of paper from the table and showed it him. ‘See
what I am going to do,’ she said sadly, almost bitterly. This was her third
effort:—

‘LADY’S-MAID. Inexperienced. Age eighteen.—G., 3 Cross Street,
Budmouth.’

Owen—Owen the respectable—looked blank astonishment. He repeated
in a nameless, varying tone, the two words—
‘Lady’s-maid!’
‘Yes; lady’s-maid. ‘Tis an honest profession,’ said Cytherea bravely.
‘But you, Cytherea?’
‘Yes, I—who am I?’

‘You will never be a lady’s-maid—never, I am quite sure.’
‘I shall try to be, at any rate.’
‘Such a disgrace—’
‘Nonsense! I maintain that it is no disgrace!’ she said, rather warmly.
‘You know very well—’
‘Well, since you will, you must,’ he interrupted. ‘Why do you put
“inexperienced?”’
‘Because I am.’
‘Never mind that—scratch out “inexperienced.” We are poor, Cytherea,
aren’t we?’ he murmured, after a silence, ‘and it seems that the two months
will close my engagement here.’
‘We can put up with being poor,’ she said, ‘if they only give us work to
do.... Yes, we desire as a blessing what was given us as a curse, and even
that is denied. However, be cheerful, Owen, and never mind!’
In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter
endurance of women at these epochs—invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is—
owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the
leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to
quell them.

IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. AUGUST THE FOURTH. TILL FOUR O’CLOCK

The early part of the next week brought an answer to Cytherea’s last note
of hope in the way of advertisement—not from a distance of hundreds of
miles, London, Scotland, Ireland, the Continent—as Cytherea seemed to
think it must, to be in keeping with the means adopted for obtaining it, but
from a place in the neighbourhood of that in which she was living—a
country mansion not twenty miles off. The reply ran thus:—

KNAPWATER HOUSE,
August 3, 1864.

‘Miss Aldclyffe is in want of a young person as lady’s-maid. The duties
of the place are light. Miss Aldclyffe will be in Budmouth on Thursday,
when (should G. still not have heard of a place) she would like to see her at
the Belvedere Hotel, Esplanade, at four o’clock. No answer need be
returned to this note.’
A little earlier than the time named, Cytherea, clothed in a modest
bonnet, and a black silk jacket, turned down to the hotel. Expectation, the
fresh air from the water, the bright, far-extending outlook, raised the most
delicate of pink colours to her cheeks, and restored to her tread a portion of
that elasticity which her past troubles, and thoughts of Edward, had well-
nigh taken away.
She entered the vestibule, and went to the window of the bar.
‘Is Miss Aldclyffe here?’ she said to a nicely-dressed barmaid in the
foreground, who was talking to a landlady covered with chains, knobs, and
clamps of gold, in the background.
‘No, she isn’t,’ said the barmaid, not very civilly. Cytherea looked a
shade too pretty for a plain dresser.
‘Miss Aldclyffe is expected here,’ the landlady said to a third person, out
of sight, in the tone of one who had known for several days the fact newly
discovered from Cytherea. ‘Get ready her room—be quick.’ From the

alacrity with which the order was given and taken, it seemed to Cytherea
that Miss Aldclyffe must be a woman of considerable importance.
‘You are to have an interview with Miss Aldclyffe here?’ the landlady
inquired.
‘Yes.’
‘The young person had better wait,’ continued the landlady. With a
money-taker’s intuition she had rightly divined that Cytherea would bring
no profit to the house.
Cytherea was shown into a nondescript chamber, on the shady side of the
building, which appeared to be either bedroom or dayroom, as occasion
necessitated, and was one of a suite at the end of the first-floor corridor. The
prevailing colour of the walls, curtains, carpet, and coverings of furniture,
was more or less blue, to which the cold light coming from the north
easterly sky, and falling on a wide roof of new slates—the only object the
small window commanded—imparted a more striking paleness. But
underneath the door, communicating with the next room of the suite,
gleamed an infinitesimally small, yet very powerful, fraction of contrast—a
very thin line of ruddy light, showing that the sun beamed strongly into this
room adjoining. The line of radiance was the only cheering thing visible in
the place.
People give way to very infantine thoughts and actions when they wait;
the battle-field of life is temporarily fenced off by a hard and fast line—the
interview. Cytherea fixed her eyes idly upon the streak, and began picturing
a wonderful paradise on the other side as the source of such a beam—
reminding her of the well-known good deed in a naughty world.
Whilst she watched the particles of dust floating before the brilliant chink
she heard a carriage and horses stop opposite the front of the house.
Afterwards came the rustle of a lady’s skirts down the corridor, and into the
room communicating with the one Cytherea occupied.
The golden line vanished in parts like the phosphorescent streak caused
by the striking of a match; there was the fall of a light footstep on the floor
just behind it: then a pause. Then the foot tapped impatiently, and ‘There’s
no one here!’ was spoken imperiously by a lady’s tongue.
‘No, madam; in the next room. I am going to fetch her,’ said the
attendant.

‘That will do—or you needn’t go in; I will call her.’
Cytherea had risen, and she advanced to the middle door with the chink
under it as the servant retired. She had just laid her hand on the knob, when
it slipped round within her fingers, and the door was pulled open from the
other side.
2. FOUR O’CLOCK
The direct blaze of the afternoon sun, partly refracted through the
crimson curtains of the window, and heightened by reflections from the
crimson-flock paper which covered the walls, and a carpet on the floor of
the same tint, shone with a burning glow round the form of a lady standing
close to Cytherea’s front with the door in her hand. The stranger appeared to
the maiden’s eyes—fresh from the blue gloom, and assisted by an
imagination fresh from nature—like a tall black figure standing in the midst
of fire. It was the figure of a finely-built woman, of spare though not
angular proportions.
Cytherea involuntarily shaded her eyes with her hand, retreated a step or
two, and then she could for the first time see Miss Aldclyffe’s face in
addition to her outline, lit up by the secondary and softer light that was
reflected from the varnished panels of the door. She was not a very young
woman, but could boast of much beauty of the majestic autumnal phase.
‘O,’ said the lady, ‘come this way.’ Cytherea followed her to the
embrasure of the window.
Both the women showed off themselves to advantage as they walked
forward in the orange light; and each showed too in her face that she had
been struck with her companion’s appearance. The warm tint added to
Cytherea’s face a voluptuousness which youth and a simple life had not yet
allowed to express itself there ordinarily; whilst in the elder lady’s face it
reduced the customary expression, which might have been called sternness,
if not harshness, to grandeur, and warmed her decaying complexion with
much of the youthful richness it plainly had once possessed.
She appeared now no more than five-and-thirty, though she might easily
have been ten or a dozen years older. She had clear steady eyes, a Roman
nose in its purest form, and also the round prominent chin with which the
Caesars are represented in ancient marbles; a mouth expressing a capability
for and tendency to strong emotion, habitually controlled by pride. There
was a severity about the lower outlines of the face which gave a masculine

cast to this portion of her countenance. Womanly weakness was nowhere
visible save in one part—the curve of her forehead and brows—there it was
clear and emphatic. She wore a lace shawl over a brown silk dress, and a
net bonnet set with a few blue cornflowers.
‘You inserted the advertisement for a situation as lady’s-maid giving the
address, G., Cross Street?’
‘Yes, madam. Graye.’
‘Yes. I have heard your name—Mrs. Morris, my housekeeper, mentioned
you, and pointed out your advertisement.’
This was puzzling intelligence, but there was not time enough to consider
it.
‘Where did you live last?’ continued Miss Aldclyffe.
‘I have never been a servant before. I lived at home.’
‘Never been out? I thought too at sight of you that you were too girlish-
looking to have done much. But why did you advertise with such
assurance? It misleads people.’
‘I am very sorry: I put “inexperienced” at first, but my brother said it is
absurd to trumpet your own weakness to the world, and would not let it
remain.’
‘But your mother knew what was right, I suppose?’
‘I have no mother, madam.’
‘Your father, then?’
‘I have no father.’
‘Well,’ she said, more softly, ‘your sisters, aunts, or cousins.’
‘They didn’t think anything about it.’
‘You didn’t ask them, I suppose.’
‘No.’
‘You should have done so, then. Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I haven’t any of them, either.’
Miss Aldclyffe showed her surprise. ‘You deserve forgiveness then at any
rate, child,’ she said, in a sort of drily-kind tone. ‘However, I am afraid you
do not suit me, as I am looking for an elderly person. You see, I want an
experienced maid who knows all the usual duties of the office.’ She was

going to add, ‘Though I like your appearance,’ but the words seemed
offensive to apply to the ladylike girl before her, and she modified them to,
‘though I like you much.’
‘I am sorry I misled you, madam,’ said Cytherea.
Miss Aldclyffe stood in a reverie, without replying.
‘Good afternoon,’ continued Cytherea.
‘Good-bye, Miss Graye—I hope you will succeed.’
Cytherea turned away towards the door. The movement chanced to be
one of her masterpieces. It was precise: it had as much beauty as was
compatible with precision, and as little coquettishness as was compatible
with beauty.
And she had in turning looked over her shoulder at the other lady with a
faint accent of reproach in her face. Those who remember Greuze’s ‘Head
of a Girl,’ have an idea of Cytherea’s look askance at the turning. It is not
for a man to tell fishers of men how to set out their fascinations so as to
bring about the highest possible average of takes within the year: but the
action that tugs the hardest of all at an emotional beholder is this sweet
method of turning which steals the bosom away and leaves the eyes behind.
Now Miss Aldclyffe herself was no tyro at wheeling. When Cytherea had
closed the door upon her, she remained for some time in her motionless
attitude, listening to the gradually dying sound of the maiden’s retreating
footsteps. She murmured to herself, ‘It is almost worth while to be bored
with instructing her in order to have a creature who could glide round my
luxurious indolent body in that manner, and look at me in that way—I
warrant how light her fingers are upon one’s head and neck.... What a silly
modest young thing she is, to go away so suddenly as that!’ She rang the
bell.
‘Ask the young lady who has just left me to step back again,’ she said to
the attendant. ‘Quick! or she will be gone.’
Cytherea was now in the vestibule, thinking that if she had told her
history, Miss Aldclyffe might perhaps have taken her into the household;
yet her history she particularly wished to conceal from a stranger. When she
was recalled she turned back without feeling much surprise. Something, she
knew not what, told her she had not seen the last of Miss Aldclyffe.

‘You have somebody to refer me to, of course,’ the lady said, when
Cytherea had re-entered the room.
‘Yes: Mr. Thorn, a solicitor at Aldbrickham.’
‘And are you a clever needlewoman?’
‘I am considered to be.’
‘Then I think that at any rate I will write to Mr. Thorn,’ said Miss
Aldclyffe, with a little smile. ‘It is true, the whole proceeding is very
irregular; but my present maid leaves next Monday, and neither of the five I
have already seen seem to do for me.... Well, I will write to Mr. Thorn, and
if his reply is satisfactory, you shall hear from me. It will be as well to set
yourself in readiness to come on Monday.’
When Cytherea had again been watched out of the room, Miss Aldclyffe
asked for writing materials, that she might at once communicate with Mr.
Thorn. She indecisively played with the pen. ‘Suppose Mr. Thorn’s reply to
be in any way disheartening—and even if so from his own imperfect
acquaintance with the young creature more than from circumstantial
knowledge—I shall feel obliged to give her up. Then I shall regret that I did
not give her one trial in spite of other people’s prejudices. All her account of
herself is reliable enough—yes, I can see that by her face. I like that face of
hers.’
Miss Aldclyffe put down the pen and left the hotel without writing to Mr.
Thorn.

V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. AUGUST THE EIGHTH. MORNING AND AFTERNOON

At post-time on that following Monday morning, Cytherea watched so
anxiously for the postman, that as the time which must bring him narrowed
less and less her vivid expectation had only a degree less tangibility than his
presence itself. In another second his form came into view. He brought two
letters for Cytherea.
One from Miss Aldclyffe, simply stating that she wished Cytherea to
come on trial: that she would require her to be at Knapwater House by
Monday evening.
The other was from Edward Springrove. He told her that she was the
bright spot of his life: that her existence was far dearer to him than his own:
that he had never known what it was to love till he had met her. True, he
had felt passing attachments to other faces from time to time; but they all
had been weak inclinations towards those faces as they then appeared. He
loved her past and future, as well as her present. He pictured her as a child:
he loved her. He pictured her of sage years: he loved her. He pictured her in
trouble; he loved her. Homely friendship entered into his love for her,
without which all love was evanescent.
He would make one depressing statement. Uncontrollable circumstances
(a long history, with which it was impossible to acquaint her at present)
operated to a certain extent as a drag upon his wishes. He had felt this more
strongly at the time of their parting than he did now—and it was the cause
of his abrupt behaviour, for which he begged her to forgive him. He saw
now an honourable way of freeing himself, and the perception had
prompted him to write. In the meantime might he indulge in the hope of
possessing her on some bright future day, when by hard labour generated
from her own encouraging words, he had placed himself in a position she
would think worthy to be shared with him?
Dear little letter; she huddled it up. So much more important a love-letter
seems to a girl than to a man. Springrove was unconsciously clever in his

letters, and a man with a talent of that kind may write himself up to a hero
in the mind of a young woman who loves him without knowing much about
him. Springrove already stood a cubit higher in her imagination than he did
in his shoes.
During the day she flitted about the room in an ecstasy of pleasure,
packing the things and thinking of an answer which should be worthy of the
tender tone of the question, her love bubbling from her involuntarily, like
prophesyings from a prophet.
In the afternoon Owen went with her to the railway-station, and put her
in the train for Carriford Road, the station nearest to Knapwater House.
Half-an-hour later she stepped out upon the platform, and found nobody
there to receive her—though a pony-carriage was waiting outside. In two
minutes she saw a melancholy man in cheerful livery running towards her
from a public-house close adjoining, who proved to be the servant sent to
fetch her. There are two ways of getting rid of sorrows: one by living them
down, the other by drowning them. The coachman drowned his.
He informed her that her luggage would be fetched by a spring-waggon
in about half-an-hour; then helped her into the chaise and drove off.
Her lover’s letter, lying close against her neck, fortified her against the
restless timidity she had previously felt concerning this new undertaking,
and completely furnished her with the confident ease of mind which is
required for the critical observation of surrounding objects. It was just that
stage in the slow decline of the summer days, when the deep, dark, and
vacuous hot-weather shadows are beginning to be replaced by blue ones
that have a surface and substance to the eye. They trotted along the turnpike
road for a distance of about a mile, which brought them just outside the
village of Carriford, and then turned through large lodge-gates, on the
heavy stone piers of which stood a pair of bitterns cast in bronze. They then
entered the park and wound along a drive shaded by old and drooping lime-
trees, not arranged in the form of an avenue, but standing irregularly,
sometimes leaving the track completely exposed to the sky, at other times
casting a shade over it, which almost approached gloom—the under surface
of the lowest boughs hanging at a uniform level of six feet above the grass
—the extreme height to which the nibbling mouths of the cattle could reach.
‘Is that the house?’ said Cytherea expectantly, catching sight of a grey
gable between the trees, and losing it again.

‘No; that’s the old manor-house—or rather all that’s left of it. The
Aldycliffes used to let it sometimes, but it was oftener empty. ‘Tis now
divided into three cottages. Respectable people didn’t care to live there.’
‘Why didn’t they?’
‘Well, ‘tis so awkward and unhandy. You see so much of it has been
pulled down, and the rooms that are left won’t do very well for a small
residence. ‘Tis so dismal, too, and like most old houses stands too low
down in the hollow to be healthy.’
‘Do they tell any horrid stories about it?’
‘No, not a single one.’
‘Ah, that’s a pity.’
‘Yes, that’s what I say. ‘Tis jest the house for a nice ghastly hair-on-end
story, that would make the parish religious. Perhaps it will have one some
day to make it complete; but there’s not a word of the kind now. There, I
wouldn’t live there for all that. In fact, I couldn’t. O no, I couldn’t.’
‘Why couldn’t you?’
‘The sounds.’
‘What are they?’
‘One is the waterfall, which stands so close by that you can hear that
there waterfall in every room of the house, night or day, ill or well. ‘Tis
enough to drive anybody mad: now hark.’
He stopped the horse. Above the slight common sounds in the air came
the unvarying steady rush of falling water from some spot unseen on
account of the thick foliage of the grove.
‘There’s something awful in the timing o’ that sound, ain’t there, miss?’
‘When you say there is, there really seems to be. You said there were two
—what is the other horrid sound?’
‘The pumping-engine. That’s close by the Old House, and sends water up
the hill and all over the Great House. We shall hear that directly.... There,
now hark again.’
From the same direction down the dell they could now hear the whistling
creak of cranks, repeated at intervals of half-a-minute, with a sousing noise
between each: a creak, a souse, then another creak, and so on continually.

‘Now if anybody could make shift to live through the other sounds, these
would finish him off, don’t you think so, miss? That machine goes on night
and day, summer and winter, and is hardly ever greased or visited. Ah, it
tries the nerves at night, especially if you are not very well; though we don’t
often hear it at the Great House.’
‘That sound is certainly very dismal. They might have the wheel greased.
Does Miss Aldclyffe take any interest in these things?’
‘Well, scarcely; you see her father doesn’t attend to that sort of thing as
he used to. The engine was once quite his hobby. But now he’s getten old
and very seldom goes there.’
‘How many are there in family?’
‘Only her father and herself. He’s a’ old man of seventy.’
‘I had thought that Miss Aldclyffe was sole mistress of the property, and
lived here alone.’
‘No, m—’ The coachman was continually checking himself thus, being
about to style her miss involuntarily, and then recollecting that he was only
speaking to the new lady’s-maid.
‘She will soon be mistress, however, I am afraid,’ he continued, as if
speaking by a spirit of prophecy denied to ordinary humanity. ‘The poor old
gentleman has decayed very fast lately.’ The man then drew a long breath.
‘Why did you breathe sadly like that?’ said Cytherea.
‘Ah!... When he’s dead peace will be all over with us old servants. I
expect to see the old house turned inside out.’
‘She will marry, do you mean?’
‘Marry—not she! I wish she would. No, in her soul she’s as solitary as
Robinson Crusoe, though she has acquaintances in plenty, if not relations.
There’s the rector, Mr. Raunham—he’s a relation by marriage—yet she’s
quite distant towards him. And people say that if she keeps single there will
be hardly a life between Mr. Raunham and the heirship of the estate. Dang
it, she don’t care. She’s an extraordinary picture of womankind—very
extraordinary.’
‘In what way besides?’
‘You’ll know soon enough, miss. She has had seven lady’s-maids this last
twelvemonth. I assure you ‘tis one body’s work to fetch ‘em from the

station and take ‘em back again. The Lord must be a neglectful party at
heart, or he’d never permit such overbearen goings on!’
‘Does she dismiss them directly they come!’
‘Not at all—she never dismisses them—they go theirselves. Ye see ‘tis
like this. She’s got a very quick temper; she flees in a passion with them for
nothing at all; next mornen they come up and say they are going; she’s
sorry for it and wishes they’d stay, but she’s as proud as a lucifer, and her
pride won’t let her say, “Stay,” and away they go. ‘Tis like this in fact. If
you say to her about anybody, “Ah, poor thing!” she says, “Pooh! indeed!”
If you say, “Pooh, indeed!” “Ah, poor thing!” she says directly. She hangs
the chief baker, as mid be, and restores the chief butler, as mid be, though
the devil but Pharaoh herself can see the difference between ‘em.’
Cytherea was silent. She feared she might be again a burden to her
brother.
‘However, you stand a very good chance,’ the man went on, ‘for I think
she likes you more than common. I have never known her send the pony-
carriage to meet one before; ‘tis always the trap, but this time she said, in a
very particular ladylike tone, “Roobert, gaow with the pony-kerriage.”...
There, ‘tis true, pony and carriage too are getten rather shabby now,’ he
added, looking round upon the vehicle as if to keep Cytherea’s pride within
reasonable limits.
‘’Tis to be hoped you’ll please in dressen her to-night.’
‘Why to-night?’
‘There’s a dinner-party of seventeen; ‘tis her father’s birthday, and she’s
very particular about her looks at such times. Now see; this is the house.
Livelier up here, isn’t it, miss?’
They were now on rising ground, and had just emerged from a clump of
trees. Still a little higher than where they stood was situated the mansion,
called Knapwater House, the offices gradually losing themselves among the
trees behind.
2. EVENING
The house was regularly and substantially built of clean grey freestone
throughout, in that plainer fashion of Greek classicism which prevailed at
the latter end of the last century, when the copyists called designers had
grown weary of fantastic variations in the Roman orders. The main block

approximated to a square on the ground plan, having a projection in the
centre of each side, surmounted by a pediment. From each angle of the
inferior side ran a line of buildings lower than the rest, turning inwards
again at their further end, and forming within them a spacious open court,
within which resounded an echo of astonishing clearness. These erections
were in their turn backed by ivy-covered ice-houses, laundries, and stables,
the whole mass of subsidiary buildings being half buried beneath close-set
shrubs and trees.
There was opening sufficient through the foliage on the right hand to
enable her on nearer approach to form an idea of the arrangement of the
remoter or lawn front also. The natural features and contour of this quarter
of the site had evidently dictated the position of the house primarily, and
were of the ordinary, and upon the whole, most satisfactory kind, namely, a
broad, graceful slope running from the terrace beneath the walls to the
margin of a placid lake lying below, upon the surface of which a dozen
swans and a green punt floated at leisure. An irregular wooded island stood
in the midst of the lake; beyond this and the further margin of the water
were plantations and greensward of varied outlines, the trees heightening,
by half veiling, the softness of the exquisite landscape stretching behind.
The glimpses she had obtained of this portion were now checked by the
angle of the building. In a minute or two they reached the side door, at
which Cytherea alighted. She was welcomed by an elderly woman of
lengthy smiles and general pleasantness, who announced herself to be Mrs.
Morris, the housekeeper.
‘Mrs. Graye, I believe?’ she said.
‘I am not—O yes, yes, we are all mistresses,’ said Cytherea, smiling, but
forcedly. The title accorded her seemed disagreeably like the first slight scar
of a brand, and she thought of Owen’s prophecy.
Mrs. Morris led her into a comfortable parlour called The Room. Here tea
was made ready, and Cytherea sat down, looking, whenever occasion
allowed, at Mrs. Morris with great interest and curiosity, to discover, if
possible, something in her which should give a clue to the secret of her
knowledge of herself, and the recommendation based upon it. But nothing
was to be learnt, at any rate just then. Mrs. Morris was perpetually getting
up, feeling in her pockets, going to cupboards, leaving the room two or
three minutes, and trotting back again.

‘You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Graye,’ she said, ‘but ‘tis the old gentleman’s
birthday, and they always have a lot of people to dinner on that day, though
he’s getting up in years now. However, none of them are sleepers—she
generally keeps the house pretty clear of lodgers (being a lady with no
intimate friends, though many acquaintances), which, though it gives us less
to do, makes it all the duller for the younger maids in the house.’ Mrs.
Morris then proceeded to give in fragmentary speeches an outline of the
constitution and government of the estate.
‘Now, are you sure you have quite done tea? Not a bit or drop more?
Why, you’ve eaten nothing, I’m sure.... Well, now, it is rather inconvenient
that the other maid is not here to show you the ways of the house a little,
but she left last Saturday, and Miss Aldclyffe has been making shift with
poor old clumsy me for a maid all yesterday and this morning. She is not
come in yet. I expect she will ask for you, Mrs. Graye, the first thing.... I
was going to say that if you have really done tea, I will take you upstairs,
and show you through the wardrobes—Miss Aldclyffe’s things are not laid
out for to-night yet.’
She preceded Cytherea upstairs, pointed out her own room, and then took
her into Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room, on the first-floor; where, after
explaining the whereabouts of various articles of apparel, the housekeeper
left her, telling her that she had an hour yet upon her hands before dressing-
time. Cytherea laid out upon the bed in the next room all that she had been
told would be required that evening, and then went again to the little room
which had been appropriated to herself.
Here she sat down by the open window, leant out upon the sill like
another Blessed Damozel, and listlessly looked down upon the brilliant
pattern of colours formed by the flower-beds on the lawn—now richly
crowded with late summer blossom. But the vivacity of spirit which had
hitherto enlivened her, was fast ebbing under the pressure of prosaic
realities, and the warm scarlet of the geraniums, glowing most
conspicuously, and mingling with the vivid cold red and green of the
verbenas, the rich depth of the dahlia, and the ripe mellowness of the
calceolaria, backed by the pale hue of a flock of meek sheep feeding in the
open park, close to the other side of the fence, were, to a great extent, lost
upon her eyes. She was thinking that nothing seemed worth while; that it
was possible she might die in a workhouse; and what did it matter? The

petty, vulgar details of servitude that she had just passed through, her
dependence upon the whims of a strange woman, the necessity of
quenching all individuality of character in herself, and relinquishing her
own peculiar tastes to help on the wheel of this alien establishment, made
her sick and sad, and she almost longed to pursue some free, out-of-doors
employment, sleep under trees or a hut, and know no enemy but winter and
cold weather, like shepherds and cowkeepers, and birds and animals—ay,
like the sheep she saw there under her window. She looked sympathizingly
at them for several minutes, imagining their enjoyment of the rich grass.
‘Yes—like those sheep,’ she said aloud; and her face reddened with
surprise at a discovery she made that very instant.
The flock consisted of some ninety or a hundred young stock ewes: the
surface of their fleece was as rounded and even as a cushion, and white as
milk. Now she had just observed that on the left buttock of every one of
them were marked in distinct red letters the initials ‘E. S.’
‘E. S.’ could bring to Cytherea’s mind only one thought; but that
immediately and for ever—the name of her lover, Edward Springrove.
‘O, if it should be—!’ She interrupted her words by a resolve. Miss
Aldclyffe’s carriage at the same moment made its appearance in the drive;
but Miss Aldclyffe was not her object now. It was to ascertain to whom the
sheep belonged, and to set her surmise at rest one way or the other. She flew
downstairs to Mrs. Morris.
‘Whose sheep are those in the park, Mrs. Morris?’
‘Farmer Springrove’s.’
‘What Farmer Springrove is that?’ she said quickly.
‘Why, surely you know? Your friend, Farmer Springrove, the cider-
maker, and who keeps the Three Tranters Inn; who recommended you to me
when he came in to see me the other day?’
Cytherea’s mother-wit suddenly warned her in the midst of her
excitement that it was necessary not to betray the secret of her love. ‘O
yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’ Her thoughts had run as follows in that short
interval:—
‘Farmer Springrove is Edward’s father, and his name is Edward too.
‘Edward knew I was going to advertise for a situation of some kind.

‘He watched the Times, and saw it, my address being attached.
‘He thought it would be excellent for me to be here that we might meet
whenever he came home.
‘He told his father that I might be recommended as a lady’s-maid; and he
knew my brother and myself.
‘His father told Mrs. Morris; Mrs. Morris told Miss Aldclyffe.’
The whole chain of incidents that drew her there was plain, and there was
no such thing as chance in the matter. It was all Edward’s doing.
The sound of a bell was heard. Cytherea did not heed it, and still
continued in her reverie.
‘That’s Miss Aldclyffe’s bell,’ said Mrs. Morris.
‘I suppose it is,’ said the young woman placidly.
‘Well, it means that you must go up to her,’ the matron continued, in a
tone of surprise.
Cytherea felt a burning heat come over her, mingled with a sudden
irritation at Mrs. Morris’s hint. But the good sense which had recognized
stern necessity prevailed over rebellious independence; the flush passed,
and she said hastily—
‘Yes, yes; of course, I must go to her when she pulls the bell—whether I
want to or no.’
However, in spite of this painful reminder of her new position in life,
Cytherea left the apartment in a mood far different from the gloomy sadness
of ten minutes previous. The place felt like home to her now; she did not
mind the pettiness of her occupation, because Edward evidently did not
mind it; and this was Edward’s own spot. She found time on her way to
Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room to hurriedly glide out by a side door, and
look for a moment at the unconscious sheep bearing the friendly initials.
She went up to them to try to touch one of the flock, and felt vexed that
they all stared sceptically at her kind advances, and then ran pell-mell down
the hill. Then, fearing any one should discover her childish movements, she
slipped indoors again, and ascended the staircase, catching glimpses, as she
passed, of silver-buttoned footmen, who flashed about the passages like
lightning.

Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room was an apartment which, on a casual
survey, conveyed an impression that it was available for almost any purpose
save the adornment of the feminine person. In its hours of perfect order
nothing pertaining to the toilet was visible; even the inevitable mirrors with
their accessories were arranged in a roomy recess not noticeable from the
door, lighted by a window of its own, called the dressing-window.
The washing-stand figured as a vast oak chest, carved with grotesque
Renaissance ornament. The dressing table was in appearance something
between a high altar and a cabinet piano, the surface being richly worked in
the same style of semi-classic decoration, but the extraordinary outline
having been arrived at by an ingenious joiner and decorator from the
neighbouring town, after months of painful toil in cutting and fitting, under
Miss Aldclyffe’s immediate eye; the materials being the remains of two or
three old cabinets the lady had found in the lumber-room. About two-thirds
of the floor was carpeted, the remaining portion being laid with parquetry of
light and dark woods.
Miss Aldclyffe was standing at the larger window, away from the
dressing-niche. She bowed, and said pleasantly, ‘I am glad you have come.
We shall get on capitally, I dare say.’
Her bonnet was off. Cytherea did not think her so handsome as on the
earlier day; the queenliness of her beauty was harder and less warm. But a
worse discovery than this was that Miss Aldclyffe, with the usual
obliviousness of rich people to their dependents’ specialities, seemed to
have quite forgotten Cytherea’s inexperience, and mechanically delivered
up her body to her handmaid without a thought of details, and with a mild
yawn.
Everything went well at first. The dress was removed, stockings and
black boots were taken off, and silk stockings and white shoes were put on.
Miss Aldclyffe then retired to bathe her hands and face, and Cytherea drew
breath. If she could get through this first evening, all would be right. She
felt that it was unfortunate that such a crucial test for her powers as a
birthday dinner should have been applied on the threshold of her arrival; but
set to again.
Miss Aldclyffe was now arrayed in a white dressing-gown, and dropped
languidly into an easy-chair, pushed up before the glass. The instincts of her
sex and her own practice told Cytherea the next movement. She let Miss

Aldclyffe’s hair fall about her shoulders, and began to arrange it. It proved
to be all real; a satisfaction.
Miss Aldclyffe was musingly looking on the floor, and the operation
went on for some minutes in silence. At length her thoughts seemed to turn
to the present, and she lifted her eyes to the glass.
‘Why, what on earth are you doing with my head?’ she exclaimed, with
widely opened eyes. At the words she felt the back of Cytherea’s little hand
tremble against her neck.
‘Perhaps you prefer it done the other fashion, madam?’ said the maiden.
‘No, no; that’s the fashion right enough, but you must make more show
of my hair than that, or I shall have to buy some, which God forbid!’
‘It is how I do my own,’ said Cytherea naively, and with a sweetness of
tone that would have pleased the most acrimonious under favourable
circumstances; but tyranny was in the ascendant with Miss Aldclyffe at this
moment, and she was assured of palatable food for her vice by having felt
the trembling of Cytherea’s hand.
‘Yours, indeed! Your hair! Come, go on.’ Considering that Cytherea
possessed at least five times as much of that valuable auxiliary to woman’s
beauty as the lady before her, there was at the same time some excuse for
Miss Aldclyffe’s outburst. She remembered herself, however, and said more
quietly, ‘Now then, Graye—By-the-bye, what do they call you downstairs?’
‘Mrs. Graye,’ said the handmaid.
‘Then tell them not to do any such absurd thing—not but that it is quite
according to usage; but you are too young yet.’
This dialogue tided Cytherea safely onward through the hairdressing till
the flowers and diamonds were to be placed upon the lady’s brow. Cytherea
began arranging them tastefully, and to the very best of her judgment.
‘That won’t do,’ said Miss Aldclyffe harshly.
‘Why?’
‘I look too young—an old dressed doll.’
‘Will that, madam?’
‘No, I look a fright—a perfect fright!’
‘This way, perhaps?’
‘Heavens! Don’t worry me so.’ She shut her lips like a trap.

Having once worked herself up to the belief that her head-dress was to be
a failure that evening, no cleverness of Cytherea’s in arranging it could
please her. She continued in a smouldering passion during the remainder of
the performance, keeping her lips firmly closed, and the muscles of her
body rigid. Finally, snatching up her gloves, and taking her handkerchief
and fan in her hand, she silently sailed out of the room, without betraying
the least consciousness of another woman’s presence behind her.
Cytherea’s fears that at the undressing this suppressed anger would find a
vent, kept her on thorns throughout the evening. She tried to read; she could
not. She tried to sew; she could not. She tried to muse; she could not do that
connectedly. ‘If this is the beginning, what will the end be!’ she said in a
whisper, and felt many misgivings as to the policy of being overhasty in
establishing an independence at the expense of congruity with a cherished
past.
3. MIDNIGHT
The clock struck twelve. The Aldclyffe state dinner was over. The
company had all gone, and Miss Aldclyffe’s bell rang loudly and jerkingly.
Cytherea started to her feet at the sound, which broke in upon a fitful
sleep that had overtaken her. She had been sitting drearily in her chair
waiting minute after minute for the signal, her brain in that state of
intentness which takes cognizance of the passage of Time as a real motion
—motion without matter—the instants throbbing past in the company of a
feverish pulse. She hastened to the room, to find the lady sitting before the
dressing shrine, illuminated on both sides, and looking so queenly in her
attitude of absolute repose, that the younger woman felt the awfullest sense
of responsibility at her Vandalism in having undertaken to demolish so
imposing a pile.
The lady’s jewelled ornaments were taken off in silence—some by her
own listless hands, some by Cytherea’s. Then followed the outer stratum of
clothing. The dress being removed, Cytherea took it in her hand and went
with it into the bedroom adjoining, intending to hang it in the wardrobe. But
on second thoughts, in order that she might not keep Miss Aldclyffe waiting
a moment longer than necessary, she flung it down on the first resting-place
that came to hand, which happened to be the bed, and re-entered the
dressing-room with the noiseless footfall of a kitten. She paused in the
middle of the room.

She was unnoticed, and her sudden return had plainly not been expected.
During the short time of Cytherea’s absence, Miss Aldclyffe had pulled off
a kind of chemisette of Brussels net, drawn high above the throat, which she
had worn with her evening dress as a semi-opaque covering to her
shoulders, and in its place had put her night-gown round her. Her right hand
was lifted to her neck, as if engaged in fastening her night-gown.
But on a second glance Miss Aldclyffe’s proceeding was clearer to
Cytherea. She was not fastening her night-gown; it had been carelessly
thrown round her, and Miss Aldclyffe was really occupied in holding up to
her eyes some small object that she was keenly scrutinizing. And now on
suddenly discovering the presence of Cytherea at the back of the apartment,
instead of naturally continuing or concluding her inspection, she desisted
hurriedly; the tiny snap of a spring was heard, her hand was removed, and
she began adjusting her robes.
Modesty might have directed her hasty action of enwrapping her
shoulders, but it was scarcely likely, considering Miss Aldclyffe’s
temperament, that she had all her life been used to a maid, Cytherea’s
youth, and the elder lady’s marked treatment of her as if she were a mere
child or plaything. The matter was too slight to reason about, and yet upon
the whole it seemed that Miss Aldclyffe must have a practical reason for
concealing her neck.
With a timid sense of being an intruder Cytherea was about to step back
and out of the room; but at the same moment Miss Aldclyffe turned, saw the
impulse, and told her companion to stay, looking into her eyes as if she had
half an intention to explain something. Cytherea felt certain it was the little
mystery of her late movements. The other withdrew her eyes; Cytherea
went to fetch the dressing-gown, and wheeled round again to bring it up to
Miss Aldclyffe, who had now partly removed her night-dress to put it on the
proper way, and still sat with her back towards Cytherea.
Her neck was again quite open and uncovered, and though hidden from
the direct line of Cytherea’s vision, she saw it reflected in the glass—the
fair white surface, and the inimitable combination of curves between throat
and bosom which artists adore, being brightly lit up by the light burning on
either side.
And the lady’s prior proceedings were now explained in the simplest
manner. In the midst of her breast, like an island in a sea of pearl, reclined

an exquisite little gold locket, embellished with arabesque work of blue,
red, and white enamel. That was undoubtedly what Miss Aldclyffe had been
contemplating; and, moreover, not having been put off with her other
ornaments, it was to be retained during the night—a slight departure from
the custom of ladies which Miss Aldclyffe had at first not cared to exhibit to
her new assistant, though now, on further thought, she seemed to have
become indifferent on the matter.
‘My dressing-gown,’ she said, quietly fastening her night-dress as she
spoke.
Cytherea came forward with it. Miss Aldclyffe did not turn her head, but
looked inquiringly at her maid in the glass.
‘You saw what I wear on my neck, I suppose?’ she said to Cytherea’s
reflected face.
‘Yes, madam, I did,’ said Cytherea to Miss Aldclyffe’s reflected face.
Miss Aldclyffe again looked at Cytherea’s reflection as if she were on the
point of explaining. Again she checked her resolve, and said lightly—
‘Few of my maids discover that I wear it always. I generally keep it a
secret—not that it matters much. But I was careless with you, and seemed
to want to tell you. You win me to make confidences that....’
She ceased, took Cytherea’s hand in her own, lifted the locket with the
other, touched the spring and disclosed a miniature.
‘It is a handsome face, is it not?’ she whispered mournfully, and even
timidly.
‘It is.’
But the sight had gone through Cytherea like an electric shock, and there
was an instantaneous awakening of perception in her, so thrilling in its
presence as to be well-nigh insupportable. The face in the miniature was the
face of her own father—younger and fresher than she had ever known him
—but her father!
Was this the woman of his wild and unquenchable early love? And was
this the woman who had figured in the gate-man’s story as answering the
name of Cytherea before her judgment was awake? Surely it was. And if so,
here was the tangible outcrop of a romantic and hidden stratum of the past
hitherto seen only in her imagination; but as far as her scope allowed,
clearly defined therein by reason of its strangeness.

Miss Aldclyffe’s eyes and thoughts were so intent upon the miniature that
she had not been conscious of Cytherea’s start of surprise. She went on
speaking in a low and abstracted tone.
‘Yes, I lost him.’ She interrupted her words by a short meditation, and
went on again. ‘I lost him by excess of honesty as regarded my past. But it
was best that it should be so.... I was led to think rather more than usual of
the circumstances to-night because of your name. It is pronounced the same
way, though differently spelt.’
The only means by which Cytherea’s surname could have been spelt to
Miss Aldclyffe must have been by Mrs. Morris or Farmer Springrove. She
fancied Farmer Springrove would have spelt it properly if Edward was his
informant, which made Miss Aldclyffe’s remark obscure.
Women make confidences and then regret them. The impulsive rush of
feeling which had led Miss Aldclyffe to indulge in this revelation, trifling as
it was, died out immediately her words were beyond recall; and the turmoil,
occasioned in her by dwelling upon that chapter of her life, found vent in
another kind of emotion—the result of a trivial accident.
Cytherea, after letting down Miss Aldclyffe’s hair, adopted some plan
with it to which the lady had not been accustomed. A rapid revulsion to
irritation ensued. The maiden’s mere touch seemed to discharge the pent-up
regret of the lady as if she had been a jar of electricity.
‘How strangely you treat my hair!’ she exclaimed.
A silence.
‘I have told you what I never tell my maids as a rule; of course nothing
that I say in this room is to be mentioned outside it.’ She spoke crossly no
less than emphatically.
‘It shall not be, madam,’ said Cytherea, agitated and vexed that the
woman of her romantic wonderings should be so disagreeable to her.
‘Why on earth did I tell you of my past?’ she went on.
Cytherea made no answer.
The lady’s vexation with herself, and the accident which had led to the
disclosure swelled little by little till it knew no bounds. But what was done
could not be undone, and though Cytherea had shown a most winning
responsiveness, quarrel Miss Aldclyffe must. She recurred to the subject of

Cytherea’s want of expertness, like a bitter reviewer, who finding the
sentiments of a poet unimpeachable, quarrels with his rhymes.
‘Never, never before did I serve myself such a trick as this in engaging a
maid!’ She waited for an expostulation: none came. Miss Aldclyffe tried
again.
‘The idea of my taking a girl without asking her more than three
questions, or having a single reference, all because of her good l—, the
shape of her face and body! It was a fool’s trick. There, I am served right,
quite right—by being deceived in such a way.’
‘I didn’t deceive you,’ said Cytherea. The speech was an unfortunate one,
and was the very ‘fuel to maintain its fires’ that the other’s petulance
desired.
‘You did,’ she said hotly.
‘I told you I couldn’t promise to be acquainted with every detail of
routine just at first.’
‘Will you contradict me in this way! You are telling untruths, I say.’
Cytherea’s lip quivered. ‘I would answer the remark if—if—’
‘If what?’
‘If it were a lady’s!’
‘You girl of impudence—what do you say? Leave the room this instant, I
tell you.’
‘And I tell you that a person who speaks to a lady as you do to me, is no
lady herself!’
‘To a lady? A lady’s-maid speaks in this way. The idea!’
‘Don’t “lady’s-maid” me: nobody is my mistress I won’t have it!’
‘Good Heavens!’
‘I wouldn’t have come—no—I wouldn’t! if I had known!’
‘What?’
‘That you were such an ill-tempered, unjust woman!’
‘Possest beyond the Muse’s painting,’ Miss Aldclyffe exclaimed—
‘A Woman, am I! I’ll teach you if I am a Woman!’ and lifted her hand as
if she would have liked to strike her companion. This stung the maiden into
absolute defiance.

‘I dare you to touch me!’ she cried. ‘Strike me if you dare, madam! I am
not afraid of you—what do you mean by such an action as that?’
Miss Aldclyffe was disconcerted at this unexpected show of spirit, and
ashamed of her unladylike impulse now it was put into words. She sank
back in the chair. ‘I was not going to strike you—go to your room—I beg
you to go to your room!’ she repeated in a husky whisper.
Cytherea, red and panting, took up her candlestick and advanced to the
table to get a light. As she stood close to them the rays from the candles
struck sharply on her face. She usually bore a much stronger likeness to her
mother than to her father, but now, looking with a grave, reckless, and
angered expression of countenance at the kindling wick as she held it
slanting into the other flame, her father’s features were distinct in her. It
was the first time Miss Aldclyffe had seen her in a passionate mood, and
wearing that expression which was invariably its concomitant. It was Miss
Aldclyffe’s turn to start now; and the remark she made was an instance of
that sudden change of tone from high-flown invective to the pettiness of
curiosity which so often makes women’s quarrels ridiculous. Even Miss
Aldclyffe’s dignity had not sufficient power to postpone the absorbing
desire she now felt to settle the strange suspicion that had entered her head.
‘You spell your name the common way, G, R, E, Y, don’t you?’ she said,
with assumed indifference.
‘No,’ said Cytherea, poised on the side of her foot, and still looking into
the flame.
‘Yes, surely? The name was spelt that way on your boxes: I looked and
saw it myself.’
The enigma of Miss Aldclyffe’s mistake was solved. ‘O, was it?’ said
Cytherea. ‘Ah, I remember Mrs. Jackson, the lodging-house keeper at
Budmouth, labelled them. We spell our name G, R, A, Y, E.’
‘What was your father’s trade?’
Cytherea thought it would be useless to attempt to conceal facts any
longer. ‘His was not a trade,’ she said. ‘He was an architect.’
‘The idea of your being an architect’s daughter!’
‘There’s nothing to offend you in that, I hope?’
‘O no.’

‘Why did you say “the idea”?’
‘Leave that alone. Did he ever visit in Gower Street, Bloomsbury, one
Christmas, many years ago?—but you would not know that.’
‘I have heard him say that Mr. Huntway, a curate somewhere in that part
of London, and who died there, was an old college friend of his.’
‘What is your Christian name?’
‘Cytherea.’
‘No! And is it really? And you knew that face I showed you? Yes, I see
you did.’ Miss Aldclyffe stopped, and closed her lips impassibly. She was a
little agitated.
‘Do you want me any longer?’ said Cytherea, standing candle in hand
and looking quietly in Miss Aldclyffe’s face.
‘Well—no: no longer,’ said the other lingeringly.
‘With your permission, I will leave the house to morrow morning,
madam.’
‘Ah.’ Miss Aldclyffe had no notion of what she was saying.
‘And I know you will be so good as not to intrude upon me during the
short remainder of my stay?’
Saying this Cytherea left the room before her companion had answered.
Miss Aldclyffe, then, had recognized her at last, and had been curious about
her name from the beginning.
The other members of the household had retired to rest. As Cytherea
went along the passage leading to her room her skirts rustled against the
partition. A door on her left opened, and Mrs. Morris looked out.
‘I waited out of bed till you came up,’ she said, ‘it being your first night,
in case you should be at a loss for anything. How have you got on with
Miss Aldclyffe?’
‘Pretty well—though not so well as I could have wished.’
‘Has she been scolding?’
‘A little.’
‘She’s a very odd lady—‘tis all one way or the other with her. She’s not
bad at heart, but unbearable in close quarters. Those of us who don’t have
much to do with her personally, stay on for years and years.’

‘Has Miss Aldclyffe’s family always been rich?’ said Cytherea.
‘O no. The property, with the name, came from her mother’s uncle. Her
family is a branch of the old Aldclyffe family on the maternal side. Her
mother married a Bradleigh—a mere nobody at that time—and was on that
account cut by her relations. But very singularly the other branch of the
family died out one by one—three of them, and Miss Aldclyffe’s great-
uncle then left all his property, including this estate, to Captain Bradleigh
and his wife—Miss Aldclyffe’s father and mother—on condition that they
took the old family name as well. There’s all about it in the “Landed
Gentry.” ‘Tis a thing very often done.’
‘O, I see. Thank you. Well, now I am going. Good-night.’

VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS
1. AUGUST THE NINTH. ONE TO TWO O’CLOCK A.M.

Cytherea entered her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed, bewildered
by a whirl of thought. Only one subject was clear in her mind, and it was
that, in spite of family discoveries, that day was to be the first and last of
her experience as a lady’s-maid. Starvation itself should not compel her to
hold such a humiliating post for another instant. ‘Ah,’ she thought, with a
sigh, at the martyrdom of her last little fragment of self-conceit, ‘Owen
knows everything better than I.’
She jumped up and began making ready for her departure in the morning,
the tears streaming down when she grieved and wondered what practical
matter on earth she could turn her hand to next. All these preparations
completed, she began to undress, her mind unconsciously drifting away to
the contemplation of her late surprises. To look in the glass for an instant at
the reflection of her own magnificent resources in face and bosom, and to
mark their attractiveness unadorned, was perhaps but the natural action of a
young woman who had so lately been chidden whilst passing through the
harassing experience of decorating an older beauty of Miss Aldclyffe’s
temper.
But she directly checked her weakness by sympathizing reflections on
the hidden troubles which must have thronged the past years of the solitary
lady, to keep her, though so rich and courted, in a mood so repellent and
gloomy as that in which Cytherea found her; and then the young girl
marvelled again and again, as she had marvelled before, at the strange
confluence of circumstances which had brought herself into contact with
the one woman in the world whose history was so romantically intertwined
with her own. She almost began to wish she were not obliged to go away
and leave the lonely being to loneliness still.
In bed and in the dark, Miss Aldclyffe haunted her mind more
persistently than ever. Instead of sleeping, she called up staring visions of
the possible past of this queenly lady, her mother’s rival. Up the long vista
of bygone years she saw, behind all, the young girl’s flirtation, little or

much, with the cousin, that seemed to have been nipped in the bud, or to
have terminated hastily in some way. Then the secret meetings between
Miss Aldclyffe and the other woman at the little inn at Hammersmith and
other places: the commonplace name she adopted: her swoon at some
painful news, and the very slight knowledge the elder female had of her
partner in mystery. Then, more than a year afterwards, the acquaintanceship
of her own father with this his first love; the awakening of the passion, his
acts of devotion, the unreasoning heat of his rapture, her tacit acceptance of
it, and yet her uneasiness under the delight. Then his declaration amid the
evergreens: the utter change produced in her manner thereby, seemingly the
result of a rigid determination: and the total concealment of her reason by
herself and her parents, whatever it was. Then the lady’s course dropped
into darkness, and nothing more was visible till she was discovered here at
Knapwater, nearly fifty years old, still unmarried and still beautiful, but
lonely, embittered, and haughty. Cytherea imagined that her father’s image
was still warmly cherished in Miss Aldclyffe’s heart, and was thankful that
she herself had not been betrayed into announcing that she knew many
particulars of this page of her father’s history, and the chief one, the lady’s
unaccountable renunciation of him. It would have made her bearing towards
the mistress of the mansion more awkward, and would have been no benefit
to either.
Thus conjuring up the past, and theorizing on the present, she lay restless,
changing her posture from one side to the other and back again. Finally,
when courting sleep with all her art, she heard a clock strike two. A minute
later, and she fancied she could distinguish a soft rustle in the passage
outside her room.
To bury her head in the sheets was her first impulse; then to uncover it,
raise herself on her elbow, and stretch her eyes wide open in the darkness;
her lips being parted with the intentness of her listening. Whatever the noise
was, it had ceased for the time.
It began again and came close to her door, lightly touching the panels.
Then there was another stillness; Cytherea made a movement which caused
a faint rustling of the bed-clothes.
Before she had time to think another thought a light tap was given.
Cytherea breathed: the person outside was evidently bent upon finding her
awake, and the rustle she had made had encouraged the hope. The maiden’s

physical condition shifted from one pole to its opposite. The cold sweat of
terror forsook her, and modesty took the alarm. She became hot and red; her
door was not locked.
A distinct woman’s whisper came to her through the keyhole: ‘Cytherea!’
Only one being in the house knew her Christian name, and that was Miss
Aldclyffe. Cytherea stepped out of bed, went to the door, and whispered
back, ‘Yes?’
‘Let me come in, darling.’
The young woman paused in a conflict between judgment and emotion. It
was now mistress and maid no longer; woman and woman only. Yes; she
must let her come in, poor thing.
She got a light in an instant, opened the door, and raising her eyes and the
candle, saw Miss Aldclyffe standing outside in her dressing-gown.
‘Now you see that it is really myself; put out the light,’ said the visitor. ‘I
want to stay here with you, Cythie. I came to ask you to come down into
my bed, but it is snugger here. But remember that you are mistress in this
room, and that I have no business here, and that you may send me away if
you choose. Shall I go?’
‘O no; you shan’t indeed if you don’t want to,’ said Cythie generously.
The instant they were in bed Miss Aldclyffe freed herself from the last
remnant of restraint. She flung her arms round the young girl, and pressed
her gently to her heart.
‘Now kiss me,’ she said.
Cytherea, upon the whole, was rather discomposed at this change of
treatment; and, discomposed or no, her passions were not so impetuous as
Miss Aldclyffe’s. She could not bring her soul to her lips for a moment, try
how she would.
‘Come, kiss me,’ repeated Miss Aldclyffe.
Cytherea gave her a very small one, as soft in touch and in sound as the
bursting of a bubble.
‘More earnestly than that—come.’
She gave another, a little but not much more expressively.
‘I don’t deserve a more feeling one, I suppose,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, with
an emphasis of sad bitterness in her tone. ‘I am an ill-tempered woman, you

think; half out of my mind. Well, perhaps I am; but I have had grief more
than you can think or dream of. But I can’t help loving you—your name is
the same as mine—isn’t it strange?’
Cytherea was inclined to say no, but remained silent.
‘Now, don’t you think I must love you?’ continued the other.
‘Yes,’ said Cytherea absently. She was still thinking whether duty to
Owen and her father, which asked for silence on her knowledge of her
father’s unfortunate love, or duty to the woman embracing her, which
seemed to ask for confidence, ought to predominate. Here was a solution.
She would wait till Miss Aldclyffe referred to her acquaintanceship and
attachment to Cytherea’s father in past times: then she would tell her all she
knew: that would be honour.
‘Why can’t you kiss me as I can kiss you? Why can’t you!’ She
impressed upon Cytherea’s lips a warm motherly salute, given as if in the
outburst of strong feeling, long checked, and yearning for something to love
and be loved by in return.
‘Do you think badly of me for my behaviour this evening, child? I don’t
know why I am so foolish as to speak to you in this way. I am a very fool, I
believe. Yes. How old are you?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘Eighteen!... Well, why don’t you ask me how old I am?’
‘Because I don’t want to know.’
‘Never mind if you don’t. I am forty-six; and it gives me greater pleasure
to tell you this than it does to you to listen. I have not told my age truly for
the last twenty years till now.’
‘Why haven’t you?’
‘I have met deceit by deceit, till I am weary of it—weary, weary—and I
long to be what I shall never be again—artless and innocent, like you. But I
suppose that you, too, will, prove to be not worth a thought, as every new
friend does on more intimate knowledge. Come, why don’t you talk to me,
child? Have you said your prayers?’
‘Yes—no! I forgot them to-night.’
‘I suppose you say them every night as a rule?’
‘Yes.’

‘Why do you do that?’
‘Because I have always done so, and it would seem strange if I were not
to. Do you?’
‘I? A wicked old sinner like me! No, I never do. I have thought all such
matters humbug for years—thought so so long that I should be glad to think
otherwise from very weariness; and yet, such is the code of the polite world,
that I subscribe regularly to Missionary Societies and others of the sort....
Well, say your prayers, dear—you won’t omit them now you recollect it. I
should like to hear you very much. Will you?’
‘It seems hardly—’
‘It would seem so like old times to me—when I was young, and nearer—
far nearer Heaven than I am now. Do, sweet one,’
Cytherea was embarrassed, and her embarrassment arose from the
following conjuncture of affairs. Since she had loved Edward Springrove,
she had linked his name with her brother Owen’s in her nightly
supplications to the Almighty. She wished to keep her love for him a secret,
and, above all, a secret from a woman like Miss Aldclyffe; yet her
conscience and the honesty of her love would not for an instant allow her to
think of omitting his dear name, and so endanger the efficacy of all her
previous prayers for his success by an unworthy shame now: it would be
wicked of her, she thought, and a grievous wrong to him. Under any
worldly circumstances she might have thought the position justified a little
finesse, and have skipped him for once; but prayer was too solemn a thing
for such trifling.
‘I would rather not say them,’ she murmured first. It struck her then that
this declining altogether was the same cowardice in another dress, and was
delivering her poor Edward over to Satan just as unceremoniously as
before. ‘Yes; I will say my prayers, and you shall hear me,’ she added
firmly.
She turned her face to the pillow and repeated in low soft tones the
simple words she had used from childhood on such occasions. Owen’s
name was mentioned without faltering, but in the other case, maidenly
shyness was too strong even for religion, and that when supported by
excellent intentions. At the name of Edward she stammered, and her voice
sank to the faintest whisper in spite of her.

‘Thank you, dearest,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘I have prayed too, I verily
believe. You are a good girl, I think.’ Then the expected question came.
‘“Bless Owen,” and whom, did you say?’
There was no help for it now, and out it came. ‘Owen and Edward,’ said
Cytherea.
‘Who are Owen and Edward?’
‘Owen is my brother, madam,’ faltered the maid.
‘Ah, I remember. Who is Edward?’
A silence.
‘Your brother, too?’ continued Miss Aldclyffe.
‘No.’
Miss Aldclyffe reflected a moment. ‘Don’t you want to tell me who
Edward is?’ she said at last, in a tone of meaning.
‘I don’t mind telling; only....’
‘You would rather not, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
Miss Aldclyffe shifted her ground. ‘Were you ever in love?’ she inquired
suddenly.
Cytherea was surprised to hear how quickly the voice had altered from
tenderness to harshness, vexation, and disappointment.
‘Yes—I think I was—once,’ she murmured.
‘Aha! And were you ever kissed by a man?’
A pause.
‘Well, were you?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, rather sharply.
‘Don’t press me to tell—I can’t—indeed, I won’t, madam!’
Miss Aldclyffe removed her arms from Cytherea’s neck. ‘’Tis now with
you as it is always with all girls,’ she said, in jealous and gloomy accents.
‘You are not, after all, the innocent I took you for. No, no.’ She then
changed her tone with fitful rapidity. ‘Cytherea, try to love me more than
you love him—do. I love you more sincerely than any man can. Do, Cythie:
don’t let any man stand between us. O, I can’t bear that!’ She clasped
Cytherea’s neck again.
‘I must love him now I have begun,’ replied the other.

‘Must—yes—must,’ said the elder lady reproachfully. ‘Yes, women are
all alike. I thought I had at last found an artless woman who had not been
sullied by a man’s lips, and who had not practised or been practised upon by
the arts which ruin all the truth and sweetness and goodness in us. Find a
girl, if you can, whose mouth and ears have not been made a regular
highway of by some man or another! Leave the admittedly notorious spots
—the drawing-rooms of society—and look in the villages—leave the
villages and search in the schools—and you can hardly find a girl whose
heart has not been had—is not an old thing half worn out by some He or
another! If men only knew the staleness of the freshest of us! that nine
times out of ten the “first love” they think they are winning from a woman
is but the hulk of an old wrecked affection, fitted with new sails and re-
used. O Cytherea, can it be that you, too, are like the rest?’
‘No, no, no,’ urged Cytherea, awed by the storm she had raised in the
impetuous woman’s mind. ‘He only kissed me once—twice I mean.’
‘He might have done it a thousand times if he had cared to, there’s no
doubt about that, whoever his lordship is. You are as bad as I—we are all
alike; and I—an old fool—have been sipping at your mouth as if it were
honey, because I fancied no wasting lover knew the spot. But a minute ago,
and you seemed to me like a fresh spring meadow—now you seem a dusty
highway.’
‘O no, no!’ Cytherea was not weak enough to shed tears except on
extraordinary occasions, but she was fain to begin sobbing now. She wished
Miss Aldclyffe would go to her own room, and leave her and her treasured
dreams alone. This vehement imperious affection was in one sense
soothing, but yet it was not of the kind that Cytherea’s instincts desired.
Though it was generous, it seemed somewhat too rank and capricious for
endurance.
‘Well,’ said the lady in continuation, ‘who is he?’
Her companion was desperately determined not to tell his name: she too
much feared a taunt when Miss Aldclyffe’s fiery mood again ruled her
tongue.
‘Won’t you tell me? not tell me after all the affection I have shown?’
‘I will, perhaps, another day.’

‘Did you wear a hat and white feather in Budmouth for the week or two
previous to your coming here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I have seen you and your lover at a distance! He rowed you round
the bay with your brother.’
‘Yes.’
‘And without your brother—fie! There, there, don’t let that little heart
beat itself to death: throb, throb: it shakes the bed, you silly thing. I didn’t
mean that there was any harm in going alone with him. I only saw you from
the Esplanade, in common with the rest of the people. I often run down to
Budmouth. He was a very good figure: now who was he?’
‘I—I won’t tell, madam—I cannot indeed!’
‘Won’t tell—very well, don’t. You are very foolish to treasure up his
name and image as you do. Why, he has had loves before you, trust him for
that, whoever he is, and you are but a temporary link in a long chain of
others like you: who only have your little day as they have had theirs.’
‘’Tisn’t true! ‘tisn’t true! ‘tisn’t true!’ cried Cytherea in an agony of
torture. ‘He has never loved anybody else, I know—I am sure he hasn’t.’
Miss Aldclyffe was as jealous as any man could have been. She
continued—
‘He sees a beautiful face and thinks he will never forget it, but in a few
weeks the feeling passes off, and he wonders how he could have cared for
anybody so absurdly much.’
‘No, no, he doesn’t—What does he do when he has thought that—Come,
tell me—tell me!’
‘You are as hot as fire, and the throbbing of your heart makes me
nervous. I can’t tell you if you get in that flustered state.’
‘Do, do tell—O, it makes me so miserable! but tell—come tell me!’
‘Ah—the tables are turned now, dear!’ she continued, in a tone which
mingled pity with derision—

‘“Love’s passions shall rock thee
As the storm rocks the ravens on high,
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.”

‘What does he do next?—Why, this is what he does next: ruminate on
what he has heard of women’s romantic impulses, and how easily men
torture them when they have given way to those feelings, and have resigned
everything for their hero. It may be that though he loves you heartily now—
that is, as heartily as a man can—and you love him in return, your loves
may be impracticable and hopeless, and you may be separated for ever.
You, as the weary, weary years pass by will fade and fade—bright eyes will
fade—and you will perhaps then die early—true to him to your latest
breath, and believing him to be true to the latest breath also; whilst he, in
some gay and busy spot far away from your last quiet nook, will have
married some dashing lady, and not purely oblivious of you, will long have
ceased to regret you—will chat about you, as you were in long past years—
will say, “Ah, little Cytherea used to tie her hair like that—poor innocent
trusting thing; it was a pleasant useless idle dream—that dream of mine for
the maid with the bright eyes and simple, silly heart; but I was a foolish lad
at that time.” Then he will tell the tale of all your little Wills and Wont’s and
particular ways, and as he speaks, turn to his wife with a placid smile.’
‘It is not true! He can’t, he c-can’t be s-so cruel—and you are cruel to me
—you are, you are!’ She was at last driven to desperation: her natural
common sense and shrewdness had seen all through the piece how
imaginary her emotions were—she felt herself to be weak and foolish in
permitting them to rise; but even then she could not control them: be
agonized she must. She was only eighteen, and the long day’s labour, her
weariness, her excitement, had completely unnerved her, and worn her out:
she was bent hither and thither by this tyrannical working upon her
imagination, as a young rush in the wind. She wept bitterly. ‘And now think
how much I like you,’ resumed Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea grew
calmer. ‘I shall never forget you for anybody else, as men do—never. I will
be exactly as a mother to you. Now will you promise to live with me
always, and always be taken care of, and never deserted?’
‘I cannot. I will not be anybody’s maid for another day on any
consideration.’
‘No, no, no. You shan’t be a lady’s-maid. You shall be my companion. I
will get another maid.’
Companion—that was a new idea. Cytherea could not resist the evidently
heartfelt desire of the strange-tempered woman for her presence. But she

could not trust to the moment’s impulse.
‘I will stay, I think. But do not ask for a final answer to-night.’
‘Never mind now, then. Put your hair round your mamma’s neck, and
give me one good long kiss, and I won’t talk any more in that way about
your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if
he’s the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten
times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, while it lasts.’
Cytherea did as she was told, to escape the punishment of further talk;
flung the twining tresses of her long, rich hair over Miss Aldclyffe’s
shoulders as directed, and the two ceased conversing, making themselves
up for sleep. Miss Aldclyffe seemed to give herself over to a luxurious
sense of content and quiet, as if the maiden at her side afforded her a
protection against dangers which had menaced her for years; she was soon
sleeping calmly.
2. TWO TO FIVE A.M.
With Cytherea it was otherwise. Unused to the place and circumstances,
she continued wakeful, ill at ease, and mentally distressed. She withdrew
herself from her companion’s embrace, turned to the other side, and
endeavoured to relieve her busy brain by looking at the window-blind, and
noticing the light of the rising moon—now in her last quarter—creep round
upon it: it was the light of an old waning moon which had but a few days
longer to live.
The sight led her to think again of what had happened under the rays of
the same month’s moon, a little before its full, the ecstatic evening scene
with Edward: the kiss, and the shortness of those happy moments—maiden
imagination bringing about the apotheosis of a status quo which had had
several unpleasantnesses in its earthly reality.
But sounds were in the ascendant that night. Her ears became aware of a
strange and gloomy murmur.
She recognized it: it was the gushing of the waterfall, faint and low,
brought from its source to the unwonted distance of the House by a faint
breeze which made it distinct and recognizable by reason of the utter
absence of all disturbing sounds. The groom’s melancholy representation
lent to the sound a more dismal effect than it would have had of its own
nature. She began to fancy what the waterfall must be like at that hour,

under the trees in the ghostly moonlight. Black at the head, and over the
surface of the deep cold hole into which it fell; white and frothy at the fall;
black and white, like a pall and its border; sad everywhere.
She was in the mood for sounds of every kind now, and strained her ears
to catch the faintest, in wayward enmity to her quiet of mind. Another soon
came.
The second was quite different from the first—a kind of intermittent
whistle it seemed primarily: no, a creak, a metallic creak, ever and anon,
like a plough, or a rusty wheelbarrow, or at least a wheel of some kind. Yes,
it was, a wheel—the water-wheel in the shrubbery by the old manor-house,
which the coachman had said would drive him mad.
She determined not to think any more of these gloomy things; but now
that she had once noticed the sound there was no sealing her ears to it. She
could not help timing its creaks, and putting on a dread expectancy just
before the end of each half-minute that brought them. To imagine the inside
of the engine-house, whence these noises proceeded, was now a necessity.
No window, but crevices in the door, through which, probably, the
moonbeams streamed in the most attenuated and skeleton-like rays, striking
sharply upon portions of wet rusty cranks and chains; a glistening wheel,
turning incessantly, labouring in the dark like a captive starving in a
dungeon; and instead of a floor below, gurgling water, which on account of
the darkness could only be heard; water which laboured up dark pipes
almost to where she lay.
She shivered. Now she was determined to go to sleep; there could be
nothing else left to be heard or to imagine—it was horrid that her
imagination should be so restless. Yet just for an instant before going to
sleep she would think this—suppose another sound should come—just
suppose it should! Before the thought had well passed through her brain, a
third sound came.
The third was a very soft gurgle or rattle—of a strange and abnormal
kind—yet a sound she had heard before at some past period of her life—
when, she could not recollect. To make it the more disturbing, it seemed to
be almost close to her—either close outside the window, close under the
floor, or close above the ceiling. The accidental fact of its coming so
immediately upon the heels of her supposition, told so powerfully upon her
excited nerves that she jumped up in the bed. The same instant, a little dog

in some room near, having probably heard the same noise, set up a low
whine. The watch-dog in the yard, hearing the moan of his associate, began
to howl loudly and distinctly. His melancholy notes were taken up directly
afterwards by the dogs in the kennel a long way off, in every variety of
wail.
One logical thought alone was able to enter her flurried brain. The little
dog that began the whining must have heard the other two sounds even
better than herself. He had taken no notice of them, but he had taken notice
of the third. The third, then, was an unusual sound.
It was not like water, it was not like wind; it was not the night-jar, it was
not a clock, nor a rat, nor a person snoring.
She crept under the clothes, and flung her arms tightly round Miss
Aldclyffe, as if for protection. Cytherea perceived that the lady’s late
peaceful warmth had given place to a sweat. At the maiden’s touch, Miss
Aldclyffe awoke with a low scream.
She remembered her position instantly. ‘O such a terrible dream!’ she
cried, in a hurried whisper, holding to Cytherea in her turn; ‘and your touch
was the end of it. It was dreadful. Time, with his wings, hour-glass, and
scythe, coming nearer and nearer to me—grinning and mocking: then he
seized me, took a piece of me only... But I can’t tell you. I can’t bear to
think of it. How those dogs howl! People say it means death.’
The return of Miss Aldclyffe to consciousness was sufficient to dispel the
wild fancies which the loneliness of the night had woven in Cytherea’s
mind. She dismissed the third noise as something which in all likelihood
could easily be explained, if trouble were taken to inquire into it: large
houses had all kinds of strange sounds floating about them. She was
ashamed to tell Miss Aldclyffe her terrors.
A silence of five minutes.
‘Are you asleep?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
‘No,’ said Cytherea, in a long-drawn whisper.
‘How those dogs howl, don’t they?’
‘Yes. A little dog in the house began it.’
‘Ah, yes: that was Totsy. He sleeps on the mat outside my father’s
bedroom door. A nervous creature.’

There was a silent interval of nearly half-an-hour. A clock on the landing
struck three.
‘Are you asleep, Miss Aldclyffe?’ whispered Cytherea.
‘No,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘How wretched it is not to be able to sleep,
isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ replied Cytherea, like a docile child.
Another hour passed, and the clock struck four. Miss Aldclyffe was still
awake.
‘Cytherea,’ she said, very softly.
Cytherea made no answer. She was sleeping soundly.
The first glimmer of dawn was now visible. Miss Aldclyffe arose, put on
her dressing-gown, and went softly downstairs to her own room.
‘I have not told her who I am after all, or found out the particulars of
Ambrose’s history,’ she murmured. ‘But her being in love alters
everything.’
3. HALF-PAST SEVEN TO TEN O’CLOCK A.M.
Cytherea awoke, quiet in mind and refreshed. A conclusion to remain at
Knapwater was already in possession of her.
Finding Miss Aldclyffe gone, she dressed herself and sat down at the
window to write an answer to Edward’s letter, and an account of her arrival
at Knapwater to Owen. The dismal and heart-breaking pictures that Miss
Aldclyffe had placed before her the preceding evening, the later terrors of
the night, were now but as shadows of shadows, and she smiled in derision
at her own excitability.
But writing Edward’s letter was the great consoler, the effect of each
word upon him being enacted in her own face as she wrote it. She felt how
much she would like to share his trouble—how well she could endure
poverty with him—and wondered what his trouble was. But all would be
explained at last, she knew.
At the appointed time she went to Miss Aldclyffe’s room, intending, with
the contradictoriness common in people, to perform with pleasure, as a
work of supererogation, what as a duty was simply intolerable.
Miss Aldclyffe was already out of bed. The bright penetrating light of
morning made a vast difference in the elder lady’s behaviour to her

dependent; the day, which had restored Cytherea’s judgment, had effected
the same for Miss Aldclyffe. Though practical reasons forbade her
regretting that she had secured such a companionable creature to read, talk,
or play to her whenever her whim required, she was inwardly vexed at the
extent to which she had indulged in the womanly luxury of making
confidences and giving way to emotions. Few would have supposed that the
calm lady sitting aristocratically at the toilet table, seeming scarcely
conscious of Cytherea’s presence in the room, even when greeting her, was
the passionate creature who had asked for kisses a few hours before.
It is both painful and satisfactory to think how often these antitheses are
to be observed in the individual most open to our observation—ourselves.
We pass the evening with faces lit up by some flaring illumination or other:
we get up the next morning—the fiery jets have all gone out, and nothing
confronts us but a few crinkled pipes and sooty wirework, hardly even
recalling the outline of the blazing picture that arrested our eyes before
bedtime.
Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light. Probably
nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet confession are written after
nine or ten o’clock in the evening, and sent off before day returns to leer
invidiously upon them. Few that remain open to catch our glance as we rise
in the morning, survive the frigid criticism of dressing-time.
The subjects uppermost in the minds of the two women who had thus
cooled from their fires, were not the visionary ones of the later hours, but
the hard facts of their earlier conversation. After a remark that Cytherea
need not assist her in dressing unless she wished to, Miss Aldclyffe said
abruptly—
‘I can tell that young man’s name.’ She looked keenly at Cytherea. ‘It is
Edward Springrove, my tenant’s son.’
The inundation of colour upon the younger lady at hearing a name which
to her was a world, handled as if it were only an atom, told Miss Aldclyffe
that she had divined the truth at last.
‘Ah—it is he, is it?’ she continued. ‘Well, I wanted to know for practical
reasons. His example shows that I was not so far wrong in my estimate of
men after all, though I only generalized, and had no thought of him.’ This
was perfectly true.
‘What do you mean?’ said Cytherea, visibly alarmed.

‘Mean? Why that all the world knows him to be engaged to be married,
and that the wedding is soon to take place.’ She made the remark bluntly
and superciliously, as if to obtain absolution at the hands of her family pride
for the weak confidences of the night.
But even the frigidity of Miss Aldclyffe’s morning mood was overcome
by the look of sick and blank despair which the carelessly uttered words had
produced upon Cytherea’s face. She sank back into a chair, and buried her
face in her hands.
‘Don’t be so foolish,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘Come, make the best of it. I
cannot upset the fact I have told you of, unfortunately. But I believe the
match can be broken off.’
‘O no, no.’
‘Nonsense. I liked him much as a youth, and I like him now. I’ll help you
to captivate and chain him down. I have got over my absurd feeling of last
night in not wanting you ever to go away from me—of course, I could not
expect such a thing as that. There, now I have said I’ll help you, and that’s
enough. He’s tired of his first choice now that he’s been away from home
for a while. The love that no outer attack can frighten away quails before its
idol’s own homely ways; it is always so.... Come, finish what you are doing
if you are going to, and don’t be a little goose about such a trumpery affair
as that.’
‘Who—is he engaged to?’ Cytherea inquired by a movement of her lips
but no sound of her voice. But Miss Aldclyffe did not answer. It mattered
not, Cytherea thought. Another woman—that was enough for her: curiosity
was stunned.
She applied herself to the work of dressing, scarcely knowing how. Miss
Aldclyffe went on:—
‘You were too easily won. I’d have made him or anybody else speak out
before he should have kissed my face for his pleasure. But you are one of
those precipitantly fond things who are yearning to throw away their hearts
upon the first worthless fellow who says good-morning. In the first place,
you shouldn’t have loved him so quickly: in the next, if you must have
loved him off-hand, you should have concealed it. It tickled his vanity: “By
Jove, that girl’s in love with me already!” he thought.’

To hasten away at the end of the toilet, to tell Mrs. Morris—who stood
waiting in a little room prepared for her, with tea poured out, bread-and-
butter cut into diaphanous slices, and eggs arranged—that she wanted no
breakfast: then to shut herself alone in her bedroom, was her only thought.
She was followed thither by the well-intentioned matron with a cup of tea
and one piece of bread-and-butter on a tray, cheerfully insisting that she
should eat it.
To those who grieve, innocent cheerfulness seems heartless levity. ‘No,
thank you, Mrs. Morris,’ she said, keeping the door closed. Despite the
incivility of the action, Cytherea could not bear to let a pleasant person see
her face then.
Immediate revocation—even if revocation would be more effective by
postponement—is the impulse of young wounded natures. Cytherea went to
her blotting-book, took out the long letter so carefully written, so full of
gushing remarks and tender hints, and sealed up so neatly with a little seal
bearing ‘Good Faith’ as its motto, tore the missive into fifty pieces, and
threw them into the grate. It was then the bitterest of anguishes to look upon
some of the words she had so lovingly written, and see them existing only
in mutilated forms without meaning—to feel that his eye would never read
them, nobody ever know how ardently she had penned them.
Pity for one’s self for being wasted is mostly present in these moods of
abnegation.
The meaning of all his allusions, his abruptness in telling her of his love,
his constraint at first, then his desperate manner of speaking, was clear.
They must have been the last flickerings of a conscience not quite dead to
all sense of perfidiousness and fickleness. Now he had gone to London: she
would be dismissed from his memory, in the same way as Miss Aldclyffe
had said. And here she was in Edward’s own parish, reminded continually
of him by what she saw and heard. The landscape, yesterday so much and
so bright to her, was now but as the banquet-hall deserted—all gone but
herself.
Miss Aldclyffe had wormed her secret out of her, and would now be
continually mocking her for her trusting simplicity in believing him. It was
altogether unbearable: she would not stay there.
She went downstairs and found Miss Aldclyffe had gone into the
breakfast-room, but that Captain Aldclyffe, who rose later with increasing

infirmities, had not yet made his appearance. Cytherea entered. Miss
Aldclyffe was looking out of the window, watching a trail of white smoke
along the distant landscape—signifying a passing train. At Cytherea’s entry
she turned and looked inquiry.
‘I must tell you now,’ began Cytherea, in a tremulous voice.
‘Well, what?’ Miss Aldclyffe said.
‘I am not going to stay with you. I must go away—a very long way. I am
very sorry, but indeed I can’t remain!’
‘Pooh—what shall we hear next?’ Miss Aldclyffe surveyed Cytherea’s
face with leisurely criticism. ‘You are breaking your heart again about that
worthless young Springrove. I knew how it would be. It is as Hallam says
of Juliet—what little reason you may have possessed originally has all been
whirled away by this love. I shan’t take this notice, mind.’
‘Do let me go!’
Miss Aldclyffe took her new pet’s hand, and said with severity, ‘As to
hindering you, if you are determined to go, of course that’s absurd. But you
are not now in a state of mind fit for deciding upon any such proceeding,
and I shall not listen to what you have to say. Now, Cythie, come with me;
we’ll let this volcano burst and spend itself, and after that we’ll see what
had better be done.’ She took Cytherea into her workroom, opened a
drawer, and drew forth a roll of linen.
‘This is some embroidery I began one day, and now I should like it
finished.’
She then preceded the maiden upstairs to Cytherea’s own room. ‘There,’
she said, ‘now sit down here, go on with this work, and remember one thing
—that you are not to leave the room on any pretext whatever for two hours
unless I send for you—I insist kindly, dear. Whilst you stitch—you are to
stitch, recollect, and not go mooning out of the window—think over the
whole matter, and get cooled; don’t let the foolish love-affair prevent your
thinking as a woman of the world. If at the end of that time you still say you
must leave me, you may. I will have no more to say in the matter. Come, sit
down, and promise to sit here the time I name.’
To hearts in a despairing mood, compulsion seems a relief; and docility
was at all times natural to Cytherea. She promised, and sat down. Miss
Aldclyffe shut the door upon her and retreated.

She sewed, stopped to think, shed a tear or two, recollected the articles of
the treaty, and sewed again; and at length fell into a reverie which took no
account whatever of the lapse of time.
4. TEN TO TWELVE O’CLOCK A.M.
A quarter of an hour might have passed when her thoughts became
attracted from the past to the present by unwonted movements downstairs.
She opened the door and listened.
There were hurryings along passages, opening and shutting of doors,
trampling in the stable-yard. She went across into another bedroom, from
which a view of the stable-yard could be obtained, and arrived there just in
time to see the figure of the man who had driven her from the station
vanishing down the coach-road on a black horse—galloping at the top of
the animal’s speed.
Another man went off in the direction of the village.
Whatever had occurred, it did not seem to be her duty to inquire or
meddle with it, stranger and dependent as she was, unless she were
requested to, especially after Miss Aldclyffe’s strict charge to her. She sat
down again, determined to let no idle curiosity influence her movements.
Her window commanded the front of the house; and the next thing she
saw was a clergyman walk up and enter the door.
All was silent again till, a long time after the first man had left, he
returned again on the same horse, now matted with sweat and trotting
behind a carriage in which sat an elderly gentleman driven by a lad in
livery. These came to the house, entered, and all was again the same as
before.
The whole household—master, mistress, and servants—appeared to have
forgotten the very existence of such a being as Cytherea. She almost wished
she had not vowed to have no idle curiosity.
Half-an-hour later, the carriage drove off with the elderly gentleman, and
two or three messengers left the house, speeding in various directions.
Rustics in smock-frocks began to hang about the road opposite the house, or
lean against trees, looking idly at the windows and chimneys.
A tap came to Cytherea’s door. She opened it to a young maid-servant.
‘Miss Aldclyffe wishes to see you, ma’am.’ Cytherea hastened down.

Miss Aldclyffe was standing on the hearthrug, her elbow on the mantel,
her hand to her temples, her eyes on the ground; perfectly calm, but very
pale.
‘Cytherea,’ she said in a whisper, ‘come here.’
Cytherea went close.
‘Something very serious has taken place,’ she said again, and then
paused, with a tremulous movement of her mouth.
‘Yes,’ said Cytherea.
‘My father. He was found dead in his bed this morning.’
‘Dead!’ echoed the younger woman. It seemed impossible that the
announcement could be true; that knowledge of so great a fact could be
contained in a statement so small.
‘Yes, dead,’ murmured Miss Aldclyffe solemnly. ‘He died alone, though
within a few feet of me. The room we slept in is exactly over his own.’
Cytherea said hurriedly, ‘Do they know at what hour?’
‘The doctor says it must have been between two and three o’clock this
morning.’
‘Then I heard him!’
‘Heard him?’
‘Heard him die!’
‘You heard him die? What did you hear?’
‘A sound I heard once before in my life—at the deathbed of my mother. I
could not identify it—though I recognized it. Then the dog howled: you
remarked it. I did not think it worth while to tell you what I had heard a
little earlier.’ She looked agonized.
‘It would have been useless,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘All was over by that
time.’ She addressed herself as much as Cytherea when she continued, ‘Is it
a Providence who sent you here at this juncture that I might not be left
entirely alone?’
Till this instant Miss Aldclyffe had forgotten the reason of Cytherea’s
seclusion in her own room. So had Cytherea herself. The fact now recurred
to both in one moment.
‘Do you still wish to go?’ said Miss Aldclyffe anxiously.

‘I don’t want to go now,’ Cytherea had remarked simultaneously with the
other’s question. She was pondering on the strange likeness which Miss
Aldclyffe’s bereavement bore to her own; it had the appearance of being
still another call to her not to forsake this woman so linked to her life, for
the sake of any trivial vexation.
Miss Aldclyffe held her almost as a lover would have held her, and said
musingly—
‘We get more and more into one groove. I now am left fatherless and
motherless as you were.’ Other ties lay behind in her thoughts, but she did
not mention them.
‘You loved your father, Cytherea, and wept for him?’
‘Yes, I did. Poor papa!’
‘I was always at variance with mine, and can’t weep for him now! But
you must stay here always, and make a better woman of me.’
The compact was thus sealed, and Cytherea, in spite of the failure of her
advertisements, was installed as a veritable Companion. And, once more in
the history of human endeavour, a position which it was impossible to reach
by any direct attempt, was come to by the seeker’s swerving from the path,
and regarding the original object as one of secondary importance.

VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
1. AUGUST THE SEVENTEENTH

The time of day was four o’clock in the afternoon. The place was the
lady’s study or boudoir, Knapwater House. The person was Miss Aldclyffe
sitting there alone, clothed in deep mourning.
The funeral of the old Captain had taken place, and his will had been
read. It was very concise, and had been executed about five years previous
to his death. It was attested by his solicitors, Messrs. Nyttleton and Tayling,
of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The whole of his estate, real and personal, was
bequeathed to his daughter Cytherea, for her sole and absolute use, subject
only to the payment of a legacy to the rector, their relative, and a few small
amounts to the servants.
Miss Aldclyffe had not chosen the easiest chair of her boudoir to sit in, or
even a chair of ordinary comfort, but an uncomfortable, high, narrow-
backed, oak framed and seated chair, which was allowed to remain in the
room only on the ground of being a companion in artistic quaintness to an
old coffer beside it, and was never used except to stand in to reach for a
book from the highest row of shelves. But she had sat erect in this chair for
more than an hour, for the reason that she was utterly unconscious of what
her actions and bodily feelings were. The chair had stood nearest her path
on entering the room, and she had gone to it in a dream.
She sat in the attitude which denotes unflagging, intense, concentrated
thought—as if she were cast in bronze. Her feet were together, her body
bent a little forward, and quite unsupported by the back of the chair; her
hands on her knees, her eyes fixed intently on the corner of a footstool.
At last she moved and tapped her fingers upon the table at her side. Her
pent-up ideas had finally found some channel to advance in. Motions
became more and more frequent as she laboured to carry further and further
the problem which occupied her brain. She sat back and drew a long breath:
she sat sideways and leant her forehead upon her hand. Later still she arose,
walked up and down the room—at first abstractedly, with her features as

firmly set as ever; but by degrees her brow relaxed, her footsteps became
lighter and more leisurely; her head rode gracefully and was no longer
bowed. She plumed herself like a swan after exertion.
‘Yes,’ she said aloud. ‘To get him here without letting him know that I
have any other object than that of getting a useful man—that’s the difficulty
—and that I think I can master.’
She rang for the new maid, a placid woman of forty with a few grey
hairs.
‘Ask Miss Graye if she can come to me.’
Cytherea was not far off, and came in.
‘Do you know anything about architects and surveyors?’ said Miss
Aldclyffe abruptly.
‘Know anything?’ replied Cytherea, poising herself on her toe to consider
the compass of the question.
‘Yes—know anything,’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
‘Owen is an architect and surveyor’s draughtsman,’ the maiden said, and
thought of somebody else who was likewise.
‘Yes! that’s why I asked you. What are the different kinds of work
comprised in an architect’s practice? They lay out estates, and superintend
the various works done upon them, I should think, among other things?’
‘Those are, more properly, a land or building steward’s duties—at least I
have always imagined so. Country architects include those things in their
practice; city architects don’t.’
‘I know that, child. But a steward’s is an indefinite fast and loose
profession, it seems to me. Shouldn’t you think that a man who had been
brought up as an architect would do for a steward?’
Cytherea had doubts whether an architect pure would do.
The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting
it. Miss Aldclyffe replied decisively—
‘Nonsense; of course he would. Your brother Owen makes plans for
country buildings—such as cottages, stables, homesteads, and so on?’
‘Yes; he does.’
‘And superintends the building of them?’

‘Yes; he will soon.’
‘And he surveys land?’
‘O yes.’
‘And he knows about hedges and ditches—how wide they ought to be,
boundaries, levelling, planting trees to keep away the winds, measuring
timber, houses for ninety-nine years, and such things?’
‘I have never heard him say that; but I think Mr. Gradfield does those
things. Owen, I am afraid, is inexperienced as yet.’
‘Yes; your brother is not old enough for such a post yet, of course. And
then there are rent-days, the audit and winding up of tradesmen’s accounts.
I am afraid, Cytherea, you don’t know much more about the matter than I
do myself.... I am going out just now,’ she continued. ‘I shall not want you
to walk with me to-day. Run away till dinner-time.’
Miss Aldclyffe went out of doors, and down the steps to the lawn: then
turning to the left, through a shrubbery, she opened a wicket and passed into
a neglected and leafy carriage-drive, leading down the hill. This she
followed till she reached the point of its greatest depression, which was also
the lowest ground in the whole grove.
The trees here were so interlaced, and hung their branches so near the
ground, that a whole summer’s day was scarcely long enough to change the
air pervading the spot from its normal state of coolness to even a temporary
warmth. The unvarying freshness was helped by the nearness of the ground
to the level of the springs, and by the presence of a deep, sluggish stream
close by, equally well shaded by bushes and a high wall. Following the
road, which now ran along at the margin of the stream, she came to an
opening in the wall, on the other side of the water, revealing a large
rectangular nook from which the stream proceeded, covered with froth, and
accompanied by a dull roar. Two more steps, and she was opposite the
nook, in full view of the cascade forming its further boundary. Over the top
could be seen the bright outer sky in the form of a crescent, caused by the
curve of a bridge across the rapids, and the trees above.
Beautiful as was the scene she did not look in that direction. The same
standing-ground afforded another prospect, straight in the front, less sombre
than the water on the right or the trees all around. The avenue and grove
which flanked it abruptly terminated a few yards ahead, where the ground

began to rise, and on the remote edge of the greensward thus laid open,
stood all that remained of the original manor-house, to which the dark
margin-line of the trees in the avenue formed an adequate and well-fitting
frame. It was the picture thus presented that was now interesting Miss
Aldclyffe—not artistically or historically, but practically—as regarded its
fitness for adaptation to modern requirements.
In front, detached from everything else, rose the most ancient portion of
the structure—an old arched gateway, flanked by the bases of two small
towers, and nearly covered with creepers, which had clambered over the
eaves of the sinking roof, and up the gable to the crest of the Aldclyffe
family perched on the apex. Behind this, at a distance of ten or twenty
yards, came the only portion of the main building that still existed—an
Elizabethan fragment, consisting of as much as could be contained under
three gables and a cross roof behind. Against the wall could be seen ragged
lines indicating the form of other destroyed gables which had once joined it
there. The mullioned and transomed windows, containing five or six lights,
were mostly bricked up to the extent of two or three, and the remaining
portion fitted with cottage window-frames carelessly inserted, to suit the
purpose to which the old place was now applied, it being partitioned out
into small rooms downstairs to form cottages for two labourers and their
families; the upper portion was arranged as a storehouse for divers kinds of
roots and fruit.
The owner of the picturesque spot, after her survey from this point, went
up to the walls and walked into the old court, where the paving-stones were
pushed sideways and upwards by the thrust of the grasses between them.
Two or three little children, with their fingers in their mouths, came out to
look at her, and then ran in to tell their mothers in loud tones of secrecy that
Miss Aldclyffe was coming. Miss Aldclyffe, however, did not come in. She
concluded her survey of the exterior by making a complete circuit of the
building; then turned into a nook a short distance off where round and
square timber, a saw-pit, planks, grindstones, heaps of building stone and
brick, explained that the spot was the centre of operations for the building
work done on the estate.
She paused, and looked around. A man who had seen her from the
window of the workshops behind, came out and respectfully lifted his hat to

her. It was the first time she had been seen walking outside the house since
her father’s death.
‘Strooden, could the Old House be made a decent residence of, without
much trouble?’ she inquired.
The mechanic considered, and spoke as each consideration completed
itself.
‘You don’t forget, ma’am, that two-thirds of the place is already pulled
down, or gone to ruin?’
‘Yes; I know.’
‘And that what’s left may almost as well be, ma’am.’
‘Why may it?’
‘’Twas so cut up inside when they made it into cottages, that the whole
carcase is full of cracks.’
‘Still by pulling down the inserted partitions, and adding a little outside,
it could be made to answer the purpose of an ordinary six or eight-roomed
house?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘About what would it cost?’ was the question which had invariably come
next in every communication of this kind to which the superintending
workman had been a party during his whole experience. To his surprise,
Miss Aldclyffe did not put it. The man thought her object in altering an old
house must have been an unusually absorbing one not to prompt what was
so instinctive in owners as hardly to require any prompting at all.
‘Thank you: that’s sufficient, Strooden,’ she said. ‘You will understand
that it is not unlikely some alteration may be made here in a short time, with
reference to the management of the affairs.’
Strooden said ‘Yes,’ in a complex voice, and looked uneasy.
‘During the life of Captain Aldclyffe, with you as the foreman of works,
and he himself as his own steward, everything worked well. But now it may
be necessary to have a steward, whose management will encroach further
upon things which have hitherto been left in your hands than did your late
master’s. What I mean is, that he will directly and in detail superintend all.’
‘Then—I shall not be wanted, ma’am?’ he faltered.

‘O yes; if you like to stay on as foreman in the yard and workshops only.
I should be sorry to lose you. However, you had better consider. I will send
for you in a few days.’
Leaving him to suspense, and all the ills that came in its train—distracted
application to his duties, and an undefined number of sleepless nights and
untasted dinners, Miss Aldclyffe looked at her watch and returned to the
House. She was about to keep an appointment with her solicitor, Mr.
Nyttleton, who had been to Budmouth, and was coming to Knapwater on
his way back to London.
2. AUGUST THE TWENTIETH
On the Saturday subsequent to Mr. Nyttleton’s visit to Knapwater House,
the subjoined advertisement appeared in the Field and the Builder
newspapers:—

‘LAND STEWARD.

‘A gentleman of integrity and professional skill is required immediately
for the MANAGEMENT of an ESTATE, containing about 1000 acres, upon
which agricultural improvements and the erection of buildings are
contemplated. He must be a man of superior education, unmarried, and not
more than thirty years of age. Considerable preference will be shown for
one who possesses an artistic as well as a practical knowledge of planning
and laying out. The remuneration will consist of a salary of 220 pounds,
with the old manor-house as a residence—Address Messrs. Nyttleton and
Tayling, solicitors, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’
A copy of each paper was sent to Miss Aldclyffe on the day of
publication. The same evening she told Cytherea that she was advertising
for a steward, who would live at the old manor-house, showing her the
papers containing the announcement.
What was the drift of that remark? thought the maiden; or was it merely
made to her in confidential intercourse, as other arrangements were told her
daily. Yet it seemed to have more meaning than common. She remembered
the conversation about architects and surveyors, and her brother Owen.
Miss Aldclyffe knew that his situation was precarious, that he was well
educated and practical, and was applying himself heart and soul to the
details of the profession and all connected with it. Miss Aldclyffe might be

ready to take him if he could compete successfully with others who would
reply. She hazarded a question:
‘Would it be desirable for Owen to answer it?’
‘Not at all,’ said Miss Aldclyffe peremptorily.
A flat answer of this kind had ceased to alarm Cytherea. Miss Aldclyffe’s
blunt mood was not her worst. Cytherea thought of another man, whose
name, in spite of resolves, tears, renunciations and injured pride, lingered in
her ears like an old familiar strain. That man was qualified for a stewardship
under a king.
‘Would it be of any use if Edward Springrove were to answer it?’ she
said, resolutely enunciating the name.
‘None whatever,’ replied Miss Aldclyffe, again in the same decided tone.
‘You are very unkind to speak in that way.’
‘Now don’t pout like a goosie, as you are. I don’t want men like either of
them, for, of course, I must look to the good of the estate rather than to that
of any individual. The man I want must have been more specially educated.
I have told you that we are going to London next week; it is mostly on this
account.’
Cytherea found that she had mistaken the drift of Miss Aldclyffe’s
peculiar explicitness on the subject of advertising, and wrote to tell her
brother that if he saw the notice it would be useless to reply.
3. AUGUST THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Five days after the above-mentioned dialogue took place they went to
London, and, with scarcely a minute’s pause, to the solicitors’ offices in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
They alighted opposite one of the characteristic entrances about the place
—a gate which was never, and could never be, closed, flanked by lamp-
standards carrying no lamp. Rust was the only active agent to be seen there
at this time of the day and year. The palings along the front were rusted
away at their base to the thinness of wires, and the successive coats of paint,
with which they were overlaid in bygone days, had been completely
undermined by the same insidious canker, which lifted off the paint in
flakes, leaving the raw surface of the iron on palings, standards, and gate
hinges, of a staring blood-red.

But once inside the railings the picture changed. The court and offices
were a complete contrast to the grand ruin of the outwork which enclosed
them. Well-painted respectability extended over, within, and around the
doorstep; and in the carefully swept yard not a particle of dust was visible.
Mr. Nyttleton, who had just come up from Margate, where he was
staying with his family, was standing at the top of his own staircase as the
pair ascended. He politely took them inside.
‘Is there a comfortable room in which this young lady can sit during our
interview?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
It was rather a favourite habit of hers to make much of Cytherea when
they were out, and snub her for it afterwards when they got home.
‘Certainly—Mr. Tayling’s.’ Cytherea was shown into an inner room.
Social definitions are all made relatively: an absolute datum is only
imagined. The small gentry about Knapwater seemed unpractised to Miss
Aldclyffe, Miss Aldclyffe herself seemed unpractised to Mr. Nyttleton’s
experienced old eyes.
‘Now then,’ the lady said, when she was alone with the lawyer; ‘what is
the result of our advertisement?’
It was late summer; the estate-agency, building, engineering, and
surveying worlds were dull. There were forty-five replies to the
advertisement.
Mr. Nyttleton spread them one by one before Miss Aldclyffe. ‘You will
probably like to read some of them yourself, madam?’ he said.
‘Yes, certainly,’ said she.
‘I will not trouble you with those which are from persons manifestly unfit
at first sight,’ he continued; and began selecting from the heap twos and
threes which he had marked, collecting others into his hand.
‘The man we want lies among these, if my judgment doesn’t deceive me,
and from them it would be advisable to select a certain number to be
communicated with.’
‘I should like to see every one—only just to glance them over—exactly
as they came,’ she said suasively.
He looked as if he thought this a waste of his time, but dismissing his
sentiment unfolded each singly and laid it before her. As he laid them out, it

struck him that she studied them quite as rapidly as he could spread them.
He slyly glanced up from the outer corner of his eye to hers, and noticed
that all she did was look at the name at the bottom of the letter, and then put
the enclosure aside without further ceremony. He thought this an odd way
of inquiring into the merits of forty-five men who at considerable trouble
gave in detail reasons why they believed themselves well qualified for a
certain post. She came to the final one, and put it down with the rest.
Then the lady said that in her opinion it would be best to get as many
replies as they possibly could before selecting—‘to give us a wider choice.
What do you think, Mr. Nyttleton?’
It seemed to him, he said, that a greater number than those they already
had would scarcely be necessary, and if they waited for more, there would
be this disadvantage attending it, that some of those they now could
command would possibly not be available.
‘Never mind, we will run that risk,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘Let the
advertisement be inserted once more, and then we will certainly settle the
matter.’
Mr. Nyttleton bowed, and seemed to think Miss Aldclyffe, for a single
woman, and one who till so very recently had never concerned herself with
business of any kind, a very meddlesome client. But she was rich, and
handsome still. ‘She’s a new broom in estate-management as yet,’ he
thought. ‘She will soon get tired of this,’ and he parted from her without a
sentiment which could mar his habitual blandness.
The two ladies then proceeded westward. Dismissing the cab in Waterloo
Place, they went along Pall Mall on foot, where in place of the usual well-
dressed clubbists—rubicund with alcohol—were to be seen, in linen
pinafores, flocks of house-painters pallid from white lead. When they had
reached the Green Park, Cytherea proposed that they should sit down
awhile under the young elms at the brow of the hill. This they did—the
growl of Piccadilly on their left hand—the monastic seclusion of the Palace
on their right: before them, the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament,
standing forth with a metallic lustre against a livid Lambeth sky.
Miss Aldclyffe still carried in her hand a copy of the newspaper, and
while Cytherea had been interesting herself in the picture around, glanced
again at the advertisement.

She heaved a slight sigh, and began to fold it up again. In the action her
eye caught sight of two consecutive advertisements on the cover, one
relating to some lecture on Art, and addressed to members of the Institute of
Architects. The other emanated from the same source, but was addressed to
the public, and stated that the exhibition of drawings at the Institute’s rooms
would close at the end of that week.
Her eye lighted up. She sent Cytherea back to the hotel in a cab, then
turned round by Piccadilly into Bond Street, and proceeded to the rooms of
the Institute. The secretary was sitting in the lobby. After making her
payment, and looking at a few of the drawings on the walls, in the company
of three gentlemen, the only other visitors to the exhibition, she turned back
and asked if she might be allowed to see a list of the members. She was a
little connected with the architectural world, she said, with a smile, and was
interested in some of the names.
‘Here it is, madam,’ he replied, politely handing her a pamphlet
containing the names.
Miss Aldclyffe turned the leaves till she came to the letter M. The name
she hoped to find there was there, with the address appended, as was the
case with all the rest.
The address was at some chambers in a street not far from Charing Cross.
‘Chambers,’ as a residence, had always been assumed by the lady to imply
the condition of a bachelor. She murmured two words, ‘There still.’
Another request had yet to be made, but it was of a more noticeable kind
than the first, and might compromise the secrecy with which she wished to
act throughout this episode. Her object was to get one of the envelopes
lying on the secretary’s table, stamped with the die of the Institute; and in
order to get it she was about to ask if she might write a note.
But the secretary’s back chanced to be turned, and he now went towards
one of the men at the other end of the room, who had called him to ask
some question relating to an etching on the wall. Quick as thought, Miss
Aldclyffe stood before the table, slipped her hand behind her, took one of
the envelopes and put it in her pocket.
She sauntered round the rooms for two or three minutes longer, then
withdrew and returned to her hotel.

Here she cut the Knapwater advertisement from the paper, put it into the
envelope she had stolen, embossed with the society’s stamp, and directed it
in a round clerkly hand to the address she had seen in the list of members’
names submitted to her:—

AENEAS MANSTON, ESQ.,
WYKEHAM CHAMBERS,
SPRING GARDENS.

This ended her first day’s work in London.
4. FROM AUGUST THE TWENTY-SIXTH TO SEPTEMBER THE
FIRST
The two Cythereas continued at the Westminster Hotel, Miss Aldclyffe
informing her companion that business would detain them in London
another week. The days passed as slowly and quietly as days can pass in a
city at that time of the year, the shuttered windows about the squares and
terraces confronting their eyes like the white and sightless orbs of blind
men. On Thursday Mr. Nyttleton called, bringing the whole number of
replies to the advertisement. Cytherea was present at the interview, by Miss
Aldclyffe’s request—either from whim or design.
Ten additional letters were the result of the second week’s insertion,
making fifty-five in all. Miss Aldclyffe looked them over as before. One
was signed—

AENEAS MANSTON, 133, TURNGATE STREET,
LIVERPOOL.

‘Now, then, Mr. Nyttleton, will you make a selection, and I will add one
or two,’ Miss Aldclyffe said.
Mr. Nyttleton scanned the whole heap of letters, testimonials, and
references, sorting them into two heaps. Manston’s missive, after a mere
glance, was thrown amongst the summarily rejected ones.
Miss Aldclyffe read, or pretended to read after the lawyer. When he had
finished, five lay in the group he had selected. ‘Would you like to add to the
number?’ he said, turning to the lady.
‘No,’ she said carelessly. ‘Well, two or three additional ones rather took
my fancy,’ she added, searching for some in the larger collection.
She drew out three. One was Manston’s.

‘These eight, then, shall be communicated with,’ said the lawyer, taking
up the eight letters and placing them by themselves.
They stood up. ‘If I myself, Miss Aldclyffe, were only concerned
personally,’ he said, in an off-hand way, and holding up a letter singly, ‘I
should choose this man unhesitatingly. He writes honestly, is not afraid to
name what he does not consider himself well acquainted with—a rare thing
to find in answers to advertisements; he is well recommended, and
possesses some qualities rarely found in combination. Oddly enough, he is
not really a steward. He was bred a farmer, studied building affairs, served
on an estate for some time, then went with an architect, and is now well
qualified as architect, estate agent, and surveyor. That man is sure to have a
fine head for a manor like yours.’ He tapped the letter as he spoke. ‘Yes, I
should choose him without hesitation—speaking personally.’
‘And I think,’ she said artificially, ‘I should choose this one as a matter of
mere personal whim, which, of course, can’t be given way to when practical
questions have to be considered.’
Cytherea, after looking out of the window, and then at the newspapers,
had become interested in the proceedings between the clever Miss Aldclyffe
and the keen old lawyer, which reminded her of a game at cards. She looked
inquiringly at the two letters—one in Miss Aldclyffe’s hand, the other in
Mr. Nyttleton’s.
‘What is the name of your man?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
‘His name—’ said the lawyer, looking down the page; ‘what is his name?
—it is Edward Springrove.’
Miss Aldclyffe glanced towards Cytherea, who was getting red and pale
by turns. She looked imploringly at Miss Aldclyffe.
‘The name of my man,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, looking at her letter in turn;
‘is, I think—yes—AEneas Manston.’
5. SEPTEMBER THE THIRD
The next morning but one was appointed for the interviews, which were
to be at the lawyer’s offices. Mr. Nyttleton and Mr. Tayling were both in
town for the day, and the candidates were admitted one by one into a private
room. In the window recess was seated Miss Aldclyffe, wearing her veil
down.

The lawyer had, in his letters to the selected number, timed each
candidate at an interval of ten or fifteen minutes from those preceding and
following. They were shown in as they arrived, and had short conversations
with Mr. Nyttleton—terse, and to the point. Miss Aldclyffe neither moved
nor spoke during this proceeding; it might have been supposed that she was
quite unmindful of it, had it not been for what was revealed by a keen
penetration of the veil covering her countenance—the rays from two bright
black eyes, directed towards the lawyer and his interlocutor.
Springrove came fifth; Manston seventh. When the examination of all
was ended, and the last man had retired, Nyttleton, again as at the former
time, blandly asked his client which of the eight she personally preferred. ‘I
still think the fifth we spoke to, Springrove, the man whose letter I pounced
upon at first, to be by far the best qualified, in short, most suitable
generally.’
‘I am sorry to say that I differ from you; I lean to my first notion still—
that Mr.—Mr. Manston is most desirable in tone and bearing, and even
specifically; I think he would suit me best in the long-run.’
Mr. Nyttleton looked out of the window at the whitened wall of the court.
‘Of course, madam, your opinion may be perfectly sound and reliable; a
sort of instinct, I know, often leads ladies by a short cut to conclusions truer
than those come to by men after laborious round-about calculations, based
on long experience. I must say I shouldn’t recommend him.’
‘Why, pray?’
‘Well, let us look first at his letter of answer to the advertisement. He
didn’t reply till the last insertion; that’s one thing. His letter is bold and
frank in tone, so bold and frank that the second thought after reading it is
that not honesty, but unscrupulousness of conscience dictated it. It is written
in an indifferent mood, as if he felt that he was humbugging us in his
statement that he was the right man for such an office, that he tried hard to
get it only as a matter of form which required that he should neglect no
opportunity that came in his way.’
‘You may be right, Mr. Nyttleton, but I don’t quite see the grounds of
your reasoning.’
‘He has been, as you perceive, almost entirely used to the office duties of
a city architect, the experience we don’t want. You want a man whose

acquaintance with rural landed properties is more practical and closer—
somebody who, if he has not filled exactly such an office before, has lived a
country life, knows the ins and outs of country tenancies, building, farming,
and so on.’
‘He’s by far the most intellectual looking of them all.’
‘Yes; he may be—your opinion, Miss Aldclyffe, is worth more than mine
in that matter. And more than you say, he is a man of parts—his brain power
would soon enable him to master details and fit him for the post, I don’t
much doubt that. But to speak clearly’ (here his words started off at a jog-
trot) ‘I wouldn’t run the risk of placing the management of an estate of mine
in his hands on any account whatever. There, that’s flat and plain, madam.’
‘But, definitely,’ she said, with a show of impatience, ‘what is your
reason?’
‘He is a voluptuary with activity; which is a very bad form of man—as
bad as it is rare.’
‘Oh. Thank you for your explicit statement, Mr. Nyttleton,’ said Miss
Aldclyffe, starting a little and flushing with displeasure.
Mr. Nyttleton nodded slightly, as a sort of neutral motion, simply
signifying a receipt of the information, good or bad.
‘And I really think it is hardly worth while to trouble you further in this,’
continued the lady. ‘He’s quite good enough for a little insignificant place
like mine at Knapwater; and I know that I could not get on with one of the
others for a single month. We’ll try him.’
‘Certainly, Miss Aldclyffe,’ said the lawyer. And Mr. Manston was
written to, to the effect that he was the successful competitor.
‘Did you see how unmistakably her temper was getting the better of her,
that minute you were in the room?’ said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their
client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody’s
character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable slyness,
which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, the Improver, into
honourable circumspection.
We frequently find that the quality which, conjoined with the simplicity
of the child, is vice, is virtue when it pervades the knowledge of the man.
‘She was as near as damn-it to boiling over when I added up her man,’
continued Nyttleton. ‘His handsome face is his qualification in her eyes.

They have met before; I saw that.’
‘He didn’t seem conscious of it,’ said the junior.
‘He didn’t. That was rather puzzling to me. But still, if ever a woman’s
face spoke out plainly that she was in love with a man, hers did that she was
with him. Poor old maid, she’s almost old enough to be his mother. If that
Manston’s a schemer he’ll marry her, as sure as I am Nyttleton. Let’s hope
he’s honest, however.’
‘I don’t think she’s in love with him,’ said Tayling. He had seen but little
of the pair, and yet he could not reconcile what he had noticed in Miss
Aldclyffe’s behaviour with the idea that it was the bearing of a woman
towards her lover.
‘Well, your experience of the fiery phenomenon is more recent than
mine,’ rejoined Nyttleton carelessly. ‘And you may remember the nature of
it best.’

VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
1. FROM THE THIRD TO THE NINETEENTH OF
SEPTEMBER

Miss Aldclyffe’s tenderness towards Cytherea, between the hours of her
irascibility, increased till it became no less than doting fondness. Like
Nature in the tropics, with her hurricanes and the subsequent luxuriant
vegetation effacing their ravages, Miss Aldclyffe compensated for her
outbursts by excess of generosity afterwards. She seemed to be completely
won out of herself by close contact with a young woman whose modesty
was absolutely unimpaired, and whose artlessness was as perfect as was
compatible with the complexity necessary to produce the due charm of
womanhood. Cytherea, on her part, perceived with honest satisfaction that
her influence for good over Miss Aldclyffe was considerable. Ideas and
habits peculiar to the younger, which the elder lady had originally imitated
as a mere whim, she grew in course of time to take a positive delight in.
Among others were evening and morning prayers, dreaming over out-door
scenes, learning a verse from some poem whilst dressing.
Yet try to force her sympathies as much as she would, Cytherea could
feel no more than thankful for this, even if she always felt as much as
thankful. The mysterious cloud hanging over the past life of her companion,
of which the uncertain light already thrown upon it only seemed to render
still darker the unpenetrated remainder, nourished in her a feeling which
was scarcely too slight to be called dread. She would have infinitely
preferred to be treated distantly, as the mere dependent, by such a
changeable nature—like a fountain, always herself, yet always another. That
a crime of any deep dye had ever been perpetrated or participated in by her
namesake, she would not believe; but the reckless adventuring of the lady’s
youth seemed connected with deeds of darkness rather than of light.
Sometimes Miss Aldclyffe appeared to be on the point of making some
absorbing confidence, but reflection invariably restrained her. Cytherea
hoped that such a confidence would come with time, and that she might

thus be a means of soothing a mind which had obviously known extreme
suffering.
But Miss Aldclyffe’s reticence concerning her past was not imitated by
Cytherea. Though she never disclosed the one fact of her knowledge that
the love-suit between Miss Aldclyffe and her father terminated abnormally,
the maiden’s natural ingenuousness on subjects not set down for special
guard had enabled Miss Aldclyffe to worm from her, fragment by fragment,
every detail of her father’s history. Cytherea saw how deeply Miss
Aldclyffe sympathized—and it compensated her, to some extent, for the
hasty resentments of other times.
Thus uncertainly she lived on. It was perceived by the servants of the
House that some secret bond of connection existed between Miss Aldclyffe
and her companion. But they were woman and woman, not woman and
man, the facts were ethereal and refined, and so they could not be worked
up into a taking story. Whether, as old critics disputed, a supernatural
machinery be necessary to an epic or no, an ungodly machinery is decidedly
necessary to a scandal.
Another letter had come to her from Edward—very short, but full of
entreaty, asking why she would not write just one line—just one line of cold
friendship at least? She then allowed herself to think, little by little, whether
she had not perhaps been too harsh with him; and at last wondered if he
were really much to blame for being engaged to another woman. ‘Ah,
Brain, there is one in me stronger than you!’ she said. The young maid now
continually pulled out his letter, read it and re-read it, almost crying with
pity the while, to think what wretched suspense he must be enduring at her
silence, till her heart chid her for her cruelty. She felt that she must send
him a line—one little line—just a wee line to keep him alive, poor thing;
sighing like Donna Clara—

‘Ah, were he now before me,
In spite of injured pride,
I fear my eyes would pardon
Before my tongue could chide.’

2. SEPTEMBER THE TWENTIETH. THREE TO FOUR P.M.
It was the third week in September, about five weeks after Cytherea’s
arrival, when Miss Aldclyffe requested her one day to go through the
village of Carriford and assist herself in collecting the subscriptions made

by some of the inhabitants of the parish to a religious society she
patronized. Miss Aldclyffe formed one of what was called a Ladies’
Association, each member of which collected tributary streams of shillings
from her inferiors, to add to her own pound at the end.
Miss Aldclyffe took particular interest in Cytherea’s appearance that
afternoon, and the object of her attention was, indeed, gratifying to look at.
The sight of the lithe girl, set off by an airy dress, coquettish jacket, flexible
hat, a ray of starlight in each eye and a war of lilies and roses in each cheek,
was a palpable pleasure to the mistress of the mansion, yet a pleasure which
appeared to partake less of the nature of affectionate satisfaction than of
mental gratification.
Eight names were printed in the report as belonging to Miss Aldclyffe’s
list, with the amount of subscription-money attached to each.
‘I will collect the first four, whilst you do the same with the last four,’
said Miss Aldclyffe.
The names of two tradespeople stood first in Cytherea’s share: then came
a Miss Hinton: last of all in the printed list was Mr. Springrove the elder.
Underneath his name was pencilled, in Miss Aldclyffe’s handwriting, ‘Mr.
Manston.’
Manston had arrived on the estate, in the capacity of steward, three or
four days previously, and occupied the old manor-house, which had been
altered and repaired for his reception.
‘Call on Mr. Manston,’ said the lady impressively, looking at the name
written under Cytherea’s portion of the list.
‘But he does not subscribe yet?’
‘I know it; but call and leave him a report. Don’t forget it.’
‘Say you would be pleased if he would subscribe?’
‘Yes—say I should be pleased if he would,’ repeated Miss Aldclyffe,
smiling. ‘Good-bye. Don’t hurry in your walk. If you can’t get easily
through your task to-day put off some of it till to-morrow.’
Each then started on her rounds: Cytherea going in the first place to the
old manor-house. Mr. Manston was not indoors, which was a relief to her.
She called then on the two gentleman-farmers’ wives, who soon transacted
their business with her, frigidly indifferent to her personality. A person who

socially is nothing is thought less of by people who are not much than by
those who are a great deal.
She then turned towards Peakhill Cottage, the residence of Miss Hinton,
who lived there happily enough, with an elderly servant and a house-dog as
companions. Her father, and last remaining parent, had retired thither four
years before this time, after having filled the post of editor to the
Casterbridge Chronicle for eighteen or twenty years. There he died soon
after, and though comparatively a poor man, he left his daughter sufficiently
well provided for as a modest fundholder and claimant of sundry small
sums in dividends to maintain herself as mistress at Peakhill.
At Cytherea’s knock an inner door was heard to open and close, and
footsteps crossed the passage hesitatingly. The next minute Cytherea stood
face to face with the lady herself.
Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age. Her hair was
plentiful, like Cytherea’s own; her teeth equalled Cytherea’s in regularity
and whiteness. But she was much paler, and had features too transparent to
be in place among household surroundings. Her mouth expressed love less
forcibly than Cytherea’s, and, as a natural result of her greater maturity, her
tread was less elastic, and she was more self-possessed.
She had been a girl of that kind which mothers praise as not forward, by
way of contrast, when disparaging those warmer ones with whom loving is
an end and not a means. Men of forty, too, said of her, ‘a good sensible wife
for any man, if she cares to marry,’ the caring to marry being thrown in as
the vaguest hypothesis, because she was so practical. Yet it would be
singular if, in such cases, the important subject of marriage should be
excluded from manipulation by hands that are ready for practical
performance in every domestic concern besides.
Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.
‘Good afternoon! O yes—Miss Graye, from Miss Aldclyffe’s. I have seen
you at church, and I am so glad you have called! Come in. I wonder if I
have change enough to pay my subscription.’ She spoke girlishly.
Adelaide, when in the company of a younger woman, always levelled
herself down to that younger woman’s age from a sense of justice to herself
—as if, though not her own age at common law, it was in equity.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll come again.’

‘Yes, do at any time; not only on this errand. But you must step in for a
minute. Do.’
‘I have been wanting to come for several weeks.’
‘That’s right. Now you must see my house—lonely, isn’t it, for a single
person? People said it was odd for a young woman like me to keep on a
house; but what did I care? If you knew the pleasure of locking up your
own door, with the sensation that you reigned supreme inside it, you would
say it was worth the risk of being called odd. Mr. Springrove attends to my
gardening, the dog attends to robbers, and whenever there is a snake or toad
to kill, Jane does it.’
‘How nice! It is better than living in a town.’
‘Far better. A town makes a cynic of me.’
The remark recalled, somewhat startlingly, to Cytherea’s mind, that
Edward had used those very words to herself one evening at Budmouth.
Miss Hinton opened an interior door and led her visitor into a small
drawing-room commanding a view of the country for miles.
The missionary business was soon settled; but the chat continued.
‘How lonely it must be here at night!’ said Cytherea. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’
‘At first I was, slightly. But I got used to the solitude. And you know a
sort of commonsense will creep even into timidity. I say to myself
sometimes at night, “If I were anybody but a harmless woman, not worth
the trouble of a worm’s ghost to appear to me, I should think that every
sound I hear was a spirit.” But you must see all over my house.’
Cytherea was highly interested in seeing.
‘I say you must do this, and you must do that, as if you were a child,’
remarked Adelaide. ‘A privileged friend of mine tells me this use of the
imperative comes of being so constantly in nobody’s society but my own.’
‘Ah, yes. I suppose she is right.’
Cytherea called the friend ‘she’ by a rule of ladylike practice; for a
woman’s ‘friend’ is delicately assumed by another friend to be of their own
sex in the absence of knowledge to the contrary; just as cats are called she’s
until they prove themselves he’s.
Miss Hinton laughed mysteriously.

‘I get a humorous reproof for it now and then, I assure you,’ she
continued.
‘“Humorous reproof:” that’s not from a woman: who can reprove
humorously but a man?’ was the groove of Cytherea’s thought at the
remark. ‘Your brother reproves you, I expect,’ said that innocent young
lady.
‘No,’ said Miss Hinton, with a candid air. ‘’Tis only a professional man I
am acquainted with.’ She looked out of the window.
Women are persistently imitative. No sooner did a thought flash through
Cytherea’s mind that the man was a lover than she became a Miss Aldclyffe
in a mild form.
‘I imagine he’s a lover,’ she said.
Miss Hinton smiled a smile of experience in that line.
Few women, if taxed with having an admirer, are so free from vanity as
to deny the impeachment, even if it is utterly untrue. When it does happen
to be true, they look pityingly away from the person who is so benighted as
to have got no further than suspecting it.
‘There now—Miss Hinton; you are engaged to be married!’ said
Cytherea accusingly.
Adelaide nodded her head practically. ‘Well, yes, I am,’ she said.
The word ‘engaged’ had no sooner passed Cytherea’s lips than the sound
of it—the mere sound of her own lips—carried her mind to the time and
circumstances under which Miss Aldclyffe had used it towards herself. A
sickening thought followed—based but on a mere surmise; yet its presence
took every other idea away from Cytherea’s mind. Miss Hinton had used
Edward’s words about towns; she mentioned Mr. Springrove as attending to
her garden. It could not be that Edward was the man! that Miss Aldclyffe
had planned to reveal her rival thus!
‘Are you going to be married soon?’ she inquired, with a steadiness the
result of a sort of fascination, but apparently of indifference.
‘Not very soon—still, soon.’
‘Ah-ha! In less than three months?’ said Cytherea.
‘Two.’

Now that the subject was well in hand, Adelaide wanted no more
prompting. ‘You won’t tell anybody if I show you something?’ she said,
with eager mystery.
‘O no, nobody. But does he live in this parish?’
‘No.’
Nothing proved yet.
‘What’s his name?’ said Cytherea flatly. Her breath and heart had begun
their old tricks, and came and went hotly. Miss Hinton could not see her
face.
‘What do you think?’ said Miss Hinton.
‘George?’ said Cytherea, with deceitful agony.
‘No,’ said Adelaide. ‘But now, you shall see him first; come here;’ and
she led the way upstairs into her bedroom. There, standing on the dressing
table in a little frame, was the unconscious portrait of Edward Springrove.
‘There he is,’ Miss Hinton said, and a silence ensued.
‘Are you very fond of him?’ continued the miserable Cytherea at length.
‘Yes, of course I am,’ her companion replied, but in the tone of one who
‘lived in Abraham’s bosom all the year,’ and was therefore untouched by
solemn thought at the fact. ‘He’s my cousin—a native of this village. We
were engaged before my father’s death left me so lonely. I was only twenty,
and a much greater belle than I am now. We know each other thoroughly, as
you may imagine. I give him a little sermonizing now and then.’
‘Why?’
‘O, it’s only in fun. He’s very naughty sometimes—not really, you know
—but he will look at any pretty face when he sees it.’
Storing up this statement of his susceptibility as another item to be
miserable upon when she had time, ‘How do you know that?’ Cytherea
asked, with a swelling heart.
‘Well, you know how things do come to women’s ears. He used to live at
Budmouth as an assistant-architect, and I found out that a young giddy
thing of a girl who lives there somewhere took his fancy for a day or two.
But I don’t feel jealous at all—our engagement is so matter-of-fact that
neither of us can be jealous. And it was a mere flirtation—she was too silly
for him. He’s fond of rowing, and kindly gave her an airing for an evening

or two. I’ll warrant they talked the most unmitigated rubbish under the sun
—all shallowness and pastime, just as everything is at watering places—
neither of them caring a bit for the other—she giggling like a goose all the
time—’
Concentrated essence of woman pervaded the room rather than air. ‘She
didn’t! and it wasn’t shallowness!’ Cytherea burst out, with brimming eyes.
‘’Twas deep deceit on one side, and entire confidence on the other—yes, it
was!’ The pent-up emotion had swollen and swollen inside the young thing
till the dam could no longer embay it. The instant the words were out she
would have given worlds to have been able to recall them.
‘Do you know her—or him?’ said Miss Hinton, starting with suspicion at
the warmth shown.
The two rivals had now lost their personality quite. There was the same
keen brightness of eye, the same movement of the mouth, the same mind in
both, as they looked doubtingly and excitedly at each other. As is invariably
the case with women when a man they care for is the subject of an
excitement among them, the situation abstracted the differences which
distinguished them as individuals, and left only the properties common to
them as atoms of a sex.
Cytherea caught at the chance afforded her of not betraying herself. ‘Yes,
I know her,’ she said.
‘Well,’ said Miss Hinton, ‘I am really vexed if my speaking so lightly of
any friend of yours has hurt your feelings, but—’
‘O, never mind,’ Cytherea returned; ‘it doesn’t matter, Miss Hinton. I
think I must leave you now. I have to call at other places. Yes—I must go.’
Miss Hinton, in a perplexed state of mind, showed her visitor politely
downstairs to the door. Here Cytherea bade her a hurried adieu, and flitted
down the garden into the lane.
She persevered in her duties with a wayward pleasure in giving herself
misery, as was her wont. Mr. Springrove’s name was next on the list, and
she turned towards his dwelling, the Three Tranters Inn.
3. FOUR TO FIVE P.M.
The cottages along Carriford village street were not so close but that on
one side or other of the road was always a hedge of hawthorn or privet, over
or through which could be seen gardens or orchards rich with produce. It

was about the middle of the early apple-harvest, and the laden trees were
shaken at intervals by the gatherers; the soft pattering of the falling crop
upon the grassy ground being diversified by the loud rattle of vagrant ones
upon a rail, hencoop, basket, or lean-to roof, or upon the rounded and
stooping backs of the collectors—mostly children, who would have cried
bitterly at receiving such a smart blow from any other quarter, but smilingly
assumed it to be but fun in apples.
The Three Tranters Inn, a many-gabled, mediaeval building, constructed
almost entirely of timber, plaster, and thatch, stood close to the line of the
roadside, almost opposite the churchyard, and was connected with a row of
cottages on the left by thatched outbuildings. It was an uncommonly
characteristic and handsome specimen of the genuine roadside inn of
bygone times; and standing on one of the great highways in this part of
England, had in its time been the scene of as much of what is now looked
upon as the romantic and genial experience of stage-coach travelling as any
halting-place in the country. The railway had absorbed the whole stream of
traffic which formerly flowed through the village and along by the ancient
door of the inn, reducing the empty-handed landlord, who used only to farm
a few fields at the back of the house, to the necessity of eking out his
attenuated income by increasing the extent of his agricultural business if he
would still maintain his social standing. Next to the general stillness
pervading the spot, the long line of outbuildings adjoining the house was
the most striking and saddening witness to the passed-away fortunes of the
Three Tranters Inn. It was the bulk of the original stabling, and where once
the hoofs of two-score horses had daily rattled over the stony yard, to and
from the stalls within, thick grass now grew, whilst the line of roofs—once
so straight—over the decayed stalls, had sunk into vast hollows till they
seemed like the cheeks of toothless age.
On a green plot at the other end of the building grew two or three large,
wide-spreading elm-trees, from which the sign was suspended—
representing the three men called tranters (irregular carriers), standing side
by side, and exactly alike to a hair’s-breadth, the grain of the wood and
joints of the boards being visible through the thin paint depicting their
forms, which were still further disfigured by red stains running downwards
from the rusty nails above.

Under the trees now stood a cider-mill and press, and upon the spot
sheltered by the boughs were gathered Mr. Springrove himself, his men, the
parish clerk, two or three other men, grinders and supernumeraries, a
woman with an infant in her arms, a flock of pigeons, and some little boys
with straws in their mouths, endeavouring, whenever the men’s backs were
turned, to get a sip of the sweet juice issuing from the vat.
Edward Springrove the elder, the landlord, now more particularly a
farmer, and for two months in the year a cider-maker, was an employer of
labour of the old school, who worked himself among his men. He was now
engaged in packing the pomace into horsehair bags with a rammer, and Gad
Weedy, his man, was occupied in shovelling up more from a tub at his side.
The shovel shone like silver from the action of the juice, and ever and anon,
in its motion to and fro, caught the rays of the declining sun and reflected
them in bristling stars of light.
Mr. Springrove had been too young a man when the pristine days of the
Three Tranters had departed for ever to have much of the host left in him
now. He was a poet with a rough skin: one whose sturdiness was more the
result of external circumstances than of intrinsic nature. Too kindly
constituted to be very provident, he was yet not imprudent. He had a quiet
humorousness of disposition, not out of keeping with a frequent
melancholy, the general expression of his countenance being one of
abstraction. Like Walt Whitman he felt as his years increased—

‘I foresee too much; it means more than I thought.’

On the present occasion he wore gaiters and a leathern apron, and worked
with his shirt-sleeves rolled up beyond his elbows, disclosing solid and
fleshy rather than muscular arms. They were stained by the cider, and two
or three brown apple-pips from the pomace he was handling were to be seen
sticking on them here and there.
The other prominent figure was that of Richard Crickett, the parish clerk,
a kind of Bowdlerized rake, who ate only as much as a woman, and had the
rheumatism in his left hand. The remainder of the group, brown-faced
peasants, wore smock-frocks embroidered on the shoulders with hearts and
diamonds, and were girt round their middle with a strap, another being
worn round the right wrist.
‘And have you seen the steward, Mr. Springrove?’ said the clerk.

‘Just a glimpse of him; but ‘twas just enough to show me that he’s not
here for long.’
‘Why mid that be?’
‘He’ll never stand the vagaries of the female figure holden the reins—not
he.’
‘She d’ pay en well,’ said a grinder; ‘and money’s money.’
‘Ah—‘tis: very much so,’ the clerk replied.
‘Yes, yes, naibour Crickett,’ said Springrove, ‘but she’ll vlee in a passion
—all the fat will be in the fire—and there’s an end o’t.... Yes, she is a one,’
continued the farmer, resting, raising his eyes, and reading the features of a
distant apple.
‘She is,’ said Gad, resting too (it is wonderful how prompt a journeyman
is in following his master’s initiative to rest) and reflectively regarding the
ground in front of him.
‘True: a one is she,’ the clerk chimed in, shaking his head ominously.
‘She has such a temper,’ said the farmer, ‘and is so wilful too. You may as
well try to stop a footpath as stop her when she has taken anything into her
head. I’d as soon grind little green crabs all day as live wi’ her.’
‘’Tis a temper she hev, ‘tis,’ the clerk replied, ‘though I be a servant of
the Church that say it. But she isn’t goen to flee in a passion this time.’
The audience waited for the continuation of the speech, as if they knew
from experience the exact distance off it lay in the future.
The clerk swallowed nothing as if it were a great deal, and then went on,
‘There’s some’at between ‘em: mark my words, naibours—there’s some’at
between ‘em.’
‘D’ye mean it?’
‘I d’ know it. He came last Saturday, didn’t he?’
‘’A did, truly,’ said Gad Weedy, at the same time taking an apple from the
hopper of the mill, eating a piece, and flinging back the remainder to be
ground up for cider.
‘He went to church a-Sunday,’ said the clerk again.
‘’A did.’

‘And she kept her eye upon en all the service, her face flickeren between
red and white, but never stoppen at either.’
Mr. Springrove nodded, and went to the press.
‘Well,’ said the clerk, ‘you don’t call her the kind o’ woman to make
mistakes in just trotten through the weekly service o’ God? Why, as a rule
she’s as right as I be myself.’
Mr. Springrove nodded again, and gave a twist to the screw of the press,
followed in the movement by Gad at the other side; the two grinders
expressing by looks of the greatest concern that, if Miss Aldclyffe were as
right at church as the clerk, she must be right indeed.
‘Yes, as right in the service o’ God as I be myself,’ repeated the clerk.
‘But last Sunday, when we were in the tenth commandment, says she,
“Incline our hearts to keep this law,” says she, when ‘twas “Laws in our
hearts, we beseech Thee,” all the church through. Her eye was upon him—
she was quite lost—“Hearts to keep this law,” says she; she was no more
than a mere shadder at that tenth time—a mere shadder. You mi’t ha’
mouthed across to her “Laws in our hearts we beseech Thee,” fifty times
over—she’d never ha’ noticed ye. She’s in love wi’ the man, that’s what she
is.’
‘Then she’s a bigger stunpoll than I took her for,’ said Mr. Springrove.
‘Why, she’s old enough to be his mother.’
‘The row’ll be between her and that young Curlywig, you’ll see. She
won’t run the risk of that pretty face be-en near.’
‘Clerk Crickett, I d’ fancy you d’ know everything about everybody,’ said
Gad.
‘Well so’s,’ said the clerk modestly. ‘I do know a little. It comes to me.’
‘And I d’ know where from.’
‘Ah.’
‘That wife o’ thine. She’s an entertainen woman, not to speak
disrespectful.’
‘She is: and a winnen one. Look at the husbands she’ve had—God bless
her!’
‘I wonder you could stand third in that list, Clerk Crickett,’ said Mr.
Springrove.

‘Well, ‘t has been a power o’ marvel to myself oftentimes. Yes,
matrimony do begin wi’ “Dearly beloved,” and ends wi’ “Amazement,” as
the prayer-book says. But what could I do, naibour Springrove? ‘Twas
ordained to be. Well do I call to mind what your poor lady said to me when
I had just married. “Ah, Mr. Crickett,” says she, “your wife will soon settle
you as she did her other two: here’s a glass o’ rum, for I shan’t see your
poor face this time next year.” I swallered the rum, called again next year,
and said, “Mrs. Springrove, you gave me a glass o’ rum last year because I
was going to die—here I be alive still, you see.” “Well said, clerk! Here’s
two glasses for you now, then,” says she. “Thank you, mem,” I said, and
swallered the rum. Well, dang my old sides, next year I thought I’d call
again and get three. And call I did. But she wouldn’t give me a drop o’ the
commonest. “No, clerk,” says she, “you be too tough for a woman’s pity.”...
Ah, poor soul, ‘twas true enough! Here be I, that was expected to die, alive
and hard as a nail, you see, and there’s she moulderen in her grave.’
‘I used to think ‘twas your wife’s fate not to have a liven husband when I
zid ‘em die off so,’ said Gad.
‘Fate? Bless thy simplicity, so ‘twas her fate; but she struggled to have
one, and would, and did. Fate’s nothen beside a woman’s schemen!’
‘I suppose, then, that Fate is a He, like us, and the Lord, and the rest o’
‘em up above there,’ said Gad, lifting his eyes to the sky.
‘Hullo! Here’s the young woman comen that we were a-talken about by-
now,’ said a grinder, suddenly interrupting. ‘She’s comen up here, as I be
alive!’
The two grinders stood and regarded Cytherea as if she had been a ship
tacking into a harbour, nearly stopping the mill in their new interest.
‘Stylish accoutrements about the head and shoulders, to my thinken,’ said
the clerk. ‘Sheenen curls, and plenty o’ em.’
‘If there’s one kind of pride more excusable than another in a young
woman, ‘tis being proud of her hair,’ said Mr. Springrove.
‘Dear man!—the pride there is only a small piece o’ the whole. I warrant
now, though she can show such a figure, she ha’n’t a stick o’ furniture to
call her own.’
‘Come, Clerk Crickett, let the maid be a maid while she is a maid,’ said
Farmer Springrove chivalrously.

‘O,’ replied the servant of the Church; ‘I’ve nothen to say against it—O
no:

‘“The chimney-sweeper’s daughter Sue
As I have heard declare, O,
Although she’s neither sock nor shoe
Will curl and deck her hair, O.”’

Cytherea was rather disconcerted at finding that the gradual cessation of
the chopping of the mill was on her account, and still more when she saw
all the cider-makers’ eyes fixed upon her except Mr. Springrove’s, whose
natural delicacy restrained him. She neared the plot of grass, but instead of
advancing further, hesitated on its border.
Mr. Springrove perceived her embarrassment, which was relieved when
she saw his old-established figure coming across to her, wiping his hands in
his apron.
‘I know your errand, missie,’ he said, ‘and am glad to see you, and attend
to it. I’ll step indoors.’
‘If you are busy I am in no hurry for a minute or two,’ said Cytherea.
‘Then if so be you really wouldn’t mind, we’ll wring down this last
filling to let it drain all night?’
‘Not at all. I like to see you.’
‘We are only just grinding down the early pickthongs and griffins,’
continued the farmer, in a half-apologetic tone for detaining by his cider-
making any well-dressed woman. ‘They rot as black as a chimney-crook if
we keep ‘em till the regulars turn in.’ As he spoke he went back to the press,
Cytherea keeping at his elbow. ‘I’m later than I should have been by rights,’
he continued, taking up a lever for propelling the screw, and beckoning to
the men to come forward. ‘The truth is, my son Edward had promised to
come to-day, and I made preparations; but instead of him comes a letter:
“London, September the eighteenth, Dear Father,” says he, and went on to
tell me he couldn’t. It threw me out a bit.’
‘Of course,’ said Cytherea.
‘He’s got a place ‘a b’lieve?’ said the clerk, drawing near.
‘No, poor mortal fellow, no. He tried for this one here, you know, but
couldn’t manage to get it. I don’t know the rights o’ the matter, but willy-
nilly they wouldn’t have him for steward. Now mates, form in line.’

Springrove, the clerk, the grinders, and Gad, all ranged themselves
behind the lever of the screw, and walked round like soldiers wheeling.
‘The man that the old quean hev got is a man you can hardly get upon
your tongue to gainsay, by the look o’ en,’ rejoined Clerk Crickett.
‘One o’ them people that can contrive to be thought no worse o’ for
stealen a horse than another man for looken over hedge at en,’ said a
grinder.
‘Well, he’s all there as steward, and is quite the gentleman—no doubt
about that.’
‘So would my Ted ha’ been, for the matter o’ that,’ the farmer said.
‘That’s true: ‘a would, sir.’
‘I said, I’ll give Ted a good education if it do cost me my eyes, and I
would have done it.’
‘Ay, that you would so,’ said the chorus of assistants solemnly.
‘But he took to books and drawing naturally, and cost very little; and as a
wind-up the womenfolk hatched up a match between him and his cousin.’
‘When’s the wedden to be, Mr. Springrove?’
‘Uncertain—but soon, I suppose. Edward, you see, can do anything
pretty nearly, and yet can’t get a straightforward living. I wish sometimes I
had kept him here, and let professions go. But he was such a one for the
pencil.’
He dropped the lever in the hedge, and turned to his visitor.
‘Now then, missie, if you’ll come indoors, please.’
Gad Weedy looked with a placid criticism at Cytherea as she withdrew
with the farmer.
‘I could tell by the tongue o’ her that she didn’t take her degrees in our
county,’ he said in an undertone.
‘The railways have left you lonely here,’ she observed, when they were
indoors.
Save the withered old flies, which were quite tame from the solitude, not
a being was in the house. Nobody seemed to have entered it since the last
passenger had been called out to mount the last stage-coach that had run by.

‘Yes, the Inn and I seem almost a pair of fossils,’ the farmer replied,
looking at the room and then at himself.
‘O, Mr. Springrove,’ said Cytherea, suddenly recollecting herself; ‘I am
much obliged to you for recommending me to Miss Aldclyffe.’ She began
to warm towards the old man; there was in him a gentleness of disposition
which reminded her of her own father.
‘Recommending? Not at all, miss. Ted—that’s my son—Ted said a
fellow-draughtsman of his had a sister who wanted to be doing something
in the world, and I mentioned it to the housekeeper, that’s all. Ay, I miss my
son very much.’
She kept her back to the window that he might not see her rising colour.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘sometimes I can’t help feeling uneasy about him.
You know, he seems not made for a town life exactly: he gets very queer
over it sometimes, I think. Perhaps he’ll be better when he’s married to
Adelaide.’
A half-impatient feeling arose in her, like that which possesses a sick
person when he hears a recently-struck hour struck again by a slow clock.
She had lived further on.
‘Everything depends upon whether he loves her,’ she said tremulously.
‘He used to—he doesn’t show it so much now; but that’s because he’s
older. You see, it was several years ago they first walked together as young
man and young woman. She’s altered too from what she was when he first
courted her.’
‘How, sir?’
‘O, she’s more sensible by half. When he used to write to her she’d creep
up the lane and look back over her shoulder, and slide out the letter, and
read a word and stand in thought looking at the hills and seeing none. Then
the cuckoo would cry—away the letter would slip, and she’d start wi’ fright
at the mere bird, and have a red skin before the quickest man among ye
could say, “Blood rush up.”’
He came forward with the money and dropped it into her hand. His
thoughts were still with Edward, and he absently took her little fingers in
his as he said, earnestly and ingenuously—
‘’Tis so seldom I get a gentlewoman to speak to that I can’t help speaking
to you, Miss Graye, on my fears for Edward; I sometimes am afraid that

he’ll never get on—that he’ll die poor and despised under the worst mental
conditions, a keen sense of having been passed in the race by men whose
brains are nothing to his own, all through his seeing too far into things—
being discontented with make-shifts—thinking o’ perfection in things, and
then sickened that there’s no such thing as perfection. I shan’t be sorry to
see him marry, since it may settle him down and do him good.... Ay, we’ll
hope for the best.’
He let go her hand and accompanied her to the door saying, ‘If you
should care to walk this way and talk to an old man once now and then, it
will be a great delight to him, Miss Graye. Good-evening to ye.... Ah look!
a thunderstorm is brewing—be quick home. Or shall I step up with you?’
‘No, thank you, Mr. Springrove. Good evening,’ she said in a low voice,
and hurried away. One thought still possessed her; Edward had trifled with
her love.
4. FIVE TO SIX P.M.
She followed the road into a bower of trees, overhanging it so densely
that the pass appeared like a rabbit’s burrow, and presently reached a side
entrance to the park. The clouds rose more rapidly than the farmer had
anticipated: the sheep moved in a trail, and complained incoherently. Livid
grey shades, like those of the modern French painters, made a mystery of
the remote and dark parts of the vista, and seemed to insist upon a
suspension of breath. Before she was half-way across the park the thunder
rumbled distinctly.
The direction in which she had to go would take her close by the old
manor-house. The air was perfectly still, and between each low rumble of
the thunder behind she could hear the roar of the waterfall before her, and
the creak of the engine among the bushes hard by it. Hurrying on, with a
growing dread of the gloom and of the approaching storm, she drew near
the Old House, now rising before her against the dark foliage and sky in
tones of strange whiteness.
On the flight of steps, which descended from a terrace in front to the
level of the park, stood a man. He appeared, partly from the relief the
position gave to his figure, and partly from fact, to be of towering height.
He was dark in outline, and was looking at the sky, with his hands behind
him.

It was necessary for Cytherea to pass directly across the line of his front.
She felt so reluctant to do this, that she was about to turn under the trees out
of the path and enter it again at a point beyond the Old House; but he had
seen her, and she came on mechanically, unconsciously averting her face a
little, and dropping her glance to the ground.
Her eyes unswervingly lingered along the path until they fell upon
another path branching in a right line from the path she was pursuing. It
came from the steps of the Old House. ‘I am exactly opposite him now,’ she
thought, ‘and his eyes are going through me.’
A clear masculine voice said, at the same instant—
‘Are you afraid?’
She, interpreting his question by her feelings at the moment, assumed
himself to be the object of fear, if any. ‘I don’t think I am,’ she stammered.
He seemed to know that she thought in that sense.
‘Of the thunder, I mean,’ he said; ‘not of myself.’
She must turn to him now. ‘I think it is going to rain,’ she remarked for
the sake of saying something.
He could not conceal his surprise and admiration of her face and bearing.
He said courteously, ‘It may possibly not rain before you reach the House,
if you are going there?’
‘Yes, I am,’
‘May I walk up with you? It is lonely under the trees.’
‘No.’ Fearing his courtesy arose from a belief that he was addressing a
woman of higher station than was hers, she added, ‘I am Miss Aldclyffe’s
companion. I don’t mind the loneliness.’
‘O, Miss Aldclyffe’s companion. Then will you be kind enough to take a
subscription to her? She sent to me this afternoon to ask me to become a
subscriber to her Society, and I was out. Of course I’ll subscribe if she
wishes it. I take a great interest in the Society.’
‘Miss Aldclyffe will be glad to hear that, I know.’
‘Yes; let me see—what Society did she say it was? I am afraid I haven’t
enough money in my pocket, and yet it would be a satisfaction to her to
have practical proof of my willingness. I’ll get it, and be out in one minute.’

He entered the house and was at her side again within the time he had
named. ‘This is it,’ he said pleasantly.
She held up her hand. The soft tips of his fingers brushed the palm of her
glove as he placed the money within it. She wondered why his fingers
should have touched her.
‘I think after all,’ he continued, ‘that the rain is upon us, and will drench
you before you reach the House. Yes: see there.’
He pointed to a round wet spot as large as a nasturtium leaf, which had
suddenly appeared upon the white surface of the step.
‘You had better come into the porch. It is not nearly night yet. The clouds
make it seem later than it really is.’
Heavy drops of rain, followed immediately by a forked flash of lightning
and sharp rattling thunder compelled her, willingly or no, to accept his
invitation. She ascended the steps, stood beside him just within the porch,
and for the first time obtained a series of short views of his person, as they
waited there in silence.
He was an extremely handsome man, well-formed, and well-dressed, of
an age which seemed to be two or three years less than thirty. The most
striking point in his appearance was the wonderful, almost preternatural,
clearness of his complexion. There was not a blemish or speck of any kind
to mar the smoothness of its surface or the beauty of its hue. Next, his
forehead was square and broad, his brows straight and firm, his eyes
penetrating and clear. By collecting the round of expressions they gave
forth, a person who theorized on such matters would have imbibed the
notion that their owner was of a nature to kick against the pricks; the last
man in the world to put up with a position because it seemed to be his
destiny to do so; one who took upon himself to resist fate with the
vindictive determination of a Theomachist. Eyes and forehead both would
have expressed keenness of intellect too severely to be pleasing, had their
force not been counteracted by the lines and tone of the lips. These were
full and luscious to a surprising degree, possessing a woman-like softness
of curve, and a ruby redness so intense, as to testify strongly to much
susceptibility of heart where feminine beauty was concerned—a
susceptibility that might require all the ballast of brain with which he had
previously been credited to confine within reasonable channels.

His manner was rather elegant than good: his speech well-finished and
unconstrained.
The pause in their discourse, which had been caused by the peal of
thunder was unbroken by either for a minute or two, during which the ears
of both seemed to be absently following the low roar of the waterfall as it
became gradually rivalled by the increasing rush of rain upon the trees and
herbage of the grove. After her short looks at him, Cytherea had turned her
head towards the avenue for a while, and now, glancing back again for an
instant, she discovered that his eyes were engaged in a steady, though
delicate, regard of her face and form.
At this moment, by reason of the narrowness of the porch, their dresses
touched, and remained in contact.
His clothes are something exterior to every man; but to a woman her
dress is part of her body. Its motions are all present to her intelligence if not
to her eyes; no man knows how his coat-tails swing. By the slightest
hyperbole it may be said that her dress has sensation. Crease but the very
Ultima Thule of fringe or flounce, and it hurts her as much as pinching her.
Delicate antennae, or feelers, bristle on every outlying frill. Go to the
uppermost: she is there; tread on the lowest: the fair creature is there almost
before you.
Thus the touch of clothes, which was nothing to Manston, sent a thrill
through Cytherea, seeing, moreover, that he was of the nature of a
mysterious stranger. She looked out again at the storm, but still felt him. At
last to escape the sensation she moved away, though by so doing it was
necessary to advance a little into the rain.
‘Look, the rain is coming into the porch upon you,’ he said. ‘Step inside
the door.’
Cytherea hesitated.
‘Perfectly safe, I assure you,’ he added, laughing, and holding the door
open. ‘You shall see what a state of disorganization I am in—boxes on
boxes, furniture, straw, crockery, in every form of transposition. An old
woman is in the back quarters somewhere, beginning to put things to
rights.... You know the inside of the house, I dare say?’
‘I have never been in.’

‘O well, come along. Here, you see, they have made a door through, here,
they have put a partition dividing the old hall into two, one part is now my
parlour; there they have put a plaster ceiling, hiding the old chestnut-carved
roof because it was too high and would have been chilly for me; you see,
being the original hall, it was open right up to the top, and here the lord of
the manor and his retainers used to meet and be merry by the light from the
monstrous fire which shone out from that monstrous fire-place, now
narrowed to a mere nothing for my grate, though you can see the old outline
still. I almost wish I could have had it in its original state.’
‘With more romance and less comfort.’
‘Yes, exactly. Well, perhaps the wish is not deep-seated. You will see how
the things are tumbled in anyhow, packing-cases and all. The only piece of
ornamental furniture yet unpacked is this one.’
‘An organ?’
‘Yes, an organ. I made it myself, except the pipes. I opened the case this
afternoon to commence soothing myself at once. It is not a very large one,
but quite big enough for a private house. You play, I dare say?’
‘The piano. I am not at all used to an organ.’
‘You would soon acquire the touch for an organ, though it would spoil
your touch for the piano. Not that that matters a great deal. A piano isn’t
much as an instrument.’
‘It is the fashion to say so now. I think it is quite good enough.’
‘That isn’t altogether a right sentiment about things being good enough.’
‘No—no. What I mean is, that the men who despise pianos do it as a rule
from their teeth, merely for fashion’s sake, because cleverer men have said
it before them—not from the experience of their ears.’
Now Cytherea all at once broke into a blush at the consciousness of a
great snub she had been guilty of in her eagerness to explain herself. He
charitably expressed by a look that he did not in the least mind her blunder,
if it were one; and this attitude forced him into a position of mental
superiority which vexed her.
‘I play for my private amusement only,’ he said. ‘I have never learned
scientifically. All I know is what I taught myself.’

The thunder, lightning, and rain had now increased to a terrific force. The
clouds, from which darts, forks, zigzags, and balls of fire continually
sprang, did not appear to be more than a hundred yards above their heads,
and every now and then a flash and a peal made gaps in the steward’s
descriptions. He went towards the organ, in the midst of a volley which
seemed to shake the aged house from foundations to chimney.
‘You are not going to play now, are you?’ said Cytherea uneasily.
‘O yes. Why not now?’ he said. ‘You can’t go home, and therefore we
may as well be amused, if you don’t mind sitting on this box. The few
chairs I have unpacked are in the other room.’
Without waiting to see whether she sat down or not, he turned to the
organ and began extemporizing a harmony which meandered through every
variety of expression of which the instrument was capable. Presently he
ceased and began searching for some music-book.
‘What a splendid flash!’ he said, as the lightning again shone in through
the mullioned window, which, of a proportion to suit the whole extent of the
original hall, was much too large for the present room. The thunder pealed
again. Cytherea, in spite of herself, was frightened, not only at the weather,
but at the general unearthly weirdness which seemed to surround her there.
‘I wish I—the lightning wasn’t so bright. Do you think it will last long?’
she said timidly.
‘It can’t last much longer,’ he murmured, without turning, running his
fingers again over the keys. ‘But this is nothing,’ he continued, suddenly
stopping and regarding her. ‘It seems brighter because of the deep shadow
under those trees yonder. Don’t mind it; now look at me—look in my face
—now.’
He had faced the window, looking fixedly at the sky with his dark strong
eyes. She seemed compelled to do as she was bidden, and looked in the too-
delicately beautiful face.
The flash came; but he did not turn or blink, keeping his eyes fixed as
firmly as before. ‘There,’ he said, turning to her, ‘that’s the way to look at
lightning.’
‘O, it might have blinded you!’ she exclaimed.
‘Nonsense—not lightning of this sort—I shouldn’t have stared at it if
there had been danger. It is only sheet-lightning now. Now, will you have

another piece? Something from an oratorio this time?’
‘No, thank you—I don’t want to hear it whilst it thunders so.’ But he had
begun without heeding her answer, and she stood motionless again,
marvelling at the wonderful indifference to all external circumstance which
was now evinced by his complete absorption in the music before him.
‘Why do you play such saddening chords?’ she said, when he next
paused.
‘H’m—because I like them, I suppose,’ said he lightly. ‘Don’t you like
sad impressions sometimes?’
‘Yes, sometimes, perhaps.’
‘When you are full of trouble.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, why shouldn’t I when I am full of trouble?’
‘Are you troubled?’
‘I am troubled.’ He said this thoughtfully and abruptly—so abruptly that
she did not push the dialogue further.
He now played more powerfully. Cytherea had never heard music in the
completeness of full orchestral power, and the tones of the organ, which
reverberated with considerable effect in the comparatively small space of
the room, heightened by the elemental strife of light and sound outside,
moved her to a degree out of proportion to the actual power of the mere
notes, practised as was the hand that produced them. The varying strains—
now loud, now soft; simple, complicated, weird, touching, grand,
boisterous, subdued; each phase distinct, yet modulating into the next with a
graceful and easy flow—shook and bent her to themselves, as a gushing
brook shakes and bends a shadow cast across its surface. The power of the
music did not show itself so much by attracting her attention to the subject
of the piece, as by taking up and developing as its libretto the poem of her
own life and soul, shifting her deeds and intentions from the hands of her
judgment and holding them in its own.
She was swayed into emotional opinions concerning the strange man
before her; new impulses of thought came with new harmonies, and entered
into her with a gnawing thrill. A dreadful flash of lightning then, and the
thunder close upon it. She found herself involuntarily shrinking up beside
him, and looking with parted lips at his face.

He turned his eyes and saw her emotion, which greatly increased the
ideal element in her expressive face. She was in the state in which woman’s
instinct to conceal has lost its power over her impulse to tell; and he saw it.
Bending his handsome face over her till his lips almost touched her ear, he
murmured, without breaking the harmonies—
‘Do you very much like this piece?’
‘Very much indeed,’ she said.
‘I could see you were affected by it. I will copy it for you.’
‘Thank you much.’
‘I will bring it to the House to you to-morrow. Who shall I ask for?’
‘O, not for me. Don’t bring it,’ she said hastily. ‘I shouldn’t like you to.’
‘Let me see—to-morrow evening at seven or a few minutes past I shall
be passing the waterfall on my way home. I could conveniently give it you
there, and I should like you to have it.’
He modulated into the Pastoral Symphony, still looking in her eyes.
‘Very well,’ she said, to get rid of the look.
The storm had by this time considerably decreased in violence, and in
seven or ten minutes the sky partially cleared, the clouds around the western
horizon becoming lighted up with the rays of the sinking sun.
Cytherea drew a long breath of relief, and prepared to go away. She was
full of a distressing sense that her detention in the old manor-house, and the
acquaintanceship it had set on foot, was not a thing she wished. It was such
a foolish thing to have been excited and dragged into frankness by the wiles
of a stranger.
‘Allow me to come with you,’ he said, accompanying her to the door, and
again showing by his behaviour how much he was impressed with her. His
influence over her had vanished with the musical chords, and she turned her
back upon him. ‘May I come?’ he repeated.
‘No, no. The distance is not a quarter of a mile—it is really not necessary,
thank you,’ she said quietly. And wishing him good-evening, without
meeting his eyes, she went down the steps, leaving him standing at the door.
‘O, how is it that man has so fascinated me?’ was all she could think. Her
own self, as she had sat spell-bound before him, was all she could see. Her
gait was constrained, from the knowledge that his eyes were upon her until

she had passed the hollow by the waterfall, and by ascending the rise had
become hidden from his view by the boughs of the overhanging trees.
5. SIX TO SEVEN P.M.
The wet shining road threw the western glare into her eyes with an
invidious lustre which rendered the restlessness of her mood more
wearying. Her thoughts flew from idea to idea without asking for the
slightest link of connection between one and another. One moment she was
full of the wild music and stirring scene with Manston—-the next, Edward’s
image rose before her like a shadowy ghost. Then Manston’s black eyes
seemed piercing her again, and the reckless voluptuous mouth appeared
bending to the curves of his special words. What could be those troubles to
which he had alluded? Perhaps Miss Aldclyffe was at the bottom of them.
Sad at heart she paced on: her life was bewildering her.
On coming into Miss Aldclyffe’s presence Cytherea told her of the
incident, not without a fear that she would burst into one of her
ungovernable fits of temper at learning Cytherea’s slight departure from the
programme. But, strangely to Cytherea, Miss Aldclyffe looked delighted.
The usual cross-examination followed.
‘And so you were with him all that time?’ said the lady, with assumed
severity.
‘Yes, I was.’
‘I did not tell you to call at the Old House twice.’
‘I didn’t call, as I have said. He made me come into the porch.’
‘What remarks did he make, do you say?’
‘That the lightning was not so bad as I thought.’
‘A very important remark, that. Did he—’ she turned her glance full upon
the girl, and eyeing her searchingly, said—
‘Did he say anything about me?’
‘Nothing,’ said Cytherea, returning her gaze calmly, ‘except that I was to
give you the subscription.’
‘You are quite sure?’
‘Quite.’
‘I believe you. Did he say anything striking or strange about himself?’
‘Only one thing—that he was troubled,’

‘Troubled!’
After saying the word, Miss Aldclyffe relapsed into silence. Such
behaviour as this had ended, on most previous occasions, by her making a
confession, and Cytherea expected one now. But for once she was mistaken,
nothing more was said.
When she had returned to her room she sat down and penned a farewell
letter to Edward Springrove, as little able as any other excitable and
brimming young woman of nineteen to feel that the wisest and only
dignified course at that juncture was to do nothing at all. She told him that,
to her painful surprise, she had learnt that his engagement to another
woman was a matter of notoriety. She insisted that all honour bade him
marry his early love—a woman far better than her unworthy self, who only
deserved to be forgotten, and begged him to remember that he was not to
see her face again. She upbraided him for levity and cruelty in meeting her
so frequently at Budmouth, and above all in stealing the kiss from her lips
on the last evening of the water excursions. ‘I never, never can forget it!’
she said, and then felt a sensation of having done her duty, ostensibly
persuading herself that her reproaches and commands were of such a force
that no man to whom they were uttered could ever approach her more.
Yet it was all unconsciously said in words which betrayed a lingering
tenderness of love at every unguarded turn. Like Beatrice accusing Dante
from the chariot, try as she might to play the superior being who contemned
such mere eye-sensuousness, she betrayed at every point a pretty woman’s
jealousy of a rival, and covertly gave her old lover hints for excusing
himself at each fresh indictment.
This done, Cytherea, still in a practical mood, upbraided herself with
weakness in allowing a stranger like Mr. Manston to influence her as he had
done that evening. What right on earth had he to suggest so suddenly that
she might meet him at the waterfall to receive his music? She would have
given much to be able to annihilate the ascendency he had obtained over her
during that extraordinary interval of melodious sound. Not being able to
endure the notion of his living a minute longer in the belief he was then
holding, she took her pen and wrote to him also:—

‘KNAPWATER HOUSE
September 20th.

‘I find I cannot meet you at seven o’clock by the waterfall as I

promised. The emotion I felt made me forgetful of realities.

‘C. GRAYE.’

A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts, and
thinks several times. When, a few minutes later, she saw the postman carry
off the bag containing one of the letters, and a messenger with the other,
she, for the first time, asked herself the question whether she had acted very
wisely in writing to either of the two men who had so influenced her.

IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS
1. FROM SEPTEMBER THE TWENTY-FIRST TO THE
MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER

The foremost figure within Cytherea’s horizon, exclusive of the inmates
of Knapwater House, was now the steward, Mr. Manston. It was impossible
that they should live within a quarter of a mile of each other, be engaged in
the same service, and attend the same church, without meeting at some spot
or another, twice or thrice a week. On Sundays, in her pew, when by chance
she turned her head, Cytherea found his eyes waiting desirously for a
glimpse of hers, and, at first more strangely, the eyes of Miss Aldclyffe
furtively resting on him. On coming out of church he frequently walked
beside Cytherea till she reached the gate at which residents in the House
turned into the shrubbery. By degrees a conjecture grew to a certainty. She
knew that he loved her.
But a strange fact was connected with the development of his love. He
was palpably making the strongest efforts to subdue, or at least to hide, the
weakness, and as it sometimes seemed, rather from his own conscience than
from surrounding eyes. Hence she found that not one of his encounters with
her was anything more than the result of pure accident. He made no
advances whatever: without avoiding her, he never sought her: the words he
had whispered at their first interview now proved themselves to be quite as
much the result of unguarded impulse as was her answer. Something held
him back, bound his impulse down, but she saw that it was neither pride of
his person, nor fear that she would refuse him—a course she unhesitatingly
resolved to take should he think fit to declare himself. She was interested in
him and his marvellous beauty, as she might have been in some fascinating
panther or leopard—for some undefinable reason she shrank from him,
even whilst she admired. The keynote of her nature, a warm ‘precipitance of
soul,’ as Coleridge happily writes it, which Manston had so directly
pounced upon at their very first interview, gave her now a tremulous sense
of being in some way in his power.

The state of mind was, on the whole, a dangerous one for a young and
inexperienced woman; and perhaps the circumstance which, more than any
other, led her to cherish Edward’s image now, was that he had taken no
notice of the receipt of her letter, stating that she discarded him. It was plain
then, she said, that he did not care deeply for her, and she thereupon could
not quite leave off caring deeply for him:—

‘Ingenium mulierum,
Nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro.’

The month of October passed, and November began its course. The
inhabitants of the village of Carriford grew weary of supposing that Miss
Aldclyffe was going to marry her steward. New whispers arose and became
very distinct (though they did not reach Miss Aldclyffe’s ears) to the effect
that the steward was deeply in love with Cytherea Graye. Indeed, the fact
became so obvious that there was nothing left to say about it except that
their marriage would be an excellent one for both;—for her in point of
comfort—and for him in point of love.
As circles in a pond grow wider and wider, the next fact, which at first
had been patent only to Cytherea herself, in due time spread to her
neighbours, and they, too, wondered that he made no overt advances. By the
middle of November, a theory made up of a combination of the other two
was received with general favour: its substance being that a guilty intrigue
had been commenced between Manston and Miss Aldclyffe, some years
before, when he was a very young man, and she still in the enjoyment of
some womanly beauty, but now that her seniority began to grow emphatic
she was becoming distasteful to him. His fear of the effect of the lady’s
jealousy would, they said, thus lead him to conceal from her his new
attachment to Cytherea. Almost the only woman who did not believe this
was Cytherea herself, on unmistakable grounds, which were hidden from all
besides. It was not only in public, but even more markedly in secluded
places, on occasions when gallantry would have been safe from all
discovery, that this guarded course of action was pursued, all the strength of
a consuming passion burning in his eyes the while.
2. NOVEMBER THE EIGHTEENTH
It was on a Friday in this month of November that Owen Graye paid a
visit to his sister.

His zealous integrity still retained for him the situation at Budmouth, and
in order that there should be as little interruption as possible to his duties
there, he had decided not to come to Knapwater till late in the afternoon,
and to return to Budmouth by the first train the next morning, Miss
Aldclyffe having made a point of frequently offering him lodging for an
unlimited period, to the great pleasure of Cytherea.
He reached the house about four o’clock, and ringing the bell, asked of
the page who answered it for Miss Graye.
When Graye spoke the name of his sister, Manston, who was just coming
out from an interview with Miss Aldclyffe, passed him in the vestibule and
heard the question. The steward’s face grew hot, and he secretly clenched
his hands. He half crossed the court, then turned his head and saw that the
lad still stood at the door, though Owen had been shown into the house.
Manston went back to him.
‘Who was that man?’ he said.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Has he ever been here before?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How many times?’
‘Three.’
‘You are sure you don’t know him?’
‘I think he is Miss Graye’s brother, sir.’
‘Then, why the devil didn’t you say so before!’ Manston exclaimed, and
again went on his way.
‘Of course, that was not the man of my dreams—of course, it couldn’t
be!’ he said to himself. ‘That I should be such a fool—such an utter fool.
Good God! to allow a girl to influence me like this, day after day, till I am
jealous of her very brother. A lady’s dependent, a waif, a helpless thing
entirely at the mercy of the world; yes, curse it; that is just why it is; that
fact of her being so helpless against the blows of circumstances which
renders her so deliciously sweet!’
He paused opposite his house. Should he get his horse saddled? No.
He went down the drive and out of the park, having started to proceed to
an outlying spot on the estate concerning some draining, and to call at the

potter’s yard to make an arrangement for the supply of pipes. But a remark
which Miss Aldclyffe had dropped in relation to Cytherea was what still
occupied his mind, and had been the immediate cause of his excitement at
the sight of her brother. Miss Aldclyffe had meaningly remarked during
their intercourse, that Cytherea was wildly in love with Edward Springrove,
in spite of his engagement to his cousin Adelaide.
‘How I am harassed!’ he said aloud, after deep thought for half-an-hour,
while still continuing his walk with the greatest vehemence. ‘How I am
harassed by these emotions of mine!’ He calmed himself by an effort. ‘Well,
duty after all it shall be, as nearly as I can effect it. “Honesty is the best
policy;”’ with which vigorously uttered resolve he once more attempted to
turn his attention to the prosy object of his journey.
The evening had closed in to a dark and dreary night when the steward
came from the potter’s door to proceed homewards again. The gloom did
not tend to raise his spirits, and in the total lack of objects to attract his eye,
he soon fell to introspection as before. It was along the margin of turnip
fields that his path lay, and the large leaves of the crop struck flatly against
his feet at every step, pouring upon them the rolling drops of moisture
gathered upon their broad surfaces; but the annoyance was unheeded. Next
reaching a fir plantation, he mounted the stile and followed the path into the
midst of the darkness produced by the overhanging trees.
After walking under the dense shade of the inky boughs for a few
minutes, he fancied he had mistaken the path, which as yet was scarcely
familiar to him. This was proved directly afterwards by his coming at right
angles upon some obstruction, which careful feeling with outstretched
hands soon told him to be a rail fence. However, as the wood was not large,
he experienced no alarm about finding the path again, and with some sense
of pleasure halted awhile against the rails, to listen to the intensely
melancholy yet musical wail of the fir-tops, and as the wind passed on, the
prompt moan of an adjacent plantation in reply. He could just dimly discern
the airy summits of the two or three trees nearest him waving restlessly
backwards and forwards, and stretching out their boughs like hairy arms
into the dull sky. The scene, from its striking and emphatic loneliness,
began to grow congenial to his mood; all of human kind seemed at the
antipodes.

A sudden rattle on his right hand caused him to start from his reverie, and
turn in that direction. There, before him, he saw rise up from among the
trees a fountain of sparks and smoke, then a red glare of light coming
forward towards him; then a flashing panorama of illuminated oblong
pictures; then the old darkness, more impressive than ever.
The surprise, which had owed its origin to his imperfect acquaintance
with the topographical features of that end of the estate, had been but
momentary; the disturbance, a well-known one to dwellers by a railway,
being caused by the 6.50 down-train passing along a shallow cutting in the
midst of the wood immediately below where he stood, the driver having the
fire-door of the engine open at the minute of going by. The train had, when
passing him, already considerably slackened speed, and now a whistle was
heard, announcing that Carriford Road Station was not far in its van.
But contrary to the natural order of things, the discovery that it was only
a commonplace train had not caused Manston to stir from his position of
facing the railway.
If the 6.50 down-train had been a flash of forked lightning transfixing
him to the earth, he could scarcely have remained in a more trance-like
state. He still leant against the railings, his right hand still continued
pressing on his walking-stick, his weight on one foot, his other heel raised,
his eyes wide open towards the blackness of the cutting. The only
movement in him was a slight dropping of the lower jaw, separating his
previously closed lips a little way, as when a strange conviction rushes
home suddenly upon a man. A new surprise, not nearly so trivial as the first,
had taken possession of him.
It was on this account. At one of the illuminated windows of a second-
class carriage in the series gone by, he had seen a pale face, reclining upon
one hand, the light from the lamp falling full upon it. The face was a
woman’s.
At last Manston moved; gave a whispering kind of whistle, adjusted his
hat, and walked on again, cross-questioning himself in every direction as to
how a piece of knowledge he had carefully concealed had found its way to
another person’s intelligence. ‘How can my address have become known?’
he said at length, audibly. ‘Well, it is a blessing I have been circumspect and
honourable, in relation to that—yes, I will say it, for once, even if the words
choke me, that darling of mine, Cytherea, never to be my own, never. I

suppose all will come out now. All!’ The great sadness of his utterance
proved that no mean force had been exercised upon himself to sustain the
circumspection he had just claimed.
He wheeled to the left, pursued the ditch beside the railway fence, and
presently emerged from the wood, stepping into a road which crossed the
railway by a bridge.
As he neared home, the anxiety lately written in his face, merged by
degrees into a grimly humorous smile, which hung long upon his lips, and
he quoted aloud a line from the book of Jeremiah—

‘A woman shall compass a man.’

3. NOVEMBER THE NINETEENTH. DAYBREAK
Before it was light the next morning, two little naked feet pattered along
the passage in Knapwater House, from which Owen Graye’s bedroom
opened, and a tap was given upon his door.
‘Owen, Owen, are you awake?’ said Cytherea in a whisper through the
keyhole. ‘You must get up directly, or you’ll miss the train.’
When he descended to his sister’s little room, he found her there already
waiting with a cup of cocoa and a grilled rasher on the table for him. A
hasty meal was despatched in the intervals of putting on his overcoat and
finding his hat, and they then went softly through the long deserted
passages, the kitchen-maid who had prepared their breakfast walking before
them with a lamp held high above her head, which cast long wheeling
shadows down corridors intersecting the one they followed, their remoter
ends being lost in darkness. The door was unbolted and they stepped out.
Owen had preferred walking to the station to accepting the pony-carriage
which Miss Aldclyffe had placed at his disposal, having a morbid horror of
giving trouble to people richer than himself, and especially to their men-
servants, who looked down upon him as a hybrid monster in social position.
Cytherea proposed to walk a little way with him.
‘I want to talk to you as long as I can,’ she said tenderly.
Brother and sister then emerged by the heavy door into the drive. The
feeling and aspect of the hour were precisely similar to those under which
the steward had left the house the evening previous, excepting that
apparently unearthly reversal of natural sequence, which is caused by the

world getting lighter instead of darker. ‘The tearful glimmer of the languid
dawn’ was just sufficient to reveal to them the melancholy red leaves, lying
thickly in the channels by the roadside, ever and anon loudly tapped on by
heavy drops of water, which the boughs above had collected from the foggy
air.
They passed the Old House, engaged in a deep conversation, and had
proceeded about twenty yards by a cross route, in the direction of the
turnpike road, when the form of a woman emerged from the porch of the
building.
She was wrapped in a grey waterproof cloak, the hood of which was
drawn over her head and closely round her face—so closely that her eyes
were the sole features uncovered.
With this one exception of her appearance there, the most perfect stillness
and silence pervaded the steward’s residence from basement to chimney.
Not a shutter was open; not a twine of smoke came forth.
Underneath the ivy-covered gateway she stood still and listened for two,
or possibly three minutes, till she became conscious of others in the park.
Seeing the pair she stepped back, with the apparent intention of letting them
pass out of sight, and evidently wishing to avoid observation. But looking at
her watch, and returning it rapidly to her pocket, as if surprised at the
lateness of the hour, she hurried out again, and across the park by a still
more oblique line than that traced by Owen and his sister.
These in the meantime had got into the road, and were walking along it
as the woman came up on the other side of the boundary hedge, looking for
a gate or stile, by which she, too, might get off the grass upon the hard
ground.
Their conversation, of which every word was clear and distinct, in the
still air of the dawn, to the distance of a quarter of a mile, reached her ears,
and withdrew her attention from all other matters and sights whatsoever.
Thus arrested she stood for an instant as precisely in the attitude of Imogen
by the cave of Belarius, as if she had studied the position from the play.
When they had advanced a few steps, she followed them in some doubt,
still screened by the hedge.
‘Do you believe in such odd coincidences?’ said Cytherea.
‘How do you mean, believe in them? They occur sometimes.’

‘Yes, one will occur often enough—that is, two disconnected events will
fall strangely together by chance, and people scarcely notice the fact
beyond saying, “Oddly enough it happened that so and so were the same,”
and so on. But when three such events coincide without any apparent reason
for the coincidence, it seems as if there must be invisible means at work.
You see, three things falling together in that manner are ten times as
singular as two cases of coincidence which are distinct.’
‘Well, of course: what a mathematical head you have, Cytherea! But I
don’t see so much to marvel at in our case. That the man who kept the
public-house in which Miss Aldclyffe fainted, and who found out her name
and position, lives in this neighbourhood, is accounted for by the fact that
she got him the berth to stop his tongue. That you came here was simply
owing to Springrove.’
‘Ah, but look at this. Miss Aldclyffe is the woman our father first loved,
and I have come to Miss Aldclyffe’s; you can’t get over that.’
From these premises, she proceeded to argue like an elderly divine on the
designs of Providence which were apparent in such conjunctures, and went
into a variety of details connected with Miss Aldclyffe’s history.
‘Had I better tell Miss Aldclyffe that I know all this?’ she inquired at last.
‘What’s the use?’ he said. ‘Your possessing the knowledge does no harm;
you are at any rate comfortable here, and a confession to Miss Aldclyffe
might only irritate her. No, hold your tongue, Cytherea.’
‘I fancy I should have been tempted to tell her too,’ Cytherea went on,
‘had I not found out that there exists a very odd, almost imperceptible, and
yet real connection of some kind between her and Mr. Manston, which is
more than that of a mutual interest in the estate.’
‘She is in love with him!’ exclaimed Owen; ‘fancy that!’
‘Ah—that’s what everybody says who has been keen enough to notice
anything. I said so at first. And yet now I cannot persuade myself that she is
in love with him at all.’
‘Why can’t you?’
‘She doesn’t act as if she were. She isn’t—you will know I don’t say it
from any vanity, Owen—she isn’t the least jealous of me.’
‘Perhaps she is in some way in his power.’

‘No—she is not. He was openly advertised for, and chosen from forty or
fifty who answered the advertisement, without knowing whose it was. And
since he has been here, she has certainly done nothing to compromise
herself in any way. Besides, why should she have brought an enemy here at
all?’
‘Then she must have fallen in love with him. You know as well as I do,
Cyth, that with women there’s nothing between the two poles of emotion
towards an interesting male acquaintance. ‘Tis either love or aversion.’
They walked for a few minutes in silence, when Cytherea’s eyes
accidentally fell upon her brother’s feet.
‘Owen,’ she said, ‘do you know that there is something unusual in your
manner of walking?’
‘What is it like?’ he asked.
‘I can’t quite say, except that you don’t walk so regularly as you used to.’
The woman behind the hedge, who had still continued to dog their
footsteps, made an impatient movement at this change in their conversation,
and looked at her watch again. Yet she seemed reluctant to give over
listening to them.
‘Yes,’ Owen returned with assumed carelessness, ‘I do know it. I think
the cause of it is that mysterious pain which comes just above my ankle
sometimes. You remember the first time I had it? That day we went by
steam-packet to Lulstead Cove, when it hindered me from coming back to
you, and compelled me to sleep with the gateman we have been talking
about.’
‘But is it anything serious, dear Owen?’ Cytherea exclaimed, with some
alarm.
‘O, nothing at all. It is sure to go off again. I never find a sign of it when I
sit in the office.’
Again their unperceived companion made a gesture of vexation, and
looked at her watch as if time were precious. But the dialogue still flowed
on upon this new subject, and showed no sign of returning to its old
channel.
Gathering up her skirt decisively she renounced all further hope, and
hurried along the ditch till she had dropped into a valley, and came to a gate
which was beyond the view of those coming behind. This she softly opened,

and came out upon the road, following it in the direction of the railway
station.
Presently she heard Owen Graye’s footsteps in her rear, his quickened
pace implying that he had parted from his sister. The woman thereupon
increased her rapid walk to a run, and in a few minutes safely distanced her
fellow-traveller.
The railway at Carriford Road consisted only of a single line of rails; and
the short local down-train by which Owen was going to Budmouth was
shunted on to a siding whilst the first up-train passed. Graye entered the
waiting-room, and the door being open he listlessly observed the
movements of a woman wearing a long grey cloak, and closely hooded,
who had asked for a ticket for London.
He followed her with his eyes on to the platform, saw her waiting there
and afterwards stepping into the train: his recollection of her ceasing with
the perception.
4. EIGHT TO TEN O’CLOCK A.M.
Mrs. Crickett, twice a widow, and now the parish clerk’s wife, a fine-
framed, scandal-loving woman, with a peculiar corner to her eye by which,
without turning her head, she could see what people were doing almost
behind her, lived in a cottage standing nearer to the old manor-house than
any other in the village of Carriford, and she had on that account been
temporarily engaged by the steward, as a respectable kind of charwoman
and general servant, until a settled arrangement could be made with some
person as permanent domestic.
Every morning, therefore, Mrs. Crickett, immediately she had lighted the
fire in her own cottage, and prepared the breakfast for herself and husband,
paced her way to the Old House to do the same for Mr. Manston. Then she
went home to breakfast; and when the steward had eaten his, and had gone
out on his rounds, she returned again to clear away, make his bed, and put
the house in order for the day.
On the morning of Owen Graye’s departure, she went through the
operations of her first visit as usual—proceeded home to breakfast, and
went back again, to perform those of the second.
Entering Manston’s empty bedroom, with her hands on her hips, she
indifferently cast her eyes upon the bed, previously to dismantling it.

Whilst she looked, she thought in an inattentive manner, ‘What a
remarkably quiet sleeper Mr. Manston must be!’ The upper bed-clothes
were flung back, certainly, but the bed was scarcely disarranged. ‘Anybody
would almost fancy,’ she thought, ‘that he had made it himself after rising.’
But these evanescent thoughts vanished as they had come, and Mrs.
Crickett set to work; she dragged off the counterpane, blankets and sheets,
and stooped to lift the pillows. Thus stooping, something arrested her
attention; she looked closely—more closely—very closely. ‘Well, to be
sure!’ was all she could say. The clerk’s wife stood as if the air had
suddenly set to amber, and held her fixed like a fly in it.
The object of her wonder was a trailing brown hair, very little less than a
yard long, which proved it clearly to be a hair from some woman’s head.
She drew it off the pillow, and took it to the window; there holding it out
she looked fixedly at it, and became utterly lost in meditation: her gaze,
which had at first actively settled on the hair, involuntarily dropped past its
object by degrees and was lost on the floor, as the inner vision obscured the
outer one.
She at length moistened her lips, returned her eyes to the hair, wound it
round her fingers, put it in some paper, and secreted the whole in her
pocket. Mrs. Crickett’s thoughts were with her work no more that morning.
She searched the house from roof-tree to cellar, for some other trace of
feminine existence or appurtenance; but none was to be found.
She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house, fowl-
house, and piggery, and still there was no sign. Coming in again, she saw a
bonnet, eagerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own.
Hastily completing her arrangements in the other rooms, she entered the
village again, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat, an
intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique diseases
and afflictions.
Mrs. Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on high
before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned and
wandered after it like a cat’s.
‘What is it?’ said Mrs. Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching out
towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been an
unmitigated delight to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli.

‘You shall hear,’ said Mrs. Crickett, complacently gathering up the
treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then solemnly imparted,
together with the accident of its discovery.
A shaving-glass was taken down from a nail, laid on its back in the
middle of a table by the window, and the hair spread carefully out upon it.
The pair then bent over the table from opposite sides, their elbows on the
edge, their hands supporting their heads, their foreheads nearly touching,
and their eyes upon the hair.
‘He ha’ been mad a’ter my lady Cytherea,’ said Mrs. Crickett, ‘and ‘tis
my very belief the hair is—’
‘No ‘tidn’. Hers idn’ so dark as that,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Elizabeth, you know that as the faithful wife of a servant of the Church,
I should be glad to think as you do about the girl. Mind I don’t wish to say
anything against Miss Graye, but this I do say, that I believe her to be a
nameless thing, and she’s no right to stick a moral clock in her face, and
deceive the country in such a way. If she wasn’t of a bad stock at the outset
she was bad in the planten, and if she wasn’t bad in the planten, she was bad
in the growen, and if not in the growen, she’s made bad by what she’s gone
through since.’
‘But I have another reason for knowing it idn’ hers,’ said Mrs. Leat.
‘Ah! I know whose it is then—Miss Aldclyffe’s, upon my song!’
‘’Tis the colour of hers, but I don’t believe it to be hers either.’
‘Don’t you believe what they d’ say about her and him?’
‘I say nothen about that; but you don’t know what I know about his
letters.’
‘What about ‘em?’
‘He d’ post all his letters here except those for one person, and they he d’
take to Budmouth. My son is in Budmouth Post Office, as you know, and as
he d’ sit at desk he can see over the blind of the window all the people who
d’ post letters. Mr. Manston d’ unvariably go there wi’ letters for that
person; my boy d’ know ‘em by sight well enough now.’
‘Is it a she?’
‘’Tis a she.’
‘What’s her name?’

‘The little stunpoll of a fellow couldn’t call to mind more than that ‘tis
Miss Somebody, of London. However, that’s the woman who ha’ been here,
depend upon’t—a wicked one—some poor street-wench escaped from
Sodom, I warrant ye.’
‘Only to find herself in Gomorrah, seemingly.’
‘That may be.’
‘No, no, Mrs. Leat, this is clear to me. ‘Tis no miss who came here to see
our steward last night—whenever she came or wherever she vanished. Do
you think he would ha’ let a miss get here how she could, go away how she
would, without breakfast or help of any kind?’
Elizabeth shook her head—Mrs. Crickett looked at her solemnly.
‘I say I know she had no help of any kind; I know it was so, for the grate
was quite cold when I touched it this morning with these fingers, and he
was still in bed. No, he wouldn’t take the trouble to write letters to a girl
and then treat her so off-hand as that. There’s a tie between ‘em stronger
than feelen. She’s his wife.’
‘He married! The Lord so ‘s, what shall we hear next? Do he look
married now? His are not the abashed eyes and lips of a married man.’
‘Perhaps she’s a tame one—but she’s his wife still.’
‘No, no: he’s not a married man.’
‘Yes, yes, he is. I’ve had three, and I ought to know.’
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Leat, giving way. ‘Whatever may be the truth on’t
I trust Providence will settle it all for the best, as He always do.’
‘Ay, ay, Elizabeth,’ rejoined Mrs. Crickett with a satirical sigh, as she
turned on her foot to go home, ‘good people like you may say so, but I have
always found Providence a different sort of feller.’
5. NOVEMBER THE TWENTIETH
It was Miss Aldclyffe’s custom, a custom originated by her father, and
nourished by her own exclusiveness, to unlock the post-bag herself every
morning, instead of allowing the duty to devolve on the butler, as was the
case in most of the neighbouring county families. The bag was brought
upstairs each morning to her dressing-room, where she took out the
contents, mostly in the presence of her maid and Cytherea, who had the
entree of the chamber at all hours, and attended there in the morning at a

kind of reception on a small scale, which was held by Miss Aldclyffe of her
namesake only.
Here she read her letters before the glass, whilst undergoing the operation
of being brushed and dressed.
‘What woman can this be, I wonder?’ she said on the morning succeeding
that of the last section. ‘“London, N.!” It is the first time in my life I ever
had a letter from that outlandish place, the North side of London.’
Cytherea had just come into her presence to learn if there was anything
for herself; and on being thus addressed, walked up to Miss Aldclyffe’s
corner of the room to look at the curiosity which had raised such an
exclamation. But the lady, having opened the envelope and read a few lines,
put it quickly in her pocket, before Cytherea could reach her side.
‘O, ‘tis nothing,’ she said. She proceeded to make general remarks in a
noticeably forced tone of sang-froid, from which she soon lapsed into
silence. Not another word was said about the letter: she seemed very
anxious to get her dressing done, and the room cleared. Thereupon Cytherea
went away to the other window, and a few minutes later left the room to
follow her own pursuits.
It was late when Miss Aldclyffe descended to the breakfast-table and then
she seemed there to no purpose; tea, coffee, eggs, cutlets, and all their
accessories, were left absolutely untasted. The next that was seen of her was
when walking up and down the south terrace, and round the flower-beds;
her face was pale, and her tread was fitful, and she crumpled a letter in her
hand.
Dinner-time came round as usual; she did not speak ten words, or indeed
seem conscious of the meal; for all that Miss Aldclyffe did in the way of
eating, dinner might have been taken out as intact as it was taken in.
In her own private apartment Miss Aldclyffe again pulled out the letter of
the morning. One passage in it ran thus:—
‘Of course, being his wife, I could publish the fact, and compel him to
acknowledge me at any moment, notwithstanding his threats, and
reasonings that it will be better to wait. I have waited, and waited again, and
the time for such acknowledgment seems no nearer than at first. To show
you how patiently I have waited I can tell you that not till a fortnight ago,
when by stress of circumstances I had been driven to new lodgings, have I

ever assumed my married name, solely on account of its having been his
request all along that I should not do it. This writing to you, madam, is my
first disobedience, and I am justified in it. A woman who is driven to visit
her husband like a thief in the night and then sent away like a street dog—
left to get up, unbolt, unbar, and find her way out of the house as she best
may—is justified in doing anything.
‘But should I demand of him a restitution of rights, there would be
involved a publicity which I could not endure, and a noisy scandal flinging
my name the length and breadth of the country.
‘What I still prefer to any such violent means is that you reason with him
privately, and compel him to bring me home to your parish in a decent and
careful manner, in the way that would be adopted by any respectable man,
whose wife had been living away from him for some time, by reason, say,
of peculiar family circumstances which had caused disunion, but not
enmity, and who at length was enabled to reinstate her in his house.
‘You will, I know, oblige me in this, especially as knowledge of a
peculiar transaction of your own, which took place some years ago, has
lately come to me in a singular way. I will not at present trouble you by
describing how. It is enough, that I alone, of all people living, know all the
sides of the story, those from whom I collected it having each only a partial
knowledge which confuses them and points to nothing. One person knows
of your early engagement and its sudden termination; another, of the reason
of those strange meetings at inns and coffee-houses; another, of what was
sufficient to cause all this, and so on. I know what fits one and all the
circumstances like a key, and shows them to be the natural outcrop of a
rational (though rather rash) line of conduct for a young lady. You will at
once perceive how it was that some at least of these things were revealed to
me.
‘This knowledge then, common to, and secretly treasured by us both, is
the ground upon which I beg for your friendship and help, with a feeling
that you will be too generous to refuse it to me.
‘I may add that, as yet, my husband knows nothing of this, neither need
he if you remember my request.’
‘A threat—a flat stinging threat! as delicately wrapped up in words as the
woman could do it; a threat from a miserable unknown creature to an

Aldclyffe, and not the least proud member of the family either! A threat on
his account—O, O! shall it be?’
Presently this humour of defiance vanished, and the members of her body
became supple again, her proceedings proving that it was absolutely
necessary to give way, Aldclyffe as she was. She wrote a short answer to
Mrs. Manston, saying civilly that Mr. Manston’s possession of such a near
relation was a fact quite new to herself, and that she would see what could
be done in such an unfortunate affair.
6. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-FIRST
Manston received a message the next day requesting his attendance at the
House punctually at eight o’clock the ensuing evening. Miss Aldclyffe was
brave and imperious, but with the purpose she had in view she could not
look him in the face whilst daylight shone upon her.
The steward was shown into the library. On entering it, he was
immediately struck with the unusual gloom which pervaded the apartment.
The fire was dead and dull, one lamp, and that a comparatively small one,
was burning at the extreme end, leaving the main proportion of the lofty
and sombre room in an artificial twilight, scarcely powerful enough to
render visible the titles of the folio and quarto volumes which were jammed
into the lower tiers of the bookshelves.
After keeping him waiting for more than twenty minutes (Miss Aldclyffe
knew that excellent recipe for taking the stiffness out of human flesh, and
for extracting all pre-arrangement from human speech) she entered the
room.
Manston sought her eye directly. The hue of her features was not
discernible, but the calm glance she flung at him, from which all attempt at
returning his scrutiny was absent, awoke him to the perception that
probably his secret was by some means or other known to her; how it had
become known he could not tell.
She drew forth the letter, unfolded it, and held it up to him, letting it hang
by one corner from between her finger and thumb, so that the light from the
lamp, though remote, fell directly upon its surface.
‘You know whose writing this is?’ she said.
He saw the strokes plainly, instantly resolving to burn his ships and
hazard all on an advance.

‘My wife’s,’ he said calmly.
His quiet answer threw her off her balance. She had no more expected an
answer than does a preacher when he exclaims from the pulpit, ‘Do you feel
your sin?’ She had clearly expected a sudden alarm.
‘And why all this concealment?’ she said again, her voice rising, as she
vainly endeavoured to control her feelings, whatever they were.
‘It doesn’t follow that, because a man is married, he must tell every
stranger of it, madam,’ he answered, just as calmly as before.
‘Stranger! well, perhaps not; but, Mr. Manston, why did you choose to
conceal it, I ask again? I have a perfect right to ask this question, as you
will perceive, if you consider the terms of my advertisement.’
‘I will tell you. There were two simple reasons. The first was this
practical one; you advertised for an unmarried man, if you remember?’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘Well, an incident suggested to me that I should try for the situation. I
was married; but, knowing that in getting an office where there is a
restriction of this kind, leaving one’s wife behind is always accepted as a
fulfilment of the condition, I left her behind for awhile. The other reason is,
that these terms of yours afforded me a plausible excuse for escaping (for a
short time) the company of a woman I had been mistaken in marrying.’
‘Mistaken! what was she?’ the lady inquired.
‘A third-rate actress, whom I met with during my stay in Liverpool last
summer, where I had gone to fulfil a short engagement with an architect.’
‘Where did she come from?’
‘She is an American by birth, and I grew to dislike her when we had been
married a week.’
‘She was ugly, I imagine?’
‘She is not an ugly woman by any means.’
‘Up to the ordinary standard?’
‘Quite up to the ordinary standard—indeed, handsome. After a while we
quarrelled and separated.’
‘You did not ill-use her, of course?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, with a little
sarcasm.

‘I did not.’
‘But at any rate, you got thoroughly tired of her.’
Manston looked as if he began to think her questions out of place;
however, he said quietly, ‘I did get tired of her. I never told her so, but we
separated; I to come here, bringing her with me as far as London and
leaving her there in perfectly comfortable quarters; and though your
advertisement expressed a single man, I have always intended to tell you
the whole truth; and this was when I was going to tell it, when your
satisfaction with my careful management of your affairs should have proved
the risk to be a safe one to run.’
She bowed.
‘Then I saw that you were good enough to be interested in my welfare to
a greater extent than I could have anticipated or hoped, judging you by the
frigidity of other employers, and this caused me to hesitate. I was vexed at
the complication of affairs. So matters stood till three nights ago; I was then
walking home from the pottery, and came up to the railway. The down-train
came along close to me, and there, sitting at a carriage window, I saw my
wife: she had found out my address, and had thereupon determined to
follow me here. I had not been home many minutes before she came in,
next morning early she left again—’
‘Because you treated her so cavalierly?’
‘And as I suppose, wrote to you directly. That’s the whole story of her,
madam.’ Whatever were Manston’s real feelings towards the lady who had
received his explanation in these supercilious tones, they remained locked
within him as within a casket of steel.
‘Did your friends know of your marriage, Mr. Manston?’ she continued.
‘Nobody at all; we kept it a secret for various reasons.’
‘It is true then that, as your wife tells me in this letter, she has not passed
as Mrs. Manston till within these last few days?’
‘It is quite true; I was in receipt of a very small and uncertain income
when we married; and so she continued playing at the theatre as before our
marriage, and in her maiden name.’
‘Has she any friends?’

‘I have never heard that she has any in England. She came over here on
some theatrical speculation, as one of a company who were going to do
much, but who never did anything; and here she has remained.’
A pause ensued, which was terminated by Miss Aldclyffe.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Now, though I have no direct right to concern
myself with your private affairs (beyond those which arise from your
misleading me and getting the office you hold)—’
‘As to that, madam,’ he interrupted, rather hotly, ‘as to coming here, I am
vexed as much as you. Somebody, a member of the Institute of Architects—
who, I could never tell—sent to my old address in London your
advertisement cut from the paper; it was forwarded to me; I wanted to get
away from Liverpool, and it seemed as if this was put in my way on
purpose, by some old friend or other. I answered the advertisement
certainly, but I was not particularly anxious to come here, nor am I anxious
to stay.’
Miss Aldclyffe descended from haughty superiority to womanly
persuasion with a haste which was almost ludicrous. Indeed, the Quos ego
of the whole lecture had been less the genuine menace of the imperious
ruler of Knapwater than an artificial utterance to hide a failing heart.
‘Now, now, Mr. Manston, you wrong me; don’t suppose I wish to be
overbearing, or anything of the kind; and you will allow me to say this
much, at any rate, that I have become interested in your wife, as well as in
yourself.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ he said, slowly, like a man feeling his way in the
dark. Manston was utterly at fault now. His previous experience of the
effect of his form and features upon womankind en masse, had taught him
to flatter himself that he could account by the same law of natural selection
for the extraordinary interest Miss Aldclyffe had hitherto taken in him, as an
unmarried man; an interest he did not at all object to, seeing that it kept him
near Cytherea, and enabled him, a man of no wealth, to rule on the estate as
if he were its lawful owner. Like Curius at his Sabine farm, he had counted
it his glory not to possess gold himself, but to have power over her who did.
But at this hint of the lady’s wish to take his wife under her wing also, he
was perplexed: could she have any sinister motive in doing so? But he did
not allow himself to be troubled with these doubts, which only concerned
his wife’s happiness.

‘She tells me,’ continued Miss Aldclyffe, ‘how utterly alone in the world
she stands, and that is an additional reason why I should sympathize with
her. Instead, then, of requesting the favour of your retirement from the post,
and dismissing your interests altogether, I will retain you as my steward
still, on condition that you bring home your wife, and live with her
respectably, in short, as if you loved her; you understand. I wish you to stay
here if you grant that everything shall flow smoothly between yourself and
her.’
The breast and shoulders of the steward rose, as if an expression of
defiance was about to be poured forth; before it took form, he controlled
himself and said, in his natural voice—
‘My part of the performance shall be carried out, madam.’
‘And her anxiety to obtain a standing in the world ensures that hers will,’
replied Miss Aldclyffe. ‘That will be satisfactory, then.’
After a few additional remarks, she gently signified that she wished to
put an end to the interview. The steward took the hint and retired.
He felt vexed and mortified; yet in walking homeward he was convinced
that telling the whole truth as he had done, with the single exception of his
love for Cytherea (which he tried to hide even from himself), had never
served him in better stead than it had done that night.
Manston went to his desk and thought of Cytherea’s beauty with the
bitterest, wildest regret. After the lapse of a few minutes he calmed himself
by a stoical effort, and wrote the subjoined letter to his wife:—

‘KNAPWATER,
November 21, 1864.

‘DEAR EUNICE,—I hope you reached London safely after your flighty
visit to me.
‘As I promised, I have thought over our conversation that night, and your
wish that your coming here should be no longer delayed. After all, it was
perfectly natural that you should have spoken unkindly as you did, ignorant
as you were of the circumstances which bound me.
‘So I have made arrangements to fetch you home at once. It is hardly
worth while for you to attempt to bring with you any luggage you may have
gathered about you (beyond mere clothing). Dispose of superfluous things

at a broker’s; your bringing them would only make a talk in this parish, and
lead people to believe we had long been keeping house separately.
‘Will next Monday suit you for coming? You have nothing to do that can
occupy you for more than a day or two, as far as I can see, and the
remainder of this week will afford ample time. I can be in London the night
before, and we will come down together by the mid-day train—Your very
affectionate husband,

‘AENEAS MANSTON.

‘Now, of course, I shall no longer write to you as Mrs. Rondley.’
The address on the envelope was—

MRS. MANSTON, 41 CHARLES SQUARE,
HOXTON,
LONDON, N.

He took the letter to the house, and it being too late for the country post,
sent one of the stablemen with it to Casterbridge, instead of troubling to go
to Budmouth with it himself as heretofore. He had no longer any necessity
to keep his condition a secret.
7. FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF
NOVEMBER
But the next morning Manston found that he had been forgetful of
another matter, in naming the following Monday to his wife for the journey.
The fact was this. A letter had just come, reminding him that he had left
the whole of the succeeding week open for an important business
engagement with a neighbouring land-agent, at that gentleman’s residence
thirteen miles off. The particular day he had suggested to his wife, had, in
the interim, been appropriated by his correspondent. The meeting could not
now be put off.
So he wrote again to his wife, stating that business, which could not be
postponed, called him away from home on Monday, and would entirely
prevent him coming all the way to fetch her on Sunday night as he had
intended, but that he would meet her at the Carriford Road Station with a
conveyance when she arrived there in the evening.
The next day came his wife’s answer to his first letter, in which she said
that she would be ready to be fetched at the time named. Having already

written his second letter, which was by that time in her hands, he made no
further reply.
The week passed away. The steward had, in the meantime, let it become
generally known in the village that he was a married man, and by a little
judicious management, sound family reasons for his past secrecy upon the
subject, which were floated as adjuncts to the story, were placidly received;
they seemed so natural and justifiable to the unsophisticated minds of nine-
tenths of his neighbours, that curiosity in the matter, beyond a strong
curiosity to see the lady’s face, was well-nigh extinguished.

X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
1. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH. UNTIL TEN P.M.

Monday came, the day named for Mrs. Manston’s journey from London
to her husband’s house; a day of singular and great events, influencing the
present and future of nearly all the personages whose actions in a complex
drama form the subject of this record.
The proceedings of the steward demand the first notice. Whilst taking his
breakfast on this particular morning, the clock pointing to eight, the horse-
and-gig that was to take him to Chettlewood waiting ready at the door,
Manston hurriedly cast his eyes down the column of Bradshaw which
showed the details and duration of the selected train’s journey.
The inspection was carelessly made, the leaf being kept open by the aid
of one hand, whilst the other still held his cup of coffee; much more
carelessly than would have been the case had the expected new-comer been
Cytherea Graye, instead of his lawful wife.
He did not perceive, branching from the column down which his finger
ran, a small twist, called a shunting-line, inserted at a particular place, to
imply that at that point the train was divided into two. By this oversight he
understood that the arrival of his wife at Carriford Road Station would not
be till late in the evening: by the second half of the train, containing the
third-class passengers, and passing two hours and three-quarters later than
the previous one, by which the lady, as a second-class passenger, would
really be brought.
He then considered that there would be plenty of time for him to return
from his day’s engagement to meet this train. He finished his breakfast,
gave proper and precise directions to his servant on the preparations that
were to be made for the lady’s reception, jumped into his gig, and drove off
to Lord Claydonfield’s, at Chettlewood.
He went along by the front of Knapwater House. He could not help
turning to look at what he knew to be the window of Cytherea’s room.
Whilst he looked, a hopeless expression of passionate love and sensuous

anguish came upon his face and lingered there for a few seconds; then, as
on previous occasions, it was resolutely repressed, and he trotted along the
smooth white road, again endeavouring to banish all thought of the young
girl whose beauty and grace had so enslaved him.
Thus it was that when, in the evening of the same day, Mrs. Manston
reached Carriford Road Station, her husband was still at Chettlewood,
ignorant of her arrival, and on looking up and down the platform, dreary
with autumn gloom and wind, she could see no sign that any preparation
whatever had been made for her reception and conduct home.
The train went on. She waited, fidgeted with the handle of her umbrella,
walked about, strained her eyes into the gloom of the chilly night, listened
for wheels, tapped with her foot, and showed all the usual signs of
annoyance and irritation: she was the more irritated in that this seemed a
second and culminating instance of her husband’s neglect—the first having
been shown in his not fetching her.
Reflecting awhile upon the course it would be best to take, in order to
secure a passage to Knapwater, she decided to leave all her luggage, except
a dressing-bag, in the cloak-room, and walk to her husband’s house, as she
had done on her first visit. She asked one of the porters if he could find a
lad to go with her and carry her bag: he offered to do it himself.
The porter was a good-tempered, shallow-minded, ignorant man. Mrs.
Manston, being apparently in very gloomy spirits, would probably have
preferred walking beside him without saying a word: but her companion
would not allow silence to continue between them for a longer period than
two or three minutes together.
He had volunteered several remarks upon her arrival, chiefly to the effect
that it was very unfortunate Mr. Manston had not come to the station for
her, when she suddenly asked him concerning the inhabitants of the parish.
He told her categorically the names of the chief—first the chief
possessors of property; then of brains; then of good looks. As first among
the latter he mentioned Miss Cytherea Graye.
After getting him to describe her appearance as completely as lay in his
power, she wormed out of him the statement that everybody had been
saying—before Mrs. Manston’s existence was heard of—how well the
handsome Mr. Manston and the beautiful Miss Graye were suited for each

other as man and wife, and that Miss Aldclyffe was the only one in the
parish who took no interest in bringing about the match.
‘He rather liked her you think?’
The porter began to think he had been too explicit, and hastened to
correct the error.
‘O no, he don’t care a bit about her, ma’am,’ he said solemnly.
‘Not more than he does about me?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘Then that must be little indeed,’ Mrs. Manston murmured. She stood
still, as if reflecting upon the painful neglect her words had recalled to her
mind; then, with a sudden impulse, turned round, and walked petulantly a
few steps back again in the direction of the station.
The porter stood still and looked surprised.
‘I’ll go back again; yes, indeed, I’ll go back again!’ she said plaintively.
Then she paused and looked anxiously up and down the deserted road.
‘No, I mustn’t go back now,’ she continued, in a tone of resignation.
Seeing that the porter was watching her, she turned about and came on as
before, giving vent to a slight laugh.
It was a laugh full of character; the low forced laugh which seeks to hide
the painful perception of a humiliating position under the mask of
indifference.
Altogether her conduct had shown her to be what in fact she was, a weak,
though a calculating woman, one clever to conceive, weak to execute: one
whose best-laid schemes were for ever liable to be frustrated by the
ineradicable blight of vacillation at the critical hour of action.
‘O, if I had only known that all this was going to happen!’ she murmured
again, as they paced along upon the rustling leaves.
‘What did you say, ma’am?’ said the porter.
‘O, nothing particular; we are getting near the old manor-house by this
time, I imagine?’
‘Very near now, ma’am.’
They soon reached Manston’s residence, round which the wind blew
mournfully and chill.

Passing under the detached gateway, they entered the porch. The porter
stepped forward, knocked heavily and waited.
Nobody came.
Mrs. Manston then advanced to the door and gave a different series of
rappings—less forcible, but more sustained.
There was not a movement of any kind inside, not a ray of light visible;
nothing but the echo of her own knocks through the passages, and the dry
scratching of the withered leaves blown about her feet upon the floor of the
porch.
The steward, of course, was not at home. Mrs. Crickett, not expecting
that anybody would arrive till the time of the later train, had set the place in
order, laid the supper-table, and then locked the door, to go into the village
and converse with her friends.
‘Is there an inn in the village?’ said Mrs. Manston, after the fourth and
loudest rapping upon the iron-studded old door had resulted only in the
fourth and loudest echo from the passages inside.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Who keeps it?’
‘Farmer Springrove.’
‘I will go there to-night,’ she said decisively. ‘It is too cold, and
altogether too bad, for a woman to wait in the open road on anybody’s
account, gentle or simple.’
They went down the park and through the gate, into the village of
Carriford. By the time they reached the Three Tranters, it was verging upon
ten o’clock. There, on the spot where two months earlier in the season the
sunny and lively group of villagers making cider under the trees had greeted
Cytherea’s eyes, was nothing now intelligible but a vast cloak of darkness,
from which came the low sough of the elms, and the occasional creak of the
swinging sign.
They went to the door, Mrs. Manston shivering; but less from the cold,
than from the dreariness of her emotions. Neglect is the coldest of winter
winds.
It so happened that Edward Springrove was expected to arrive from
London either on that evening or the next, and at the sound of voices his

father came to the door fully expecting to see him. A picture of
disappointment seldom witnessed in a man’s face was visible in old Mr.
Springrove’s, when he saw that the comer was a stranger.
Mrs. Manston asked for a room, and one that had been prepared for
Edward was immediately named as being ready for her, another being
adaptable for Edward, should he come in.
Without taking any refreshment, or entering any room downstairs, or
even lifting her veil, she walked straight along the passage and up to her
apartment, the chambermaid preceding her.
‘If Mr. Manston comes to-night,’ she said, sitting on the bed as she had
come in, and addressing the woman, ‘tell him I cannot see him.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The woman left the room, and Mrs. Manston locked the door. Before the
servant had gone down more than two or three stairs, Mrs. Manston
unfastened the door again, and held it ajar.
‘Bring me some brandy,’ she said.
The chambermaid went down to the bar and brought up the spirit in a
tumbler. When she came into the room, Mrs. Manston had not removed a
single article of apparel, and was walking up and down, as if still quite
undecided upon the course it was best to adopt.
Outside the door, when it was closed upon her, the maid paused to listen
for an instant. She heard Mrs. Manston talking to herself.
‘This is welcome home!’ she said.
2. FROM TEN TO HALF-PAST ELEVEN P.M.
A strange concurrence of phenomena now confronts us.
During the autumn in which the past scenes were enacted, Mr.
Springrove had ploughed, harrowed, and cleaned a narrow and shaded piece
of ground, lying at the back of his house, which for many years had been
looked upon as irreclaimable waste.
The couch-grass extracted from the soil had been left to wither in the sun;
afterwards it was raked together, lighted in the customary way, and now lay
smouldering in a large heap in the middle of the plot.
It had been kindled three days previous to Mrs. Manston’s arrival, and
one or two villagers, of a more cautious and less sanguine temperament

than Springrove, had suggested that the fire was almost too near the back of
the house for its continuance to be unattended with risk; for though no
danger could be apprehended whilst the air remained moderately still, a
brisk breeze blowing towards the house might possibly carry a spark across.
‘Ay, that’s true enough,’ said Springrove. ‘I must look round before going
to bed and see that everything’s safe; but to tell the truth I am anxious to get
the rubbish burnt up before the rain comes to wash it into ground again. As
to carrying the couch into the back field to burn, and bringing it back again,
why, ‘tis more than the ashes would be worth.’
‘Well, that’s very true,’ said the neighbours, and passed on.
Two or three times during the first evening after the heap was lit, he went
to the back door to take a survey. Before bolting and barring up for the
night, he made a final and more careful examination. The slowly-smoking
pile showed not the slightest signs of activity. Springrove’s perfectly sound
conclusion was, that as long as the heap was not stirred, and the wind
continued in the quarter it blew from then, the couch would not flame, and
that there could be no shadow of danger to anything, even a combustible
substance, though it were no more than a yard off.
The next morning the burning couch was discovered in precisely the
same state as when he had gone to bed the preceding night. The heap
smoked in the same manner the whole of that day: at bed-time the farmer
looked towards it, but less carefully than on the first night.
The morning and the whole of the third day still saw the heap in its old
smouldering condition; indeed, the smoke was less, and there seemed a
probability that it might have to be re-kindled on the morrow.
After admitting Mrs. Manston to his house in the evening, and hearing
her retire, Mr. Springrove returned to the front door to listen for a sound of
his son, and inquired concerning him of the railway-porter, who sat for a
while in the kitchen. The porter had not noticed young Mr. Springrove get
out of the train, at which intelligence the old man concluded that he would
probably not see his son till the next day, as Edward had hitherto made a
point of coming by the train which had brought Mrs. Manston.
Half-an-hour later the porter left the inn, Springrove at the same time
going to the door to listen again an instant, then he walked round and in at
the back of the house.

The farmer glanced at the heap casually and indifferently in passing; two
nights of safety seemed to ensure the third; and he was about to bolt and bar
as usual, when the idea struck him that there was just a possibility of his
son’s return by the latest train, unlikely as it was that he would be so
delayed. The old man thereupon left the door unfastened, looked to his
usual matters indoors, and went to bed, it being then half-past ten o’clock.
Farmers and horticulturists well know that it is in the nature of a heap of
couch-grass, when kindled in calm weather, to smoulder for many days, and
even weeks, until the whole mass is reduced to a powdery charcoal ash,
displaying the while scarcely a sign of combustion beyond the volcano-like
smoke from its summit; but the continuance of this quiet process is
throughout its length at the mercy of one particular whim of Nature: that is,
a sudden breeze, by which the heap is liable to be fanned into a flame so
brisk as to consume the whole in an hour or two.
Had the farmer narrowly watched the pile when he went to close the
door, he would have seen, besides the familiar twine of smoke from its
summit, a quivering of the air around the mass, showing that a considerable
heat had arisen inside.
As the railway-porter turned the corner of the row of houses adjoining
the Three Tranters, a brisk new wind greeted his face, and spread past him
into the village. He walked along the high-road till he came to a gate, about
three hundred yards from the inn. Over the gate could be discerned the
situation of the building he had just quitted. He carelessly turned his head in
passing, and saw behind him a clear red glow indicating the position of the
couch-heap: a glow without a flame, increasing and diminishing in
brightness as the breeze quickened or fell, like the coal of a newly lighted
cigar. If those cottages had been his, he thought, he should not care to have
a fire so near them as that—and the wind rising. But the cottages not being
his, he went on his way to the station, where he was about to resume duty
for the night. The road was now quite deserted: till four o’clock the next
morning, when the carters would go by to the stables there was little
probability of any human being passing the Three Tranters Inn.
By eleven, everybody in the house was asleep. It truly seemed as if the
treacherous element knew there had arisen a grand opportunity for
devastation.

At a quarter past eleven a slight stealthy crackle made itself heard amid
the increasing moans of the night wind; the heap glowed brighter still, and
burst into a flame; the flame sank, another breeze entered it, sustained it,
and it grew to be first continuous and weak, then continuous and strong.
At twenty minutes past eleven a blast of wind carried an airy bit of
ignited fern several yards forward, in a direction parallel to the houses and
inn, and there deposited it on the ground.
Five minutes later another puff of wind carried a similar piece to a
distance of five-and-twenty yards, where it also was dropped softly on the
ground.
Still the wind did not blow in the direction of the houses, and even now
to a casual observer they would have appeared safe. But Nature does few
things directly. A minute later yet, an ignited fragment fell upon the straw
covering of a long thatched heap or ‘grave’ of mangel-wurzel, lying in a
direction at right angles to the house, and down toward the hedge. There the
fragment faded to darkness.
A short time subsequent to this, after many intermediate deposits and
seemingly baffled attempts, another fragment fell on the mangel-wurzel
grave, and continued to glow; the glow was increased by the wind; the
straw caught fire and burst into flame. It was inevitable that the flame
should run along the ridge of the thatch towards a piggery at the end. Yet
had the piggery been tiled, the time-honoured hostel would even now at this
last moment have been safe; but it was constructed as piggeries are mostly
constructed, of wood and thatch. The hurdles and straw roof of the frail
erection became ignited in their turn, and abutting as the shed did on the
back of the inn, flamed up to the eaves of the main roof in less than thirty
seconds.
3. HALF-PAST ELEVEN TO TWELVE P.M.
A hazardous length of time elapsed before the inmates of the Three
Tranters knew of their danger. When at length the discovery was made, the
rush was a rush for bare life.
A man’s voice calling, then screams, then loud stamping and shouts were
heard.
Mr. Springrove ran out first. Two minutes later appeared the ostler and
chambermaid, who were man and wife. The inn, as has been stated, was a

quaint old building, and as inflammable as a bee-hive; it overhung the base
at the level of the first floor, and again overhung at the eaves, which were
finished with heavy oak barge-boards; every atom in its substance, every
feature in its construction, favoured the fire.
The forked flames, lurid and smoky, became nearly lost to view, bursting
forth again with a bound and loud crackle, increased tenfold in power and
brightness. The crackling grew sharper. Long quivering shadows began to
be flung from the stately trees at the end of the house; the square outline of
the church tower, on the other side of the way, which had hitherto been a
dark mass against a sky comparatively light, now began to appear as a light
object against a sky of darkness; and even the narrow surface of the flag-
staff at the top could be seen in its dark surrounding, brought out from its
obscurity by the rays from the dancing light.
Shouts and other noises increased in loudness and frequency. The lapse
of ten minutes brought most of the inhabitants of that end of the village into
the street, followed in a short time by the rector, Mr. Raunham.
Casting a hasty glance up and down, he beckoned to one or two of the
men, and vanished again. In a short time wheels were heard, and Mr.
Raunham and the men reappeared, with the garden engine, the only one in
the village, except that at Knapwater House. After some little trouble the
hose was connected with a tank in the old stable-yard, and the puny
instrument began to play.
Several seemed paralyzed at first, and stood transfixed, their rigid faces
looking like red-hot iron in the glaring light. In the confusion a woman
cried, ‘Ring the bells backwards!’ and three or four of the old and
superstitious entered the belfry and jangled them indescribably. Some were
only half dressed, and, to add to the horror, among them was Clerk Crickett,
running up and down with a face streaming with blood, ghastly and pitiful
to see, his excitement being so great that he had not the slightest conception
of how, when, or where he came by the wound.
The crowd was now busy at work, and tried to save a little of the
furniture of the inn. The only room they could enter was the parlour, from
which they managed to bring out the bureau, a few chairs, some old silver
candlesticks, and half-a-dozen light articles; but these were all.
Fiery mats of thatch slid off the roof and fell into the road with a
deadened thud, whilst white flakes of straw and wood-ash were flying in the

wind like feathers. At the same time two of the cottages adjoining, upon
which a little water had been brought to play from the rector’s engine, were
seen to be on fire. The attenuated spirt of water was as nothing upon the
heated and dry surface of the thatched roof; the fire prevailed without a
minute’s hindrance, and dived through to the rafters.
Suddenly arose a cry, ‘Where’s Mr. Springrove?’
He had vanished from the spot by the churchyard wall, where he had
been standing a few minutes earlier.
‘I fancy he’s gone inside,’ said a voice.
‘Madness and folly! what can he save?’ said another. ‘Good God, find
him! Help here!’
A wild rush was made at the door, which had fallen to, and in defiance of
the scorching flame that burst forth, three men forced themselves through it.
Immediately inside the threshold they found the object of their search lying
senseless on the floor of the passage.
To bring him out and lay him on a bank was the work of an instant; a
basin of cold water was dashed in his face, and he began to recover
consciousness, but very slowly. He had been saved by a miracle. No sooner
were his preservers out of the building than the window-frames lit up as if
by magic with deep and waving fringes of flames. Simultaneously, the
joints of the boards forming the front door started into view as glowing bars
of fire: a star of red light penetrated the centre, gradually increasing in size
till the flames rushed forth.
Then the staircase fell.
‘Everybody is out safe,’ said a voice.
‘Yes, thank God!’ said three or four others.
‘O, we forgot that a stranger came! I think she is safe.’
‘I hope she is,’ said the weak voice of some one coming up from behind.
It was the chambermaid’s.
Springrove at that moment aroused himself; he staggered to his feet, and
threw his hands up wildly.
‘Everybody, no! no! The lady who came by train, Mrs. Manston! I tried
to fetch her out, but I fell.’

An exclamation of horror burst from the crowd; it was caused partly by
this disclosure of Springrove, more by the added perception which followed
his words.
An average interval of about three minutes had elapsed between one
intensely fierce gust of wind and the next, and now another poured over
them; the roof swayed, and a moment afterwards fell in with a crash,
pulling the gable after it, and thrusting outwards the front wall of wood-
work, which fell into the road with a rumbling echo; a cloud of black dust,
myriads of sparks, and a great outburst of flame followed the uproar of the
fall.
‘Who is she? what is she?’ burst from every lip again and again,
incoherently, and without leaving a sufficient pause for a reply, had a reply
been volunteered.
The autumn wind, tameless, and swift, and proud, still blew upon the
dying old house, which was constructed so entirely of combustible
materials that it burnt almost as fiercely as a corn-rick. The heat in the road
increased, and now for an instant at the height of the conflagration all stood
still, and gazed silently, awestruck and helpless, in the presence of so
irresistible an enemy. Then, with minds full of the tragedy unfolded to
them, they rushed forward again with the obtuse directness of waves, to
their labour of saving goods from the houses adjoining, which it was
evident were all doomed to destruction.
The minutes passed by. The Three Tranters Inn sank into a mere heap of
red-hot charcoal: the fire pushed its way down the row as the church clock
opposite slowly struck the hour of midnight, and the bewildered chimes,
scarcely heard amid the crackling of the flames, wandered through the
wayward air of the Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth Psalm.
4. NINE TO ELEVEN P.M.
Manston mounted his gig and set out from Chettlewood that evening in
no very enviable frame of mind. The thought of domestic life in Knapwater
Old House, with the now eclipsed wife of the past, was more than
disagreeable, was positively distasteful to him.
Yet he knew that the influential position, which, from whatever fortunate
cause, he held on Miss Aldclyffe’s manor, would never again fall to his lot
on any other, and he tacitly assented to this dilemma, hoping that some

consolation or other would soon suggest itself to him; married as he was, he
was near Cytherea.
He occasionally looked at his watch as he drove along the lanes, timing
the pace of his horse by the hour, that he might reach Carriford Road
Station just soon enough to meet the last London train.
He soon began to notice in the sky a slight yellow halo, near the horizon.
It rapidly increased; it changed colour, and grew redder; then the glare
visibly brightened and dimmed at intervals, showing that its origin was
affected by the strong wind prevailing.
Manston reined in his horse on the summit of a hill, and considered.
‘It is a rick-yard on fire,’ he thought; ‘no house could produce such a
raging flame so suddenly.’
He trotted on again, attempting to particularize the local features in the
neighbourhood of the fire; but this it was too dark to do, and the excessive
winding of the roads misled him as to its direction, not being an old
inhabitant of the district, or a countryman used to forming such judgments;
whilst the brilliancy of the light shortened its real remoteness to an apparent
distance of not more than half: it seemed so near that he again stopped his
horse, this time to listen; but he could hear no sound.
Entering now a narrow valley, the sides of which obscured the sky to an
angle of perhaps thirty or forty degrees above the mathematical horizon, he
was obliged to suspend his judgment till he was in possession of further
knowledge, having however assumed in the interim, that the fire was
somewhere between Carriford Road Station and the village.
The self-same glare had just arrested the eyes of another man. He was at
that minute gliding along several miles to the east of the steward’s position,
but nearing the same point as that to which Manston tended. The younger
Edward Springrove was returning from London to his father’s house by the
identical train which the steward was expecting to bring his wife, the truth
being that Edward’s lateness was owing to the simplest of all causes, his
temporary want of money, which led him to make a slow journey for the
sake of travelling at third-class fare.
Springrove had received Cytherea’s bitter and admonitory letter, and he
was clearly awakened to a perception of the false position in which he had
placed himself, by keeping silence at Budmouth on his long engagement.

An increasing reluctance to put an end to those few days of ecstasy with
Cytherea had overruled his conscience, and tied his tongue till speaking was
too late.
‘Why did I do it? how could I dream of loving her?’ he asked himself as
he walked by day, as he tossed on his bed by night: ‘miserable folly!’
An impressionable heart had for years—perhaps as many as six or seven
years—been distracting him, by unconsciously setting itself to yearn for
somebody wanting, he scarcely knew whom. Echoes of himself, though
rarely, he now and then found. Sometimes they were men, sometimes
women, his cousin Adelaide being one of these; for in spite of a fashion
which pervades the whole community at the present day—the habit of
exclaiming that woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse, the fact
remains that, after all, women are Mankind, and that in many of the
sentiments of life the difference of sex is but a difference of degree.
But the indefinable helpmate to the remoter sides of himself still
continued invisible. He grew older, and concluded that the ideas, or rather
emotions, which possessed him on the subject, were probably too unreal
ever to be found embodied in the flesh of a woman. Thereupon, he
developed a plan of satisfying his dreams by wandering away to the
heroines of poetical imagination, and took no further thought on the earthly
realization of his formless desire, in more homely matters satisfying himself
with his cousin.
Cytherea appeared in the sky: his heart started up and spoke:

‘Tis She, and here
Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes’ cloudy character.’

Some women kindle emotion so rapidly in a man’s heart that the
judgment cannot keep pace with its rise, and finds, on comprehending the
situation, that faithfulness to the old love is already treachery to the new.
Such women are not necessarily the greatest of their sex, but there are very
few of them. Cytherea was one.
On receiving the letter from her he had taken to thinking over these
things, and had not answered it at all. But ‘hungry generations’ soon tread
down the muser in a city. At length he thought of the strong necessity of
living. After a dreary search, the negligence of which was ultimately
overcome by mere conscientiousness, he obtained a situation as assistant to

an architect in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross: the duties would not
begin till after the lapse of a month.
He could not at first decide whither he should go to spend the intervening
time; but in the midst of his reasonings he found himself on the road
homeward, impelled by a secret and unowned hope of getting a last glimpse
of Cytherea there.
5. MIDNIGHT
It was a quarter to twelve when Manston drove into the station-yard. The
train was punctual, and the bell, announcing its arrival, rang as he crossed
the booking-office to go out upon the platform.
The porter who had accompanied Mrs. Manston to Carriford, and had
returned to the station on his night duty, recognized the steward as he
entered, and immediately came towards him.
‘Mrs. Manston came by the nine o’clock train, sir,’ he said.
The steward gave vent to an expression of vexation.
‘Her luggage is here, sir,’ the porter said.
‘Put it up behind me in the gig if it is not too much,’ said Manston.
‘Directly this train is in and gone, sir.’
The man vanished and crossed the line to meet the entering train.
‘Where is that fire?’ Manston said to the booking-clerk.
Before the clerk could speak, another man ran in and answered the
question without having heard it.
‘Half Carriford is burnt down, or will be!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t see
the flames from this station on account of the trees, but step on the bridge
—‘tis tremendous!’
He also crossed the line to assist at the entry of the train, which came in
the next minute.
The steward stood in the office. One passenger alighted, gave up his
ticket, and crossed the room in front of Manston: a young man with a black
bag and umbrella in his hand. He passed out of the door, down the steps,
and struck out into the darkness.
‘Who was that young man?’ said Manston, when the porter had returned.
The young man, by a kind of magnetism, had drawn the steward’s thoughts
after him.

‘He’s an architect.’
‘My own old profession. I could have sworn it by the cut of him,’
Manston murmured. ‘What’s his name?’ he said again.
‘Springrove—Farmer Springrove’s son, Edward.’
‘Farmer Springrove’s son, Edward,’ the steward repeated to himself, and
considered a matter to which the words had painfully recalled his mind.
The matter was Miss Aldclyffe’s mention of the young man as Cytherea’s
lover, which, indeed, had scarcely ever been absent from his thoughts.
‘But for the existence of my wife that man might have been my rival,’ he
pondered, following the porter, who had now come back to him, into the
luggage-room. And whilst the man was carrying out and putting in one box,
which was sufficiently portable for the gig, Manston still thought, as his
eyes watched the process—
‘But for my wife, Springrove might have been my rival.’
He examined the lamps of his gig, carefully laid out the reins, mounted
the seat and drove along the turnpike-road towards Knapwater Park.
The exact locality of the fire was plain to him as he neared home. He
soon could hear the shout of men, the flapping of the flames, the crackling
of burning wood, and could smell the smoke from the conflagration.
Of a sudden, a few yards ahead, within the compass of the rays from the
right-hand lamp, burst forward the figure of a man. Having been walking in
darkness the newcomer raised his hands to his eyes, on approaching nearer,
to screen them from the glare of the reflector.
Manston saw that he was one of the villagers: a small farmer originally,
who had drunk himself down to a day-labourer and reputed poacher.
‘Hoy!’ cried Manston, aloud, that the man might step aside out of the
way.
‘Is that Mr. Manston?’ said the man.
‘Yes.’
‘Somebody ha’ come to Carriford: and the rest of it may concern you,
sir.’
‘Well, well.’
‘Did you expect Mrs. Manston to-night, sir?’

‘Yes, unfortunately she’s come, I know, and asleep long before this time,
I suppose.’
The labourer leant his elbow upon the shaft of the gig and turned his face,
pale and sweating from his late work at the fire, up to Manston’s.
‘Yes, she did come,’ he said.... ‘I beg pardon, sir, but I should be glad of
—of—’
‘What?’
‘Glad of a trifle for bringen ye the news.’
‘Not a farthing! I didn’t want your news, I knew she was come.’
‘Won’t you give me a shillen, sir?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Then will you lend me a shillen, sir? I be tired out, and don’t know what
to do. If I don’t pay you back some day I’ll be d—d.’
‘The devil is so cheated that perdition isn’t worth a penny as a security.’
‘Oh!’
‘Let me go on,’ said Manston.
‘Thy wife is dead; that’s the rest o’ the news,’ said the labourer slowly.
He waited for a reply; none came.
‘She went to the Three Tranters, because she couldn’t get into thy house,
the burnen roof fell in upon her before she could be called up, and she’s a
cinder, as thou’lt be some day.’
‘That will do, let me drive on,’ said the steward calmly.
Expectation of a concussion may be so intense that its failure strikes the
brain with more force than its fulfilment. The labourer sank back into the
ditch. Such a Cushi could not realize the possibility of such an unmoved
David as this.
Manston drove hastily to the turning of the road, tied his horse, and ran
on foot to the site of the fire.
The stagnation caused by the awful accident had been passed through,
and all hands were helping to remove from the remaining cottage what
furniture they could lay hold of; the thatch of the roofs being already on
fire. The Knapwater fire-engine had arrived on the spot, but it was small,
and ineffectual. A group was collected round the rector, who in a coat which

had become bespattered, scorched, and torn in his exertions, was directing
on one hand the proceedings relative to the removal of goods into the
church, and with the other was pointing out the spot on which it was most
desirable that the puny engines at their disposal should be made to play.
Every tongue was instantly silent at the sight of Manston’s pale and clear
countenance, which contrasted strangely with the grimy and streaming
faces of the toiling villagers.
‘Was she burnt?’ he said in a firm though husky voice, and stepping into
the illuminated area. The rector came to him, and took him aside. ‘Is she
burnt?’ repeated Manston.
‘She is dead: but thank God, she was spared the horrid agony of burning,’
the rector said solemnly; ‘the roof and gable fell in upon her, and crushed
her. Instant death must have followed.’
‘Why was she here?’ said Manston.
‘From what we can hurriedly collect, it seems that she found the door of
your house locked, and concluded that you had retired, the fact being that
your servant, Mrs. Crickett, had gone out to supper. She then came back to
the inn and went to bed.’
‘Where’s the landlord?’ said Manston.
Mr. Springrove came up, walking feebly, and wrapped in a cloak, and
corroborated the evidence given by the rector.
‘Did she look ill, or annoyed, when she came?’ said the steward.
‘I can’t say. I didn’t see; but I think—’
‘What do you think?’
‘She was much put out about something.’
‘My not meeting her, naturally,’ murmured the other, lost in reverie. He
turned his back on Springrove and the rector, and retired from the shining
light.
Everything had been done that could be done with the limited means at
their disposal. The whole row of houses was destroyed, and each presented
itself as one stage of a series, progressing from smoking ruins at the end
where the inn had stood, to a partly flaming mass—glowing as none but
wood embers will glow—at the other.

A feature in the decline of town fires was noticeably absent here—steam.
There was present what is not observable in towns—incandescence.
The heat, and the smarting effect upon their eyes of the strong smoke
from the burning oak and deal, had at last driven the villagers back from the
road in front of the houses, and they now stood in groups in the churchyard,
the surface of which, raised by the interments of generations, stood four or
five feet above the level of the road, and almost even with the top of the low
wall dividing one from the other. The headstones stood forth whitely against
the dark grass and yews, their brightness being repeated on the white
smock-frocks of some of the labourers, and in a mellower, ruddier form on
their faces and hands, on those of the grinning gargoyles, and on other
salient stonework of the weather-beaten church in the background.
The rector had decided that, under the distressing circumstances of the
case, there would be no sacrilege in placing in the church, for the night, the
pieces of furniture and utensils which had been saved from the several
houses. There was no other place of safety for them, and they accordingly
were gathered there.
6. HALF-PAST TWELVE TO ONE A.M.
Manston, when he retired to meditate, had walked round the churchyard,
and now entered the opened door of the building.
He mechanically pursued his way round the piers into his own seat in the
north aisle. The lower atmosphere of this spot was shaded by its own wall
from the shine which streamed in over the window-sills on the same side.
The only light burning inside the church was a small tallow candle, standing
in the font, in the opposite aisle of the building to that in which Manston
had sat down, and near where the furniture was piled. The candle’s mild
rays were overpowered by the ruddier light from the ruins, making the weak
flame to appear like the moon by day.
Sitting there he saw Farmer Springrove enter the door, followed by his
son Edward, still carrying his travelling-bag in his hand. They were
speaking of the sad death of Mrs. Manston, but the subject was relinquished
for that of the houses burnt.
This row of houses, running from the inn eastward, had been built under
the following circumstances:—

Fifty years before this date, the spot upon which the cottages afterwards
stood was a blank strip, along the side of the village street, difficult to
cultivate, on account of the outcrop thereon of a large bed of flints called
locally a ‘lanch’ or ‘lanchet.’
The Aldclyffe then in possession of the estate conceived the idea that a
row of cottages would be an improvement to the spot, and accordingly
granted leases of portions to several respectable inhabitants. Each lessee
was to be subject to the payment of a merely nominal rent for the whole
term of lives, on condition that he built his own cottage, and delivered it up
intact at the end of the term.
Those who had built had, one by one, relinquished their indentures, either
by sale or barter, to Farmer Springrove’s father. New lives were added in
some cases, by payment of a sum to the lord of the manor, etc., and all the
leases were now held by the farmer himself, as one of the chief provisions
for his old age.
The steward had become interested in the following conversation:—
‘Try not to be so depressed, father; they are all insured.’
The words came from Edward in an anxious tone.
‘You mistake, Edward; they are not insured,’ returned the old man
gloomily.
‘Not?’ the son asked.
‘Not one!’ said the farmer.
‘In the Helmet Fire Office, surely?’
‘They were insured there every one. Six months ago the office, which
had been raising the premiums on thatched premises higher for some years,
gave up insuring them altogether, as two or three other fire-offices had done
previously, on account, they said, of the uncertainty and greatness of the
risk of thatch undetached. Ever since then I have been continually intending
to go to another office, but have never gone. Who expects a fire?’
‘Do you remember the terms of the leases?’ said Edward, still more
uneasily.
‘No, not particularly,’ said his father absently.
‘Where are they?’

‘In the bureau there; that’s why I tried to save it first, among other
things.’
‘Well, we must see to that at once.’
‘What do you want?’
‘The key.’
They went into the south aisle, took the candle from the font, and then
proceeded to open the bureau, which had been placed in a corner under the
gallery. Both leant over upon the flap; Edward holding the candle, whilst
his father took the pieces of parchment from one of the drawers, and spread
the first out before him.
‘You read it, Ted. I can’t see without my glasses. This one will be
sufficient. The terms of all are the same.’
Edward took the parchment, and read quickly and indistinctly for some
time; then aloud and slowly as follows:—
‘And the said John Springrove for himself his heirs executors and
administrators doth covenant and agree with the said Gerald Fellcourt
Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns that he the said John Springrove his heirs
and assigns during the said term shall pay unto the said Gerald Fellcourt
Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns the clear yearly rent of ten shillings and
sixpence.... at the several times hereinbefore appointed for the payment
thereof respectively. And also shall and at all times during the said term
well and sufficiently repair and keep the said Cottage or Dwelling-house
and all other the premises and all houses or buildings erected or to be
erected thereupon in good and proper repair in every respect without
exception and the said premises in such good repair upon the determination
of this demise shall yield up unto the said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his
heirs and assigns.’
They closed the bureau and turned towards the door of the church
without speaking.
Manston also had come forward out of the gloom. Notwithstanding the
farmer’s own troubles, an instinctive respect and generous sense of
sympathy with the steward for his awful loss caused the old man to step
aside, that Manston might pass out without speaking to them if he chose to
do so.
‘Who is he?’ whispered Edward to his father, as Manston approached.

‘Mr. Manston, the steward.’
Manston came near, and passed down the aisle on the side of the younger
man. Their faces came almost close together: one large flame, which still
lingered upon the ruins outside, threw long dancing shadows of each across
the nave till they bent upwards against the aisle wall, and also illuminated
their eyes, as each met those of the other. Edward had learnt, by a letter
from home, of the steward’s passion for Cytherea, and his mysterious
repression of it, afterwards explained by his marriage. That marriage was
now nought. Edward realized the man’s newly acquired freedom, and felt
an instinctive enmity towards him—he would hardly own to himself why.
The steward, too, knew Cytherea’s attachment to Edward, and looked
keenly and inscrutably at him.
7. ONE TO TWO A.M.
Manston went homeward alone, his heart full of strange emotions.
Entering the house, and dismissing the woman to her own home, he at once
proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.
Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness, cannot
repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour out the soul
to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is dismissed with the
title of Chance, or at most Law. Manston was selfishly and inhumanly, but
honestly and unutterably, thankful for the recent catastrophe. Beside his
bed, for that first time during a period of nearly twenty years, he fell down
upon his knees in a passionate outburst of feeling.
Many minutes passed before he arose. He walked to the window, and
then seemed to remember for the first time that some action on his part was
necessary in connection with the sad circumstance of the night.
Leaving the house at once, he went to the scene of the fire, arriving there
in time to hear the rector making an arrangement with a certain number of
men to watch the spot till morning. The ashes were still red-hot and
flaming. Manston found that nothing could be done towards searching them
at that hour of the night. He turned homeward again, in the company of the
rector, who had considerately persuaded him to retire from the scene for a
while, and promised that as soon as a man could live amid the embers of the
Three Tranters Inn, they should be carefully searched for the remains of his
unfortunate wife.
Manston then went indoors, to wait for morning.

XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS
1. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-NINTH

The search began at dawn, but a quarter past nine o’clock came without
bringing any result. Manston ate a little breakfast, and crossed the hollow of
the park which intervened between the old and modern manor-houses, to
ask for an interview with Miss Aldclyffe.
He met her midway. She was about to pay him a visit of condolence, and
to place every man on the estate at his disposal, that the search for any relic
of his dead and destroyed wife might not be delayed an instant.
He accompanied her back to the house. At first they conversed as if the
death of the poor woman was an event which the husband must of necessity
deeply lament; and when all under this head that social form seemed to
require had been uttered, they spoke of the material damage done, and of
the steps which had better be taken to remedy it.
It was not till both were shut inside her private room that she spoke to
him in her blunt and cynical manner. A certain newness of bearing in him,
peculiar to the present morning, had hitherto forbidden her this tone: the
demeanour of the subject of her favouritism had altered, she could not tell
in what way. He was entirely a changed man.
‘Are you really sorry for your poor wife, Mr. Manston?’ she said.
‘Well, I am,’ he answered shortly.
‘But only as for any human being who has met with a violent death?’
He confessed it—‘For she was not a good woman,’ he added.
‘I should be sorry to say such a thing now the poor creature is dead,’ Miss
Aldclyffe returned reproachfully.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I praise her if she doesn’t deserve it? I say
exactly what I have often admired Sterne for saying in one of his letters—
that neither reason nor Scripture asks us to speak nothing but good of the
dead. And now, madam,’ he continued, after a short interval of thought, ‘I
may, perhaps, hope that you will assist me, or rather not thwart me, in

endeavouring to win the love of a young lady living about you, one in
whom I am much interested already.’
‘Cytherea!’
‘Yes, Cytherea.’
‘You have been loving Cytherea all the while?’
‘Yes.’
Surprise was a preface to much agitation in her, which caused her to rise
from her seat, and pace to the side of the room. The steward quietly looked
on and added, ‘I have been loving and still love her.’
She came close up to him, wistfully contemplating his face, one hand
moving indecisively at her side.
‘And your secret marriage was, then, the true and only reason for that
backwardness regarding the courtship of Cytherea, which, they tell me, has
been the talk of the village; not your indifference to her attractions.’ Her
voice had a tone of conviction in it, as well as of inquiry; but none of
jealousy.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘and not a dishonourable one. What held me back was just
that one thing—a sense of morality that perhaps, madam, you did not give
me credit for.’ The latter words were spoken with a mien and tone of pride.
Miss Aldclyffe preserved silence.
‘And now,’ he went on, ‘I may as well say a word in vindication of my
conduct lately, at the risk, too, of offending you. My actual motive in
submitting to your order that I should send for my late wife, and live with
her, was not the mercenary policy of wishing to retain an office which
brings me greater comforts than any I have enjoyed before, but this
unquenchable passion for Cytherea. Though I saw the weakness, folly, and
even wickedness of it continually, it still forced me to try to continue near
her, even as the husband of another woman.’
He waited for her to speak: she did not.
‘There’s a great obstacle to my making any way in winning Miss Graye’s
love,’ he went on.
‘Yes, Edward Springrove,’ she said quietly. ‘I know it, I did once want to
see them married; they have had a slight quarrel, and it will soon be made

up again, unless—’ she spoke as if she had only half attended to Manston’s
last statement.
‘He is already engaged to be married to somebody else,’ said the steward.
‘Pooh!’ said she, ‘you mean to his cousin at Peakhill; that’s nothing to
help us; he’s now come home to break it off.’
‘He must not break it off,’ said Manston, firmly and calmly.
His tone attracted her, startled her. Recovering herself, she said haughtily,
‘Well, that’s your affair, not mine. Though my wish has been to see her your
wife, I can’t do anything dishonourable to bring about such a result.’
‘But it must be made your affair,’ he said in a hard, steady voice, looking
into her eyes, as if he saw there the whole panorama of her past.
One of the most difficult things to portray by written words is that
peculiar mixture of moods expressed in a woman’s countenance when, after
having been sedulously engaged in establishing another’s position, she
suddenly suspects him of undermining her own. It was thus that Miss
Aldclyffe looked at the steward.
‘You—know—something—of me?’ she faltered.
‘I know all,’ he said.
‘Then curse that wife of yours! She wrote and said she wouldn’t tell
you!’ she burst out. ‘Couldn’t she keep her word for a day?’ She reflected
and then said, but no more as to a stranger, ‘I will not yield. I have
committed no crime. I yielded to her threats in a moment of weakness,
though I felt inclined to defy her at the time: it was chiefly because I was
mystified as to how she got to know of it. Pooh! I will put up with threats
no more. O, can you threaten me?’ she added softly, as if she had for the
moment forgotten to whom she had been speaking.
‘My love must be made your affair,’ he repeated, without taking his eyes
from her.
An agony, which was not the agony of being discovered in a secret,
obstructed her utterance for a time. ‘How can you turn upon me so when I
schemed to get you here—schemed that you might win her till I found you
were married. O, how can you! O!... O!’ She wept; and the weeping of such
a nature was as harrowing as the weeping of a man.

‘Your getting me here was bad policy as to your secret—the most absurd
thing in the world,’ he said, not heeding her distress. ‘I knew all, except the
identity of the individual, long ago. Directly I found that my coming here
was a contrived thing, and not a matter of chance, it fixed my attention
upon you at once. All that was required was the mere spark of life, to make
of a bundle of perceptions an organic whole.’
‘Policy, how can you talk of policy? Think, do think! And how can you
threaten me when you know—you know—that I would befriend you readily
without a threat!’
‘Yes, yes, I think you would,’ he said more kindly; ‘but your indifference
for so many, many years has made me doubt it.’
‘No, not indifference—‘twas enforced silence. My father lived.’
He took her hand, and held it gently.

‘Now listen,’ he said, more quietly and humanly, when she had become
calmer: ‘Springrove must marry the woman he’s engaged to. You may make
him, but only in one way.’
‘Well: but don’t speak sternly, AEneas!’
‘Do you know that his father has not been particularly thriving for the
last two or three years?’
‘I have heard something of it, once or twice, though his rents have been
promptly paid, haven’t they?’
‘O yes; and do you know the terms of the leases of the houses which are
burnt?’ he said, explaining to her that by those terms she might compel him
even to rebuild every house. ‘The case is the clearest case of fire by
negligence that I have ever known, in addition to that,’ he continued.
‘I don’t want them rebuilt; you know it was intended by my father,
directly they fell in, to clear the site for a new entrance to the park?’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t affect the position, which is that Farmer Springrove
is in your power to an extent which is very serious for him.’
‘I won’t do it—‘tis a conspiracy.’
‘Won’t you for me?’ he said eagerly.
Miss Aldclyffe changed colour.
‘I don’t threaten now, I implore,’ he said.

‘Because you might threaten if you chose,’ she mournfully answered.
‘But why be so—when your marriage with her was my own pet idea long
before it was yours? What must I do?’
‘Scarcely anything: simply this. When I have seen old Mr. Springrove,
which I shall do in a day or two, and told him that he will be expected to
rebuild the houses, do you see the young man. See him yourself, in order
that the proposals made may not appear to be anything more than an
impulse of your own. You or he will bring up the subject of the houses. To
rebuild them would be a matter of at least six hundred pounds, and he will
almost surely say that we are hard in insisting upon the extreme letter of the
leases. Then tell him that scarcely can you yourself think of compelling an
old tenant like his father to any such painful extreme—there shall be no
compulsion to build, simply a surrender of the leases. Then speak feelingly
of his cousin, as a woman whom you respect and love, and whose secret
you have learnt to be that she is heart-sick with hope deferred. Beg him to
marry her, his betrothed and your friend, as some return for your
consideration towards his father. Don’t suggest too early a day for their
marriage, or he will suspect you of some motive beyond womanly
sympathy. Coax him to make a promise to her that she shall be his wife at
the end of a twelvemonth, and get him, on assenting to this, to write to
Cytherea, entirely renouncing her.’
‘She has already asked him to do that.’
‘So much the better—and telling her, too, that he is about to fulfil his
long-standing promise to marry his cousin. If you think it worth while, you
may say Cytherea was not indisposed to think of me before she knew I was
married. I have at home a note she wrote me the first evening I saw her,
which looks rather warm, and which I could show you. Trust me, he will
give her up. When he is married to Adelaide Hinton, Cytherea will be
induced to marry me—perhaps before; a woman’s pride is soon wounded.’
‘And hadn’t I better write to Mr. Nyttleton, and inquire more particularly
what’s the law upon the houses?’
‘O no, there’s no hurry for that. We know well enough how the case
stands—quite well enough to talk in general terms about it. And I want the
pressure to be put upon young Springrove before he goes away from home
again.’

She looked at him furtively, long, and sadly, as after speaking he became
lost in thought, his eyes listlessly tracing the pattern of the carpet. ‘Yes, yes,
she will be mine,’ he whispered, careless of Cytherea Aldclyffe’s presence.
At last he raised his eyes inquiringly.
‘I will do my best, AEneas,’ she answered.
Talibus incusat. Manston then left the house, and again went towards the
blackened ruins, where men were still raking and probing.
2. FROM NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-NINTH TO DECEMBER THE
SECOND
The smouldering remnants of the Three Tranters Inn seemed to promise
that, even when the searchers should light upon the remains of the
unfortunate Mrs. Manston, very little would be discoverable.
Consisting so largely of the charcoal and ashes of hard dry oak and
chestnut, intermingled with thatch, the interior of the heap was one glowing
mass of embers, which, on being stirred about, emitted sparks and flame
long after it was dead and black on the outside. It was persistently hoped,
however, that some traces of the body would survive the effect of the hot
coals, and after a search pursued uninterruptedly for thirty hours, under the
direction of Manston himself, enough was found to set at rest any doubts of
her fate.
The melancholy gleanings consisted of her watch, bunch of keys, a few
coins, and two charred and blackened bones.
Two days later the official inquiry into the cause of her death was held at
the Rising Sun Inn, before Mr. Floy, the coroner, and a jury of the chief
inhabitants of the district. The little tavern—the only remaining one in the
village—was crowded to excess by the neighbouring peasantry as well as
their richer employers: all who could by any possibility obtain an hour’s
release from their duties being present as listeners.
The jury viewed the sad and infinitesimal remains, which were folded in
a white cambric cloth, and laid in the middle of a well-finished coffin lined
with white silk (by Manston’s order), which stood in an adjoining room, the
bulk of the coffin being completely filled in with carefully arranged flowers
and evergreens—also the steward’s own doing.
Abraham Brown, of Hoxton, London—an old white-headed man, without
the ruddiness which makes white hairs so pleasing—was sworn, and

deposed that he kept a lodging-house at an address he named. On a
Saturday evening less than a month before the fire, a lady came to him, with
very little luggage, and took the front room on the second floor. He did not
inquire where she came from, as she paid a week in advance, but she gave
her name as Mrs. Manston, referring him, if he wished for any guarantee of
her respectability, to Mr. Manston, Knapwater Park. Here she lived for three
weeks, rarely going out. She slept away from her lodgings one night during
the time. At the end of that time, on the twenty-eighth of November, she left
his house in a four-wheeled cab, about twelve o’clock in the day, telling the
driver to take her to the Waterloo Station. She paid all her lodging expenses,
and not having given notice the full week previous to her going away,
offered to pay for the next, but he only took half. She wore a thick black
veil, and grey waterproof cloak, when she left him, and her luggage was
two boxes, one of plain deal, with black japanned clamps, the other sewn up
in canvas.
Joseph Chinney, porter at the Carriford Road Station, deposed that he
saw Mrs. Manston, dressed as the last witness had described, get out of a
second-class carriage on the night of the twenty-eighth. She stood beside
him whilst her luggage was taken from the van. The luggage, consisting of
the clamped deal box and another covered with canvas, was placed in the
cloak-room. She seemed at a loss at finding nobody there to meet her. She
asked him for some person to accompany her, and carry her bag to Mr.
Manston’s house, Knapwater Park. He was just off duty at that time, and
offered to go himself. The witness here repeated the conversation he had
had with Mrs. Manston during their walk, and testified to having left her at
the door of the Three Tranters Inn, Mr. Manston’s house being closed.
Next, Farmer Springrove was called. A murmur of surprise and
commiseration passed round the crowded room when he stepped forward.
The events of the few preceding days had so worked upon his nervously
thoughtful nature that the blue orbits of his eyes, and the mere spot of
scarlet to which the ruddiness of his cheeks had contracted, seemed the
result of a heavy sickness. A perfect silence pervaded the assembly when he
spoke.
His statement was that he received Mrs. Manston at the threshold, and
asked her to enter the parlour. She would not do so, and stood in the passage
whilst the maid went upstairs to see that the room was in order. The maid

came down to the middle landing of the staircase, when Mrs. Manston
followed her up to the room. He did not speak ten words with her
altogether.
Afterwards, whilst he was standing at the door listening for his son
Edward’s return, he saw her light extinguished, having first caught sight of
her shadow moving about the room.
THE CORONER: ‘Did her shadow appear to be that of a woman
undressing?’
SPRINGROVE: ‘I cannot say, as I didn’t take particular notice. It moved
backwards and forwards; she might have been undressing or merely pacing
up and down the room.’
Mrs. Fitler, the ostler’s wife and chambermaid, said that she preceded
Mrs. Manston into the room, put down the candle, and went out. Mrs.
Manston scarcely spoke to her, except to ask her to bring a little brandy.
Witness went and fetched it from the bar, brought it up, and put it on the
dressing-table.
THE CORONER: ‘Had Mrs. Manston begun to undress, when you came
back?’
‘No, sir; she was sitting on the bed, with everything on, as when she
came in.’
‘Did she begin to undress before you left?’
‘Not exactly before I had left; but when I had closed the door, and was on
the landing I heard her boot drop on the floor, as it does sometimes when
pulled off?’
‘Had her face appeared worn and sleepy?’
‘I cannot say as her bonnet and veil were still on when I left, for she
seemed rather shy and ashamed to be seen at the Three Tranters at all.’
‘And did you hear or see any more of her?’
‘No more, sir.’
Mrs. Crickett, temporary servant to Mr. Manston, said that in accordance
with Mr. Manston’s orders, everything had been made comfortable in the
house for Mrs. Manston’s expected return on Monday night. Mr. Manston
told her that himself and Mrs. Manston would be home late, not till between
eleven and twelve o’clock, and that supper was to be ready. Not expecting

Mrs. Manston so early, she had gone out on a very important errand to Mrs.
Leat the postmistress.
Mr. Manston deposed that in looking down the columns of Bradshaw he
had mistaken the time of the train’s arrival, and hence was not at the station
when she came. The broken watch produced was his wife’s—he knew it by
a scratch on the inner plate, and by other signs. The bunch of keys belonged
to her: two of them fitted the locks of her two boxes.
Mr. Flooks, agent to Lord Claydonfield at Chettlewood, said that Mr.
Manston had pleaded as his excuse for leaving him rather early in the
evening after their day’s business had been settled, that he was going to
meet his wife at Carriford Road Station, where she was coming by the last
train that night.
The surgeon said that the remains were those of a human being. The
small fragment seemed a portion of one of the lumbar vertebrae—the other
the head of the os femoris—but they were both so far gone that it was
impossible to say definitely whether they belonged to the body of a male or
female. There was no moral doubt that they were a woman’s. He did not
believe that death resulted from burning by fire. He thought she was
crushed by the fall of the west gable, which being of wood, as well as the
floor, burnt after it had fallen, and consumed the body with it.
Two or three additional witnesses gave unimportant testimony.
The coroner summed up, and the jury without hesitation found that the
deceased Mrs. Manston came by her death accidentally through the burning
of the Three Tranters Inn.
3. DECEMBER THE SECOND. AFTERNOON
When Mr. Springrove came from the door of the Rising Sun at the end of
the inquiry, Manston walked by his side as far as the stile to the park, a
distance of about a stone’s-throw.
‘Ah, Mr. Springrove, this is a sad affair for everybody concerned.’
‘Everybody,’ said the old farmer, with deep sadness, ‘’tis quite a misery
to me. I hardly know how I shall live through each day as it breaks. I think
of the words, “In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and
at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine
heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou
shalt see.”’ His voice became broken.

‘Ah—true. I read Deuteronomy myself,’ said Manston.
‘But my loss is as nothing to yours,’ the farmer continued.
‘Nothing; but I can commiserate you. I should be worse than unfeeling if
I didn’t, although my own affliction is of so sad and solemn a kind. Indeed
my own loss makes me more keenly alive to yours, different in nature as it
is.’
‘What sum do you think would be required of me to put the houses in
place again?’
‘I have roughly thought six or seven hundred pounds.’
‘If the letter of the law is to be acted up to,’ said the old man, with more
agitation in his voice.
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘Do you know enough of Miss Aldclyffe’s mind to give me an idea of
how she means to treat me?’
‘Well, I am afraid I must tell you that though I know very little of her
mind as a rule, in this matter I believe she will be rather peremptory; she
might share to the extent of a sixth or an eighth perhaps, in consideration of
her getting new lamps for old, but I should hardly think more.’
The steward stepped upon the stile, and Mr. Springrove went along the
road with a bowed head and heavy footsteps towards his niece’s cottage, in
which, rather against the wish of Edward, they had temporarily taken
refuge.
The additional weight of this knowledge soon made itself perceptible.
Though indoors with Edward or Adelaide nearly the whole of the afternoon,
nothing more than monosyllabic replies could be drawn from him. Edward
continually discovered him looking fixedly at the wall or floor, quite
unconscious of another’s presence. At supper he ate just as usual, but quite
mechanically, and with the same abstraction.
4. DECEMBER THE THIRD
The next morning he was in no better spirits. Afternoon came: his son
was alarmed, and managed to draw from him an account of the
conversation with the steward.
‘Nonsense; he knows nothing about it,’ said Edward vehemently. ‘I’ll see
Miss Aldclyffe myself. Now promise me, father, that you’ll not believe till I

come back, and tell you to believe it, that Miss Aldclyffe will do any such
unjust thing.’
Edward started at once for Knapwater House. He strode rapidly along the
high-road, till he reached a wicket where a footpath allowed of a short cut
to the mansion. Here he leant down upon the bars for a few minutes,
meditating as to the best manner of opening his speech, and surveying the
scene before him in that absent mood which takes cognizance of little
things without being conscious of them at the time, though they appear in
the eye afterwards as vivid impressions. It was a yellow, lustrous, late
autumn day, one of those days of the quarter when morning and evening
seem to meet together without the intervention of a noon. The clear yellow
sunlight had tempted forth Miss Aldclyffe herself, who was at this same
time taking a walk in the direction of the village. As Springrove lingered he
heard behind the plantation a woman’s dress brushing along amid the
prickly husks and leaves which had fallen into the path from the boughs of
the chestnut trees. In another minute she stood in front of him.
He answered her casual greeting respectfully, and was about to request a
few minutes’ conversation with her, when she directly addressed him on the
subject of the fire. ‘It is a sad misfortune for your father’ she said, ‘and I
hear that he has lately let his insurances expire?’
‘He has, madam, and you are probably aware that either by the general
terms of his holding, or the same coupled with the origin of the fire, the
disaster may involve the necessity of his rebuilding the whole row of
houses, or else of becoming a debtor to the estate, to the extent of some
hundreds of pounds?’
She assented. ‘I have been thinking of it,’ she went on, and then repeated
in substance the words put into her mouth by the steward. Some disturbance
of thought might have been fancied as taking place in Springrove’s mind
during her statement, but before she had reached the end, his eyes were
clear, and directed upon her.
‘I don’t accept your conditions of release,’ he said.
‘They are not conditions exactly.’
‘Well, whatever they are not, they are very uncalled-for remarks.’
‘Not at all—the houses have been burnt by your family’s negligence.’

‘I don’t refer to the houses—you have of course the best of all rights to
speak of that matter; but you, a stranger to me comparatively, have no right
at all to volunteer opinions and wishes upon a very delicate subject, which
concerns no living beings but Miss Graye, Miss Hinton, and myself.’
Miss Aldclyffe, like a good many others in her position, had plainly not
realized that a son of her tenant and inferior could have become an educated
man, who had learnt to feel his individuality, to view society from a
Bohemian standpoint, far outside the farming grade in Carriford parish, and
that hence he had all a developed man’s unorthodox opinion about the
subordination of classes. And fully conscious of the labyrinth into which he
had wandered between his wish to behave honourably in the dilemma of his
engagement to his cousin Adelaide and the intensity of his love for
Cytherea, Springrove was additionally sensitive to any allusion to the case.
He had spoken to Miss Aldclyffe with considerable warmth.
And Miss Aldclyffe was not a woman likely to be far behind any second
person in warming to a mood of defiance. It seemed as if she were prepared
to put up with a cold refusal, but that her haughtiness resented a criticism of
her conduct ending in a rebuke. By this, Manston’s discreditable object,
which had been made hers by compulsion only, was now adopted by
choice. She flung herself into the work.
A fiery man in such a case would have relinquished persuasion and tried
palpable force. A fiery woman added unscrupulousness and evolved daring
strategy; and in her obstinacy, and to sustain herself as mistress, she
descended to an action the meanness of which haunted her conscience to
her dying hour.
‘I don’t quite see, Mr. Springrove,’ she said, ‘that I am altogether what
you are pleased to call a stranger. I have known your family, at any rate, for
a good many years, and I know Miss Graye particularly well, and her state
of mind with regard to this matter.’
Perplexed love makes us credulous and curious as old women. Edward
was willing, he owned it to himself, to get at Cytherea’s state of mind, even
through so dangerous a medium.
‘A letter I received from her’ he said, with assumed coldness, ‘tells me
clearly enough what Miss Graye’s mind is.’
‘You think she still loves you? O yes, of course you do—all men are like
that.’

‘I have reason to.’ He could feign no further than the first speech.
‘I should be interested in knowing what reason?’ she said, with sarcastic
archness.
Edward felt he was allowing her to do, in fractional parts, what he
rebelled against when regarding it as a whole; but the fact that his
antagonist had the presence of a queen, and features only in the early
evening of their beauty, was not without its influence upon a keenly
conscious man. Her bearing had charmed him into toleration, as Mary
Stuart’s charmed the indignant Puritan visitors. He again answered her
honestly.
‘The best of reasons—the tone of her letter.’
‘Pooh, Mr. Springrove!’
‘Not at all, Miss Aldclyffe! Miss Graye desired that we should be
strangers to each other for the simple practical reason that intimacy could
only make wretched complications worse, not from lack of love—love is
only suppressed.’
‘Don’t you know yet, that in thus putting aside a man, a woman’s pity for
the pain she inflicts gives her a kindness of tone which is often mistaken for
suppressed love?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, with soft insidiousness.
This was a translation of the ambiguity of Cytherea’s tone which he had
certainly never thought of; and he was too ingenuous not to own it.
‘I had never thought of it,’ he said.
‘And don’t believe it?’
‘Not unless there was some other evidence to support the view.’
She paused a minute and then began hesitatingly—
‘My intention was—what I did not dream of owning to you—my
intention was to try to induce you to fulfil your promise to Miss Hinton not
solely on her account and yours (though partly). I love Cytherea Graye with
all my soul, and I want to see her happy even more than I do you. I did not
mean to drag her name into the affair at all, but I am driven to say that she
wrote that letter of dismissal to you—for it was a most pronounced
dismissal—not on account of your engagement. She is old enough to know
that engagements can be broken as easily as they can be made. She wrote it

because she loved another man; very suddenly, and not with any idea or
hope of marrying him, but none the less deeply.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr. Manston.’
‘Good—! I can’t listen to you for an instant, madam; why, she hadn’t
seen him!’
‘She had; he came here the day before she wrote to you; and I could
prove to you, if it were worth while, that on that day she went voluntarily to
his house, though not artfully or blamably; stayed for two hours playing and
singing; that no sooner did she leave him than she went straight home, and
wrote the letter saying she should not see you again, entirely because she
had seen him and fallen desperately in love with him—a perfectly natural
thing for a young girl to do, considering that he’s the handsomest man in the
county. Why else should she not have written to you before?’
‘Because I was such a—because she did not know of the connection
between me and my cousin until then.’
‘I must think she did.’
‘On what ground?’
‘On the strong ground of my having told her so, distinctly, the very first
day she came to live with me.’
‘Well, what do you seek to impress upon me after all? This—that the day
Miss Graye wrote to me, saying it was better that we should part, coincided
with the day she had seen a certain man—’
‘A remarkably handsome and talented man.’
‘Yes, I admit that.’
‘And that it coincided with the hour just subsequent to her seeing him.’
‘Yes, just when she had seen him.’
‘And been to his house alone with him.’
‘It is nothing.’
‘And stayed there playing and singing with him.’
‘Admit that, too,’ he said; ‘an accident might have caused it.’
‘And at the same instant that she wrote your dismissal she wrote a letter
referring to a secret appointment with him.’

‘Never, by God, madam! never!’
‘What do you say, sir?’
‘Never.’
She sneered.
‘There’s no accounting for beliefs, and the whole history is a very trivial
matter; but I am resolved to prove that a lady’s word is truthful, though
upon a matter which concerns neither you nor herself. You shall learn that
she did write him a letter concerning an assignation—that is, if Mr.
Manston still has it, and will be considerate enough to lend it me.’
‘But besides,’ continued Edward, ‘a married man to do what would cause
a young girl to write a note of the kind you mention!’
She flushed a little.
‘That I don’t know anything about,’ she stammered. ‘But Cytherea didn’t,
of course, dream any more than I did, or others in the parish, that he was
married.’
‘Of course she didn’t.’
‘And I have reason to believe that he told her of the fact directly
afterwards, that she might not compromise herself, or allow him to. It is
notorious that he struggled honestly and hard against her attractions, and
succeeded in hiding his feelings, if not in quenching them.’
‘We’ll hope that he did.’
‘But circumstances are changed now.’
‘Very greatly changed,’ he murmured abstractedly.
‘You must remember,’ she added more suasively, ‘that Miss Graye has a
perfect right to do what she likes with her own—her heart, that is to say.’
Her descent from irritation was caused by perceiving that Edward’s faith
was really disturbed by her strong assertions, and it gratified her.
Edward’s thoughts flew to his father, and the object of his interview with
her. Tongue-fencing was utterly distasteful to him.
‘I will not trouble you by remaining longer, madam,’ he remarked,
gloomily; ‘our conversation has ended sadly for me.’
‘Don’t think so,’ she said, ‘and don’t be mistaken. I am older than you
are, many years older, and I know many things.’

Full of miserable doubt, and bitterly regretting that he had raised his
father’s expectations by anticipations impossible of fulfilment, Edward
slowly went his way into the village, and approached his cousin’s house.
The farmer was at the door looking eagerly for him. He had been waiting
there for more than half-an-hour. His eye kindled quickly.
‘Well, Ted, what does she say?’ he asked, in the intensely sanguine tones
which fall sadly upon a listener’s ear, because, antecedently, they raise
pictures of inevitable disappointment for the speaker, in some direction or
another.
‘Nothing for us to be alarmed at,’ said Edward, with a forced
cheerfulness.
‘But must we rebuild?’
‘It seems we must, father.’
The old man’s eyes swept the horizon, then he turned to go in, without
making another observation. All light seemed extinguished in him again.
When Edward went in he found his father with the bureau open, unfolding
the leases with a shaking hand, folding them up again without reading them,
then putting them in their niche only to remove them again.
Adelaide was in the room. She said thoughtfully to Edward, as she
watched the farmer—
‘I hope it won’t kill poor uncle, Edward. What should we do if anything
were to happen to him? He is the only near relative you and I have in the
world.’ It was perfectly true, and somehow Edward felt more bound up with
her after that remark.
She continued: ‘And he was only saying so hopefully the day before the
fire, that he wouldn’t for the world let any one else give me away to you
when we are married.’
For the first time a conscientious doubt arose in Edward’s mind as to the
justice of the course he was pursuing in resolving to refuse the alternative
offered by Miss Aldclyffe. Could it be selfishness as well as independence?
How much he had thought of his own heart, how little he had thought of his
father’s peace of mind!
The old man did not speak again till supper-time, when he began asking
his son an endless number of hypothetical questions on what might induce
Miss Aldclyffe to listen to kinder terms; speaking of her now not as an

unfair woman, but as a Lachesis or Fate whose course it behoved nobody to
condemn. In his earnestness he once turned his eyes on Edward’s face: their
expression was woful: the pupils were dilated and strange in aspect.
‘If she will only agree to that!’ he reiterated for the hundredth time,
increasing the sadness of his listeners.
An aristocratic knocking came to the door, and Jane entered with a letter,
addressed—

‘MR. EDWARD SPRINGROVE, Junior.’

‘Charles from Knapwater House brought it,’ she said.
‘Miss Aldclyffe’s writing,’ said Mr. Springrove, before Edward had
recognized it himself. ‘Now ‘tis all right; she’s going to make an offer; she
doesn’t want the houses there, not she; they are going to make that the way
into the park.’
Edward opened the seal and glanced at the inside. He said, with a
supreme effort of self-command—
‘It is only directed by Miss Aldclyffe, and refers to nothing connected
with the fire. I wonder at her taking the trouble to send it to-night.’
His father looked absently at him and turned away again. Shortly
afterwards they retired for the night. Alone in his bedroom Edward opened
and read what he had not dared to refer to in their presence.
The envelope contained another envelope in Cytherea’s handwriting,
addressed to ‘—— Manston, Esq., Old Manor House.’ Inside this was the
note she had written to the steward after her detention in his house by the
thunderstorm—

‘KNAPWATER HOUSE,
September 20th.

‘I find I cannot meet you at seven o’clock by the waterfall as I promised.
The emotion I felt made me forgetful of realities. ‘C. GRAYE.’
Miss Aldclyffe had not written a line, and, by the unvarying rule
observable when words are not an absolute necessity, her silence seemed
ten times as convincing as any expression of opinion could have been.
He then, step by step, recalled all the conversation on the subject of
Cytherea’s feelings that had passed between himself and Miss Aldclyffe in

the afternoon, and by a confusion of thought, natural enough under the
trying experience, concluded that because the lady was truthful in her
portraiture of effects, she must necessarily be right in her assumption of
causes. That is, he was convinced that Cytherea—the hitherto-believed
faithful Cytherea—had, at any rate, looked with something more than
indifference upon the extremely handsome face and form of Manston.
Did he blame her, as guilty of the impropriety of allowing herself to love
the newcomer in the face of his not being free to return her love? No; never
for a moment did he doubt that all had occurred in her old, innocent,
impulsive way; that her heart was gone before she knew it—before she
knew anything, beyond his existence, of the man to whom it had flown.
Perhaps the very note enclosed to him was the result of first reflection.
Manston he would unhesitatingly have called a scoundrel, but for one
strikingly redeeming fact. It had been patent to the whole parish, and had
come to Edward’s own knowledge by that indirect channel, that Manston,
as a married man, conscientiously avoided Cytherea after those first few
days of his arrival during which her irresistibly beautiful and fatal glances
had rested upon him—his upon her.
Taking from his coat a creased and pocket-worn envelope containing
Cytherea’s letter to himself, Springrove opened it and read it through. He
was upbraided therein, and he was dismissed. It bore the date of the letter
sent to Manston, and by containing within it the phrase, ‘All the day long I
have been thinking,’ afforded justifiable ground for assuming that it was
written subsequently to the other (and in Edward’s sight far sweeter one) to
the steward.
But though he accused her of fickleness, he would not doubt the
genuineness, in its kind, of her partiality for him at Budmouth. It was a
short and shallow feeling—not perfect love:

‘Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.’

But it was not flirtation; a feeling had been born in her and had died. It
would be well for his peace of mind if his love for her could flit away so
softly, and leave so few traces behind.
Miss Aldclyffe had shown herself desperately concerned in the whole
matter by the alacrity with which she had obtained the letter from Manston,

and her labours to induce himself to marry his cousin. Taken in connection
with her apparent interest in, if not love for, Cytherea, her eagerness, too,
could only be accounted for on the ground that Cytherea indeed loved the
steward.
5. DECEMBER THE FOURTH
Edward passed the night he scarcely knew how, tossing feverishly from
side to side, the blood throbbing in his temples, and singing in his ears.
Before the day began to break he dressed himself. On going out upon the
landing he found his father’s bedroom door already open. Edward
concluded that the old man had risen softly, as was his wont, and gone out
into the fields to start the labourers. But neither of the outer doors was
unfastened. He entered the front room, and found it empty. Then animated
by a new idea, he went round to the little back parlour, in which the few
wrecks saved from the fire were deposited, and looked in at the door. Here,
near the window, the shutters of which had been opened half way, he saw
his father leaning on the bureau, his elbows resting on the flap, his body
nearly doubled, his hands clasping his forehead. Beside him were ghostly-
looking square folds of parchment—the leases of the houses destroyed.
His father looked up when Edward entered, and wearily spoke to the
young man as his face came into the faint light.
‘Edward, why did you get up so early?’
‘I was uneasy, and could not sleep.’
The farmer turned again to the leases on the bureau, and seemed to
become lost in reflection. In a minute or two, without lifting his eyes, he
said—
‘This is more than we can bear, Ted—more than we can bear! Ted, this
will kill me. Not the loss only—the sense of my neglect about the insurance
and everything. Borrow I never will. ‘Tis all misery now. God help us—all
misery now!’
Edward did not answer, continuing to look fixedly at the dreary daylight
outside.
‘Ted,’ the farmer went on, ‘this upset of be-en burnt out o’ home makes
me very nervous and doubtful about everything. There’s this troubles me
besides—our liven here with your cousin, and fillen up her house. It must

be very awkward for her. But she says she doesn’t mind. Have you said
anything to her lately about when you are going to marry her?’
‘Nothing at all lately.’
‘Well, perhaps you may as well, now we are so mixed in together. You
know, no time has ever been mentioned to her at all, first or last, and I think
it right that now, since she has waited so patiently and so long—you are
almost called upon to say you are ready. It would simplify matters very
much, if you were to walk up to church wi’ her one of these mornings, get
the thing done, and go on liven here as we are. If you don’t I must get a
house all the sooner. It would lighten my mind, too, about the two little
freeholds over the hill—not a morsel a-piece, divided as they were between
her mother and me, but a tidy bit tied together again. Just think about it, will
ye, Ted?’
He stopped from exhaustion produced by the intense concentration of his
mind upon the weary subject, and looked anxiously at his son.
‘Yes, I will,’ said Edward.
‘But I am going to see her of the Great House this morning,’ the farmer
went on, his thoughts reverting to the old subject. ‘I must know the rights of
the matter, the when and the where. I don’t like seeing her, but I’d rather
talk to her than the steward. I wonder what she’ll say to me.’
The younger man knew exactly what she would say. If his father asked
her what he was to do, and when, she would simply refer him to Manston:
her character was not that of a woman who shrank from a proposition she
had once laid down. If his father were to say to her that his son had at last
resolved to marry his cousin within the year, and had given her a promise to
that effect, she would say, ‘Mr. Springrove, the houses are burnt: we’ll let
them go: trouble no more about them.’
His mind was already made up. He said calmly, ‘Father, when you are
talking to Miss Aldclyffe, mention to her that I have asked Adelaide if she is
willing to marry me next Christmas. She is interested in my union with
Adelaide, and the news will be welcome to her.’
‘And yet she can be iron with reference to me and her property,’ the
farmer murmured. ‘Very well, Ted, I’ll tell her.’
6. DECEMBER THE FIFTH

Of the many contradictory particulars constituting a woman’s heart, two
had shown their vigorous contrast in Cytherea’s bosom just at this time.
It was a dark morning, the morning after old Mr. Springrove’s visit to
Miss Aldclyffe, which had terminated as Edward had intended. Having
risen an hour earlier than was usual with her, Cytherea sat at the window of
an elegant little sitting-room on the ground floor, which had been
appropriated to her by the kindness or whim of Miss Aldclyffe, that she
might not be driven into that lady’s presence against her will. She leant with
her face on her hand, looking out into the gloomy grey air. A yellow
glimmer from the flapping flame of the newly-lit fire fluttered on one side
of her face and neck like a butterfly about to settle there, contrasting
warmly with the other side of the same fair face, which received from the
window the faint cold morning light, so weak that her shadow from the fire
had a distinct outline on the window-shutter in spite of it. There the shadow
danced like a demon, blue and grim.
The contradiction alluded to was that in spite of the decisive mood which
two months earlier in the year had caused her to write a peremptory and
final letter to Edward, she was now hoping for some answer other than the
only possible one a man who, as she held, did not love her wildly, could
send to such a communication. For a lover who did love wildly, she had left
one little loophole in her otherwise straightforward epistle. Why she
expected the letter on some morning of this particular week was, that
hearing of his return to Carriford, she fondly assumed that he meant to ask
for an interview before he left. Hence it was, too, that for the last few days,
she had not been able to keep in bed later than the time of the postman’s
arrival.
The clock pointed to half-past seven. She saw the postman emerge from
beneath the bare boughs of the park trees, come through the wicket, dive
through the shrubbery, reappear on the lawn, stalk across it without
reference to paths—as country postmen do—and come to the porch. She
heard him fling the bag down on the seat, and turn away towards the
village, without hindering himself for a single pace.
Then the butler opened the door, took up the bag, brought it in, and
carried it up the staircase to place it on the slab by Miss Aldclyffe’s
dressing-room door. The whole proceeding had been depicted by sounds.

She had a presentiment that her letter was in the bag at last. She thought
then in diminishing pulsations of confidence, ‘He asks to see me! Perhaps
he asks to see me: I hope he asks to see me.’
A quarter to eight: Miss Aldclyffe’s bell—rather earlier than usual. ‘She
must have heard the post-bag brought,’ said the maiden, as, tired of the
chilly prospect outside, she turned to the fire, and drew imaginative pictures
of her future therein.
A tap came to the door, and the lady’s-maid entered.
‘Miss Aldclyffe is awake,’ she said; ‘and she asked if you were moving
yet, miss.’
‘I’ll run up to her,’ said Cytherea, and flitted off with the utterance of the
words. ‘Very fortunate this,’ she thought; ‘I shall see what is in the bag this
morning all the sooner.’
She took it up from the side table, went into Miss Aldclyffe’s bedroom,
pulled up the blinds, and looked round upon the lady in bed, calculating the
minutes that must elapse before she looked at her letters.
‘Well, darling, how are you? I am glad you have come in to see me,’ said
Miss Aldclyffe. ‘You can unlock the bag this morning, child, if you like,’
she continued, yawning factitiously.
‘Strange!’ Cytherea thought; ‘it seems as if she knew there was likely to
be a letter for me.’
From her bed Miss Aldclyffe watched the girl’s face as she tremblingly
opened the post-bag and found there an envelope addressed to her in
Edward’s handwriting; one he had written the day before, after the decision
he had come to on an impartial, and on that account torturing, survey of his
own, his father’s, his cousin Adelaide’s, and what he believed to be
Cytherea’s, position.
The haughty mistress’s soul sickened remorsefully within her when she
saw suddenly appear upon the speaking countenance of the young lady
before her a wan desolate look of agony.
The master-sentences of Edward’s letter were these: ‘You speak truly.
That we never meet again is the wisest and only proper course. That I regret
the past as much as you do yourself, it is hardly necessary for me to say.’

XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS
1. DECEMBER TO APRIL

Week after week, month after month, the time had flown by. Christmas
had passed; dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more
dreary winter with light evenings. Thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind,
wind in dust. Showery days had come—the period of pink dawns and white
sunsets; with the third week in April the cuckoo had appeared, with the
fourth, the nightingale.
Edward Springrove was in London, attending to the duties of his new
office, and it had become known throughout the neighbourhood of
Carriford that the engagement between himself and Miss Adelaide Hinton
would terminate in marriage at the end of the year.
The only occasion on which her lover of the idle delicious days at
Budmouth watering-place had been seen by Cytherea after the time of the
decisive correspondence, was once in church, when he sat in front of her,
and beside Miss Hinton.
The rencounter was quite an accident. Springrove had come there in the
full belief that Cytherea was away from home with Miss Aldclyffe; and he
continued ignorant of her presence throughout the service.
It is at such moments as these, when a sensitive nature writhes under the
conception that its most cherished emotions have been treated with
contumely, that the sphere-descended Maid, Music, friend of Pleasure at
other times, becomes a positive enemy—racking, bewildering, unrelenting.
The congregation sang the first Psalm and came to the verse—

‘Like some fair tree which, fed by streams,
With timely fruit doth bend,
He still shall flourish, and success
All his designs attend.’

Cytherea’s lips did not move, nor did any sound escape her; but could she
help singing the words in the depths of her being, although the man to
whom she applied them sat at her rival’s side?

Perhaps the moral compensation for all a woman’s petty cleverness under
thriving conditions is the real nobility that lies in her extreme foolishness at
these other times; her sheer inability to be simply just, her exercise of an
illogical power entirely denied to men in general—the power not only of
kissing, but of delighting to kiss the rod by a punctilious observance of the
self-immolating doctrines in the Sermon on the Mount.
As for Edward—a little like other men of his temperament, to whom, it is
somewhat humiliating to think, the aberrancy of a given love is in itself a
recommendation—his sentiment, as he looked over his cousin’s book, was
of a lower rank, Horatian rather than Psalmodic—

‘O, what hast thou of her, of her
Whose every look did love inspire;
Whose every breathing fanned my fire,
And stole me from myself away!’

Then, without letting him see her, Cytherea slipt out of church early, and
went home, the tones of the organ still lingering in her ears as she tried
bravely to kill a jealous thought that would nevertheless live: ‘My nature is
one capable of more, far more, intense feeling than hers! She can’t
appreciate all the sides of him—she never will! He is more tangible to me
even now, as a thought, than his presence itself is to her!’ She was less
noble then.
But she continually repressed her misery and bitterness of heart till the
effort to do so showed signs of lessening. At length she even tried to hope
that her lost lover and her rival would love one another very dearly.
The scene and the sentiment dropped into the past. Meanwhile, Manston
continued visibly before her. He, though quiet and subdued in his bearing
for a long time after the calamity of November, had not simulated a grief
that he did not feel. At first his loss seemed so to absorb him—though as a
startling change rather than as a heavy sorrow—that he paid Cytherea no
attention whatever. His conduct was uniformly kind and respectful, but little
more. Then, as the date of the catastrophe grew remoter, he began to wear a
different aspect towards her. He always contrived to obliterate by his
manner all recollection on her side that she was comparatively more
dependent than himself—making much of her womanhood, nothing of her
situation. Prompt to aid her whenever occasion offered, and full of
delightful petits soins at all times, he was not officious. In this way he

irresistibly won for himself a position as her friend, and the more easily in
that he allowed not the faintest symptom of the old love to be apparent.
Matters stood thus in the middle of the spring when the next move on his
behalf was made by Miss Aldclyffe.
2. THE THIRD OF MAY
She led Cytherea to a summer-house called the Fane, built in the private
grounds about the mansion in the form of a Grecian temple; it overlooked
the lake, the island on it, the trees, and their undisturbed reflection in the
smooth still water. Here the old and young maid halted; here they stood,
side by side, mentally imbibing the scene.
The month was May—the time, morning. Cuckoos, thrushes, blackbirds,
and sparrows gave forth a perfect confusion of song and twitter. The road
was spotted white with the fallen leaves of apple-blossoms, and the
sparkling grey dew still lingered on the grass and flowers. Two swans
floated into view in front of the women, and then crossed the water towards
them.
‘They seem to come to us without any will of their own—quite
involuntarily—don’t they?’ said Cytherea, looking at the birds’ graceful
advance.
‘Yes, but if you look narrowly you can see their hips just beneath the
water, working with the greatest energy.’
‘I’d rather not see that, it spoils the idea of proud indifference to direction
which we associate with a swan.’
‘It does; we’ll have “involuntarily.” Ah, now this reminds me of
something.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of a human being who involuntarily comes towards yourself.’
Cytherea looked into Miss Aldclyffe’s face; her eyes grew round as
circles, and lines of wonderment came visibly upon her countenance. She
had not once regarded Manston as a lover since his wife’s sudden
appearance and subsequent death. The death of a wife, and such a death,
was an overwhelming matter in her ideas of things.
‘Is it a man or woman?’ she said, quite innocently.
‘Mr. Manston,’ said Miss Aldclyffe quietly.

‘Mr. Manston attracted by me now?’ said Cytherea, standing at gaze.
‘Didn’t you know it?’
‘Certainly I did not. Why, his poor wife has only been dead six months.’
‘Of course he knows that. But loving is not done by months, or method,
or rule, or nobody would ever have invented such a phrase as “falling in
love.” He does not want his love to be observed just yet, on the very
account you mention; but conceal it as he may from himself and us, it exists
definitely—and very intensely, I assure you.’
‘I suppose then, that if he can’t help it, it is no harm of him,’ said
Cytherea naively, and beginning to ponder.
‘Of course it isn’t—you know that well enough. She was a great burden
and trouble to him. This may become a great good to you both.’
A rush of feeling at remembering that the same woman, before Manston’s
arrival, had just as frankly advocated Edward’s claims, checked Cytherea’s
utterance for awhile.
‘There, don’t look at me like that, for Heaven’s sake!’ said Miss
Aldclyffe. ‘You could almost kill a person by the force of reproach you can
put into those eyes of yours, I verily believe.’
Edward once in the young lady’s thoughts, there was no getting rid of
him. She wanted to be alone.
‘Do you want me here?’ she said.
‘Now there, there; you want to be off, and have a good cry,’ said Miss
Aldclyffe, taking her hand. ‘But you mustn’t, my dear. There’s nothing in
the past for you to regret. Compare Mr. Manston’s honourable conduct
towards his wife and yourself, with Springrove towards his betrothed and
yourself, and then see which appears the more worthy of your thoughts.’
3. FROM THE FOURTH OF MAY TO THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE
The next stage in Manston’s advances towards her hand was a clearly
defined courtship. She was sadly perplexed, and some contrivance was
necessary on his part in order to meet with her. But it is next to impossible
for an appreciative woman to have a positive repugnance towards an
unusually handsome and gifted man, even though she may not be inclined
to love him. Hence Cytherea was not so alarmed at the sight of him as to
render a meeting and conversation with her more than a matter of difficulty.

Coming and going from church was his grand opportunity. Manston was
very religious now. It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by
argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in
England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer-books and become a
zealous Episcopalian—the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from
his pew.
Manston introduced into his method a system of bewitching flattery,
everywhere pervasive, yet, too, so transitory and intangible, that, as in the
case of the poet Wordsworth and the Wandering Voice, though she felt it
present, she could never find it. As a foil to heighten its effect, he
occasionally spoke philosophically of the evanescence of female beauty—
the worthlessness of mere appearance. ‘Handsome is that handsome does’
he considered a proverb which should be written on the looking-glass of
every woman in the land. ‘Your form, your motions, your heart have won
me,’ he said, in a tone of playful sadness. ‘They are beautiful. But I see
these things, and it comes into my mind that they are doomed, they are
gliding to nothing as I look. Poor eyes, poor mouth, poor face, poor maiden!
“Where will her glories be in twenty years?” I say. “Where will all of her be
in a hundred?” Then I think it is cruel that you should bloom a day, and fade
for ever and ever. It seems hard and sad that you will die as ordinarily as I,
and be buried; be food for roots and worms, be forgotten and come to earth,
and grow up a mere blade of churchyard-grass and an ivy leaf. Then, Miss
Graye, when I see you are a Lovely Nothing, I pity you, and the love I feel
then is better and sounder, larger and more lasting than that I felt at the
beginning.’ Again an ardent flash of his handsome eyes.
It was by this route that he ventured on an indirect declaration and offer
of his hand.
She implied in the same indirect manner that she did not love him enough
to accept it.
An actual refusal was more than he had expected. Cursing himself for
what he called his egregious folly in making himself the slave of a mere
lady’s attendant, and for having given the parish, should they know of her
refusal, a chance of sneering at him—certainly a ground for thinking less of
his standing than before—he went home to the Old House, and walked
indecisively up and down his back-yard. Turning aside, he leant his arms
upon the edge of the rain-water-butt standing in the corner, and looked into

it. The reflection from the smooth stagnant surface tinged his face with the
greenish shades of Correggio’s nudes. Staves of sunlight slanted down
through the still pool, lighting it up with wonderful distinctness. Hundreds
of thousands of minute living creatures sported and tumbled in its depth
with every contortion that gaiety could suggest; perfectly happy, though
consisting only of a head, or a tail, or at most a head and a tail, and all
doomed to die within the twenty-four hours.
‘Damn my position! Why shouldn’t I be happy through my little day too?
Let the parish sneer at my repulses, let it. I’ll get her, if I move heaven and
earth to do it!’
Indeed, the inexperienced Cytherea had, towards Edward in the first
place, and Manston afterwards, unconsciously adopted bearings that would
have been the very tactics of a professional fisher of men who wished to
have them each successively dangling at her heels. For if any rule at all can
be laid down in a matter which, for men collectively, is notoriously beyond
regulation, it is that to snub a petted man, and to pet a snubbed man, is the
way to win in suits of both kinds. Manston with Springrove’s
encouragement would have become indifferent. Edward with Manston’s
repulses would have sheered off at the outset, as he did afterwards. Her
supreme indifference added fuel to Manston’s ardour—it completely
disarmed his pride. The invulnerable Nobody seemed greater to him than a
susceptible Princess.
4. FROM THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE TO THE END OF JULY
Cytherea had in the meantime received the following letter from her
brother. It was the first definite notification of the enlargement of that cloud
no bigger than a man’s hand which had for nearly a twelvemonth hung
before them in the distance, and which was soon to give a colour to their
whole sky from horizon to horizon.

‘BUDMOUTH REGIS,

Saturday.
‘DARLING SIS,—I have delayed telling you for a long time of a little
matter which, though not one to be seriously alarmed about, is sufficiently
vexing, and it would be unfair in me to keep it from you any longer. It is
that for some time past I have again been distressed by that lameness which
I first distinctly felt when we went to Lulstead Cove, and again when I left

Knapwater that morning early. It is an unusual pain in my left leg, between
the knee and the ankle. I had just found fresh symptoms of it when you
were here for that half-hour about a month ago—when you said in fun that I
began to move like an old man. I had a good mind to tell you then, but
fancying it would go off in a few days, I thought it was not worth while.
Since that time it has increased, but I am still able to work in the office,
sitting on the stool. My great fear is that Mr. G. will have some out-door
measuring work for me to do soon, and that I shall be obliged to decline it.
However, we will hope for the best. How it came, what was its origin, or
what it tends to, I cannot think. You shall hear again in a day or two, if it is
no better...—Your loving brother, OWEN.’
This she answered, begging to know the worst, which she could bear, but
suspense and anxiety never. In two days came another letter from him, of
which the subjoined paragraph is a portion:—
‘I had quite decided to let you know the worst, and to assure you that it
was the worst, before you wrote to ask it. And again I give you my word
that I will conceal nothing—so that there will be no excuse whatever for
your wearing yourself out with fears that I am worse than I say. This
morning then, for the first time, I have been obliged to stay away from the
office. Don’t be frightened at this, dear Cytherea. Rest is all that is wanted,
and by nursing myself now for a week, I may avoid an illness of six
months.’
After a visit from her he wrote again:—
‘Dr. Chestman has seen me. He said that the ailment was some sort of
rheumatism, and I am now undergoing proper treatment for its cure. My leg
and foot have been placed in hot bran, liniments have been applied, and also
severe friction with a pad. He says I shall be as right as ever in a very short
time. Directly I am I shall run up by the train to see you. Don’t trouble to
come to me if Miss Aldclyffe grumbles again about your being away, for I
am going on capitally.... You shall hear again at the end of the week.’
At the time mentioned came the following:—
‘I am sorry to tell you, because I know it will be so disheartening after
my last letter, that I am not so well as I was then, and that there has been a
sort of hitch in the proceedings. After I had been treated for rheumatism a
few days longer (in which treatment they pricked the place with a long
needle several times,) I saw that Dr. Chestman was in doubt about

something, and I requested that he would call in a brother professional man
to see me as well. They consulted together and then told me that
rheumatism was not the disease after all, but erysipelas. They then began
treating it differently, as became a different matter. Blisters, flour, and
starch, seem to be the order of the day now—medicine, of course, besides.
‘Mr. Gradfield has been in to inquire about me. He says he has been
obliged to get a designer in my place, which grieves me very much, though,
of course, it could not be avoided.’
A month passed away; throughout this period, Cytherea visited him as
often as the limited time at her command would allow, and wore as cheerful
a countenance as the womanly determination to do nothing which might
depress him could enable her to wear. Another letter from him then told her
these additional facts:—
‘The doctors find they are again on the wrong tack. They cannot make
out what the disease is. O Cytherea! how I wish they knew! This suspense
is wearing me out. Could not Miss Aldclyffe spare you for a day? Do come
to me. We will talk about the best course then. I am sorry to complain, but I
am worn out.’
Cytherea went to Miss Aldclyffe, and told her of the melancholy turn her
brother’s illness had taken. Miss Aldclyffe at once said that Cytherea might
go, and offered to do anything to assist her which lay in her power.
Cytherea’s eyes beamed gratitude as she turned to leave the room, and
hasten to the station.
‘O, Cytherea,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, calling her back; ‘just one word. Has
Mr. Manston spoken to you lately?’
‘Yes,’ said Cytherea, blushing timorously.
‘He proposed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you refused him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tut, tut! Now listen to my advice,’ said Miss Aldclyffe emphatically,
‘and accept him before he changes his mind. The chance which he offers
you of settling in life is one that may possibly, probably, not occur again.
His position is good and secure, and the life of his wife would be a happy
one. You may not be sure that you love him madly; but suppose you are not

sure? My father used to say to me as a child when he was teaching me
whist, “When in doubt win the trick!” That advice is ten times as valuable
to a woman on the subject of matrimony. In refusing a man there is always
the risk that you may never get another offer.’
‘Why didn’t you win the trick when you were a girl?’ said Cytherea.
‘Come, my lady Pert; I’m not the text,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, her face
glowing like fire.
Cytherea laughed stealthily.
‘I was about to say,’ resumed Miss Aldclyffe severely, ‘that here is Mr.
Manston waiting with the tenderest solicitude for you, and you overlooking
it, as if it were altogether beneath you. Think how you might benefit your
sick brother if you were Mrs. Manston. You will please me very much by
giving him some encouragement. You understand me, Cythie dear?’
Cytherea was silent.
‘And,’ said Miss Aldclyffe, still more emphatically, ‘on your promising
that you will accept him some time this year, I will take especial care of
your brother. You are listening, Cytherea?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, leaving the room.
She went to Budmouth, passed the day with her brother, and returned to
Knapwater wretched and full of foreboding. Owen had looked startlingly
thin and pale—thinner and paler than ever she had seen him before. The
brother and sister had that day decided that notwithstanding the drain upon
their slender resources, another surgeon should see him. Time was
everything.
Owen told her the result in his next letter:—
‘The three practitioners between them have at last hit the nail on the
head, I hope. They probed the place, and discovered that the secret lay in
the bone. I underwent an operation for its removal three days ago (after
taking chloroform)... Thank God it is over. Though I am so weak, my spirits
are rather better. I wonder when I shall be at work again? I asked the
surgeons how long it would be first. I said a month? They shook their
heads. A year? I said. Not so long, they said. Six months? I inquired. They
would not, or could not, tell me. But never mind.
‘Run down, when you have half a day to spare, for the hours drag on so
drearily. O Cytherea, you can’t think how drearily!’

She went. Immediately on her departure Miss Aldclyffe sent a note to the
Old House, to Manston. On the maiden’s return, tired and sick at heart as
usual, she found Manston at the station awaiting her. He asked politely if he
might accompany her to Knapwater. She tacitly acquiesced. During their
walk he inquired the particulars of her brother’s illness, and with an
irresistible desire to pour out her trouble to some one, she told him of the
length of time which must elapse before he could be strong again, and of
the lack of comfort in lodgings.
Manston was silent awhile. Then he said impetuously: ‘Miss Graye, I
will not mince matters—I love you—you know it. Stratagem they say is fair
in love, and I am compelled to adopt it now. Forgive me, for I cannot help
it. Consent to be my wife at any time that may suit you—any remote day
you may name will satisfy me—and you shall find him well provided for.’
For the first time in her life she truly dreaded the handsome man at her
side who pleaded thus selfishly, and shrank from the hot voluptuous nature
of his passion for her, which, disguise it as he might under a quiet and
polished exterior, at times radiated forth with a scorching white heat. She
perceived how animal was the love which bargained.
‘I do not love you, Mr. Manston,’ she replied coldly.
5. FROM THE FIRST TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST
The long sunny days of the later summer-time brought only the same
dreary accounts from Budmouth, and saw Cytherea paying the same sad
visits.
She grew perceptibly weaker, in body and mind. Manston still persisted
in his suit, but with more of his former indirectness, now that he saw how
unexpectedly well she stood an open attack. His was the system of Dares at
the Sicilian games—

‘He, like a captain who beleaguers round
Some strong-built castle on a rising ground,
Views all the approaches with observing eyes,
This and that other part again he tries,
And more on industry than force relies.’

Miss Aldclyffe made it appear more clearly than ever that aid to Owen
from herself depended entirely upon Cytherea’s acceptance of her steward.
Hemmed in and distressed, Cytherea’s answers to his importunities grew
less uniform; they were firm, or wavering, as Owen’s malady fluctuated.

Had a register of her pitiful oscillations been kept, it would have rivalled in
pathos the diary wherein De Quincey tabulates his combat with Opium—
perhaps as noticeable an instance as any in which a thrilling dramatic power
has been given to mere numerals. Thus she wearily and monotonously lived
through the month, listening on Sundays to the well-known round of
chapters narrating the history of Elijah and Elisha in famine and drought; on
week-days to buzzing flies in hot sunny rooms. ‘So like, so very like, was
day to day.’ Extreme lassitude seemed all that the world could show her.
Her state was in this wise, when one afternoon, having been with her
brother, she met the surgeon, and begged him to tell the actual truth
concerning Owen’s condition.
The reply was that he feared that the first operation had not been
thorough; that although the wound had healed, another attempt might still
be necessary, unless nature were left to effect her own cure. But the time
such a self-healing proceeding would occupy might be ruinous.
‘How long would it be?’ she said.
‘It is impossible to say. A year or two, more or less.’
‘And suppose he submitted to another artificial extraction?’
‘Then he might be well in four or six months.’
Now the remainder of his and her possessions, together with a sum he
had borrowed, would not provide him with necessary comforts for half that
time. To combat the misfortune, there were two courses open—her
becoming betrothed to Manston, or the sending Owen to the County
Hospital.
Thus terrified, driven into a corner, panting and fluttering about for some
loophole of escape, yet still shrinking from the idea of being Manston’s
wife, the poor little bird endeavoured to find out from Miss Aldclyffe
whether it was likely Owen would be well treated in the hospital.
‘County Hospital!’ said Miss Aldclyffe; ‘why, it is only another name for
slaughter-house—in surgical cases at any rate. Certainly if anything about
your body is snapt in two they do join you together in a fashion, but ‘tis so
askew and ugly, that you may as well be apart again.’ Then she terrified the
inquiring and anxious maiden by relating horrid stories of how the legs and
arms of poor people were cut off at a moment’s notice, especially in cases
where the restorative treatment was likely to be long and tedious.

‘You know how willing I am to help you, Cytherea,’ she added
reproachfully. ‘You know it. Why are you so obstinate then? Why do you
selfishly bar the clear, honourable, and only sisterly path which leads out of
this difficulty? I cannot, on my conscience, countenance you; no, I cannot.’
Manston once more repeated his offer; and once more she refused, but
this time weakly, and with signs of an internal struggle. Manston’s eye
sparkled; he saw for the hundredth time in his life, that perseverance, if only
systematic, was irresistible by womankind.
6. THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST
On going to Budmouth three days later, she found to her surprise that the
steward had been there, had introduced himself, and had seen her brother. A
few delicacies had been brought him also by the same hand. Owen spoke in
warm terms of Manston and his free and unceremonious call, as he could
not have refrained from doing of any person, of any kind, whose presence
had served to help away the tedious hours of a long day, and who had,
moreover, shown that sort of consideration for him which the
accompanying basket implied—antecedent consideration, so telling upon
all invalids—and which he so seldom experienced except from the hands of
his sister.
How should he perceive, amid this tithe-paying of mint, and anise, and
cummin, the weightier matters which were left undone?
Again the steward met her at Carriford Road Station on her return
journey. Instead of being frigid as at the former meeting at the same place,
she was embarrassed by a strife of thought, and murmured brokenly her
thanks for what he had done. The same request that he might see her home
was made.
He had perceived his error in making his kindness to Owen a conditional
kindness, and had hastened to efface all recollection of it. ‘Though I let my
offer on her brother’s—my friend’s—behalf, seem dependent on my lady’s
graciousness to me,’ he whispered wooingly in the course of their walk, ‘I
could not conscientiously adhere to my statement; it was said with all the
impulsive selfishness of love. Whether you choose to have me, or whether
you don’t, I love you too devotedly to be anything but kind to your
brother.... Miss Graye, Cytherea, I will do anything,’ he continued earnestly,
‘to give you pleasure—indeed I will.’

She saw on the one hand her poor and much-loved Owen recovering
from his illness and troubles by the disinterested kindness of the man beside
her, on the other she drew him dying, wholly by reason of her self-enforced
poverty. To marry this man was obviously the course of common sense, to
refuse him was impolitic temerity. There was reason in this. But there was
more behind than a hundred reasons—a woman’s gratitude and her impulse
to be kind.
The wavering of her mind was visible in her tell-tale face. He noticed it,
and caught at the opportunity.
They were standing by the ruinous foundations of an old mill in the midst
of a meadow. Between grey and half-overgrown stonework—the only signs
of masonry remaining—the water gurgled down from the old millpond to a
lower level, under the cloak of rank broad leaves—the sensuous natures of
the vegetable world. On the right hand the sun, resting on the horizon-line,
streamed across the ground from below copper-coloured and lilac clouds,
stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft green. All dark objects on
the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread by a purple haze, against
which a swarm of wailing gnats shone forth luminously, rising upward and
floating away like sparks of fire.
The stillness oppressed and reduced her to mere passivity. The only wish
the humidity of the place left in her was to stand motionless. The helpless
flatness of the landscape gave her, as it gives all such temperaments, a sense
of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a single entity under the sky.
He came so close that their clothes touched. ‘Will you try to love me? Do
try to love me!’ he said, in a whisper, taking her hand. He had never taken it
before. She could feel his hand trembling exceedingly as it held hers in its
clasp.
Considering his kindness to her brother, his love for herself, and
Edward’s fickleness, ought she to forbid him to do this? How truly pitiful it
was to feel his hand tremble so—all for her! Should she withdraw her hand?
She would think whether she would. Thinking, and hesitating, she looked as
far as the autumnal haze on the marshy ground would allow her to see
distinctly. There was the fragment of a hedge—all that remained of a ‘wet
old garden’—standing in the middle of the mead, without a definite
beginning or ending, purposeless and valueless. It was overgrown, and
choked with mandrakes, and she could almost fancy she heard their

shrieks.... Should she withdraw her hand? No, she could not withdraw it
now; it was too late, the act would not imply refusal. She felt as one in a
boat without oars, drifting with closed eyes down a river—she knew not
whither.
He gave her hand a gentle pressure, and relinquished it.
Then it seemed as if he were coming to the point again. No, he was not
going to urge his suit that evening. Another respite.
7. THE EARLY PART OF SEPTEMBER
Saturday came, and she went on some trivial errand to the village post-
office. It was a little grey cottage with a luxuriant jasmine encircling the
doorway, and before going in Cytherea paused to admire this pleasing
feature of the exterior. Hearing a step on the gravel behind the corner of the
house, she resigned the jasmine and entered. Nobody was in the room. She
could hear Mrs. Leat, the widow who acted as postmistress, walking about
over her head. Cytherea was going to the foot of the stairs to call Mrs. Leat,
but before she had accomplished her object, another form stood at the half-
open door. Manston came in.
‘Both on the same errand,’ he said gracefully.
‘I will call her,’ said Cytherea, moving in haste to the foot of the stairs.
‘One moment.’ He glided to her side. ‘Don’t call her for a moment,’ he
repeated.
But she had said, ‘Mrs. Leat!’
He seized Cytherea’s hand, kissed it tenderly, and carefully replaced it by
her side.
She had that morning determined to check his further advances, until she
had thoroughly considered her position. The remonstrance was now on her
tongue, but as accident would have it, before the word could be spoken
Mrs. Leat was stepping from the last stair to the floor, and no remonstrance
came.
With the subtlety which characterized him in all his dealings with her, he
quickly concluded his own errand, bade her a good-bye, in the tones of
which love was so garnished with pure politeness that it only showed its
presence to herself, and left the house—putting it out of her power to refuse
him her companionship homeward, or to object to his late action of kissing
her hand.

The Friday of the next week brought another letter from her brother. In
this he informed her that, in absolute grief lest he should distress her
unnecessarily, he had some time earlier borrowed a few pounds. A week
ago, he said, his creditor became importunate, but that on the day on which
he wrote, the creditor had told him there was no hurry for a settlement, that
‘his sister’s suitor had guaranteed the sum.’ ‘Is he Mr. Manston? tell me,
Cytherea,’ said Owen.
He also mentioned that a wheeled chair had been anonymously hired for
his especial use, though as yet he was hardly far enough advanced towards
convalescence to avail himself of the luxury. ‘Is this Mr. Manston’s doing?’
he inquired.
She could dally with her perplexity, evade it, trust to time for guidance,
no longer. The matter had come to a crisis: she must once and for all choose
between the dictates of her understanding and those of her heart. She
longed, till her soul seemed nigh to bursting, for her lost mother’s return to
earth, but for one minute, that she might have tender counsel to guide her
through this, her great difficulty.
As for her heart, she half fancied that it was not Edward’s to quite the
extent that it once had been; she thought him cruel in conducting himself
towards her as he did at Budmouth, cruel afterwards in making so light of
her. She knew he had stifled his love for her—was utterly lost to her. But
for all that she could not help indulging in a woman’s pleasure of recreating
defunct agonies, and lacerating herself with them now and then.
‘If I were rich,’ she thought, ‘I would give way to the luxury of being
morbidly faithful to him for ever without his knowledge.’
But she considered; in the first place she was a homeless dependent; and
what did practical wisdom tell her to do under such desperate
circumstances? To provide herself with some place of refuge from poverty,
and with means to aid her brother Owen. This was to be Mr. Manston’s
wife.
She did not love him.
But what was love without a home? Misery. What was a home without
love? Alas, not much; but still a kind of home.
‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘I am urged by my common sense to marry Mr.
Manston.’

Did anything nobler in her say so too?
With the death (to her) of Edward her heart’s occupation was gone. Was
it necessary or even right for her to tend it and take care of it as she used to
in the old time, when it was still a capable minister?
By a slight sacrifice here she could give happiness to at least two hearts
whose emotional activities were still unwounded. She would do good to
two men whose lives were far more important than hers.
‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘even Christianity urges me to marry Mr. Manston.’
Directly Cytherea had persuaded herself that a kind of heroic self-
abnegation had to do with the matter, she became much more content in the
consideration of it. A wilful indifference to the future was what really
prevailed in her, ill and worn out, as she was, by the perpetual harassments
of her sad fortune, and she regarded this indifference, as gushing natures
will do under such circumstances, as genuine resignation and devotedness.
Manston met her again the following day: indeed, there was no escaping
him now. At the end of a short conversation between them, which took
place in the hollow of the park by the waterfall, obscured on the outer side
by the low hanging branches of the limes, she tacitly assented to his
assumption of a privilege greater than any that had preceded it. He stooped
and kissed her brow.
Before going to bed she wrote to Owen explaining the whole matter. It
was too late in the evening for the postman’s visit, and she placed the letter
on the mantelpiece to send it the next day.
The morning (Sunday) brought a hurried postscript to Owen’s letter of
the day before:—

‘September 9, 1865.

‘DEAR CYTHEREA—I have received a frank and friendly letter from
Mr. Manston explaining the position in which he stands now, and also that
in which he hopes to stand towards you. Can’t you love him? Why not? Try,
for he is a good, and not only that, but a cultured man. Think of the weary
and laborious future that awaits you if you continue for life in your present
position, and do you see any way of escape from it except by marriage? I
don’t. Don’t go against your heart, Cytherea, but be wise.—Ever
affectionately yours, OWEN.’

She thought that probably he had replied to Mr. Manston in the same
favouring mood. She had a conviction that that day would settle her doom.
Yet

‘So true a fool is love,’

that even now she nourished a half-hope that something would happen at
the last moment to thwart her deliberately-formed intentions, and favour the
old emotion she was using all her strength to thrust down.
8. THE TENTH OF SEPTEMBER
The Sunday was the thirteenth after Trinity, and the afternoon service at
Carriford was nearly over. The people were singing the Evening Hymn.
Manston was at church as usual in his accustomed place two seats
forward from the large square pew occupied by Miss Aldclyffe and
Cytherea.
The ordinary sadness of an autumnal evening-service seemed, in
Cytherea’s eyes, to be doubled on this particular occasion. She looked at all
the people as they stood and sang, waving backwards and forwards like a
forest of pines swayed by a gentle breeze; then at the village children
singing too, their heads inclined to one side, their eyes listlessly tracing
some crack in the old walls, or following the movement of a distant bough
or bird with features petrified almost to painfulness. Then she looked at
Manston; he was already regarding her with some purpose in his glance.
‘It is coming this evening,’ she said in her mind. A minute later, at the
end of the hymn, when the congregation began to move out, Manston came
down the aisle. He was opposite the end of her seat as she stepped from it,
the remainder of their progress to the door being in contact with each other.
Miss Aldclyffe had lingered behind.
‘Don’t let’s hurry,’ he said, when Cytherea was about to enter the private
path to the House as usual. ‘Would you mind turning down this way for a
minute till Miss Aldclyffe has passed?’
She could not very well refuse now. They turned into a secluded path on
their left, leading round through a thicket of laurels to the other gate of the
church-yard, walking very slowly. By the time the further gate was reached,
the church was closed. They met the sexton with the keys in his hand.

‘We are going inside for a minute,’ said Manston to him, taking the keys
unceremoniously. ‘I will bring them to you when we return.’
The sexton nodded his assent, and Cytherea and Manston walked into the
porch, and up the nave.
They did not speak a word during their progress, or in any way interfere
with the stillness and silence that prevailed everywhere around them.
Everything in the place was the embodiment of decay: the fading red glare
from the setting sun, which came in at the west window, emphasizing the
end of the day and all its cheerful doings, the mildewed walls, the uneven
paving-stones, the wormy pews, the sense of recent occupation, and the
dank air of death which had gathered with the evening, would have made
grave a lighter mood than Cytherea’s was then.
‘What sensations does the place impress you with?’ she said at last, very
sadly.
‘I feel imperatively called upon to be honest, from very despair of
achieving anything by stratagem in a world where the materials are such as
these.’ He, too, spoke in a depressed voice, purposely or otherwise.
‘I feel as if I were almost ashamed to be seen walking such a world,’ she
murmured; ‘that’s the effect it has upon me; but it does not induce me to be
honest particularly.’
He took her hand in both his, and looked down upon the lids of her eyes.
‘I pity you sometimes,’ he said more emphatically.
‘I am pitiable, perhaps; so are many people. Why do you pity me?’
‘I think that you make yourself needlessly sad.’
‘Not needlessly.’
‘Yes, needlessly. Why should you be separated from your brother so
much, when you might have him to stay with you till he is well?’
‘That can’t be,’ she said, turning away.
He went on, ‘I think the real and only good thing that can be done for
him is to get him away from Budmouth awhile; and I have been wondering
whether it could not be managed for him to come to my house to live for a
few weeks. Only a quarter of a mile from you. How pleasant it would be!’
‘It would.’

He moved himself round immediately to the front of her, and held her
hand more firmly, as he continued, ‘Cytherea, why do you say “It would,”
so entirely in the tone of abstract supposition? I want him there: I want him
to be my brother, too. Then make him so, and be my wife! I cannot live
without you. O Cytherea, my darling, my love, come and be my wife!’
His face bent closer and closer to hers, and the last words sank to a
whisper as weak as the emotion inspiring it was strong.
She said firmly and distinctly, ‘Yes, I will.’
‘Next month?’ he said on the instant, before taking breath.
‘No; not next month.’
‘The next?’
‘No.’
‘December? Christmas Day, say?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘O, you darling!’ He was about to imprint a kiss upon her pale, cold
mouth, but she hastily covered it with her hand.
‘Don’t kiss me—at least where we are now!’ she whispered imploringly.
‘Why?’
‘We are too near God.’
He gave a sudden start, and his face flushed. She had spoken so
emphatically that the words ‘Near God’ echoed back again through the
hollow building from the far end of the chancel.
‘What a thing to say!’ he exclaimed; ‘surely a pure kiss is not
inappropriate to the place!’
‘No,’ she replied, with a swelling heart; ‘I don’t know why I burst out so
—I can’t tell what has come over me! Will you forgive me?’
‘How shall I say “Yes” without judging you? How shall I say “No”
without losing the pleasure of saying “Yes?”’ He was himself again.
‘I don’t know,’ she absently murmured.
‘I’ll say “Yes,”’ he answered daintily. ‘It is sweeter to fancy we are
forgiven, than to think we have not sinned; and you shall have the
sweetness without the need.’

She did not reply, and they moved away. The church was nearly dark
now, and melancholy in the extreme. She stood beside him while he locked
the door, then took the arm he gave her, and wound her way out of the
churchyard with him. Then they walked to the house together, but the great
matter having been set at rest, she persisted in talking only on indifferent
subjects.
‘Christmas Day, then,’ he said, as they were parting at the end of the
shrubbery.
‘I meant Old Christmas Day,’ she said evasively.
‘H’m, people do not usually attach that meaning to the words.’
‘No; but I should like it best if it could not be till then?’ It seemed to be
still her instinct to delay the marriage to the utmost.
‘Very well, love,’ he said gently. ‘’Tis a fortnight longer still; but never
mind. Old Christmas Day.’
9. THE ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER
‘There. It will be on a Friday!’
She sat upon a little footstool gazing intently into the fire. It was the
afternoon of the day following that of the steward’s successful solicitation
of her hand.
‘I wonder if it would be proper in me to run across the park and tell him
it is a Friday?’ she said to herself, rising to her feet, looking at her hat lying
near, and then out of the window towards the Old House. Proper or not, she
felt that she must at all hazards remove the disagreeable, though, as she
herself owned, unfounded impression the coincidence had occasioned. She
left the house directly, and went to search for him.
Manston was in the timber-yard, looking at the sawyers as they worked.
Cytherea came up to him hesitatingly. Till within a distance of a few yards
she had hurried forward with alacrity—now that the practical expression of
his face became visible she wished almost she had never sought him on
such an errand; in his business-mood he was perhaps very stern.
‘It will be on a Friday,’ she said confusedly, and without any preface.
‘Come this way!’ said Manston, in the tone he used for workmen, not
being able to alter at an instant’s notice. He gave her his arm and led her

back into the avenue, by which time he was lover again. ‘On a Friday, will
it, dearest? You do not mind Fridays, surely? That’s nonsense.’
‘Not seriously mind them, exactly—but if it could be any other day?’
‘Well, let us say Old Christmas Eve, then. Shall it be Old Christmas
Eve?’
‘Yes, Old Christmas Eve.’
‘Your word is solemn, and irrevocable now?’
‘Certainly, I have solemnly pledged my word; I should not have
promised to marry you if I had not meant it. Don’t think I should.’ She
spoke the words with a dignified impressiveness.
‘You must not be vexed at my remark, dearest. Can you think the worse
of an ardent man, Cytherea, for showing some anxiety in love?’
‘No, no.’ She could not say more. She was always ill at ease when he
spoke of himself as a piece of human nature in that analytical way, and
wanted to be out of his presence. The time of day, and the proximity of the
house, afforded her a means of escape. ‘I must be with Miss Aldclyffe now
—will you excuse my hasty coming and going?’ she said prettily. Before he
had replied she had parted from him.
‘Cytherea, was it Mr. Manston I saw you scudding away from in the
avenue just now?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, when Cytherea joined her.
‘Yes.’
‘“Yes.” Come, why don’t you say more than that? I hate those taciturn
“Yesses” of yours. I tell you everything, and yet you are as close as wax
with me.’
‘I parted from him because I wanted to come in.’
‘What a novel and important announcement! Well, is the day fixed?’
‘Yes.’
Miss Aldclyffe’s face kindled into intense interest at once. ‘Is it indeed?
When is it to be?’
‘On Old Christmas Eve.’
‘Old Christmas Eve.’ Miss Aldclyffe drew Cytherea round to her front,
and took a hand in each of her own. ‘And then you will be a bride!’ she said
slowly, looking with critical thoughtfulness upon the maiden’s delicately
rounded cheeks.

The normal area of the colour upon each of them decreased perceptibly
after that slow and emphatic utterance by the elder lady.
Miss Aldclyffe continued impressively, ‘You did not say “Old Christmas
Eve” as a fiancee should have said the words: and you don’t receive my
remark with the warm excitement that foreshadows a bright future.... How
many weeks are there to the time?’
‘I have not reckoned them.’
‘Not? Fancy a girl not counting the weeks! I find I must take the lead in
this matter—you are so childish, or frightened, or stupid, or something,
about it. Bring me my diary, and we will count them at once.’
Cytherea silently fetched the book.
Miss Aldclyffe opened the diary at the page containing the almanac, and
counted sixteen weeks, which brought her to the thirty-first of December—
a Sunday. Cytherea stood by, looking on as if she had no appetite for the
scene.
‘Sixteen to the thirty-first. Then let me see, Monday will be the first of
January, Tuesday the second, Wednesday third, Thursday fourth, Friday
fifth—you have chosen a Friday, as I declare!’
‘A Thursday, surely?’ said Cytherea.
‘No: Old Christmas Day comes on a Saturday.’
The perturbed little brain had reckoned wrong. ‘Well, it must be a
Friday,’ she murmured in a reverie.
‘No: have it altered, of course,’ said Miss Aldclyffe cheerfully. ‘There’s
nothing bad in Friday, but such a creature as you will be thinking about its
being unlucky—in fact, I wouldn’t choose a Friday myself to be married on,
since all the other days are equally available.’
‘I shall not have it altered,’ said Cytherea firmly; ‘it has been altered once
already: I shall let it be.’

XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. THE FIFTH OF JANUARY. BEFORE DAWN

We pass over the intervening weeks. The time of the story is thus
advanced more than a quarter of a year.
On the midnight preceding the morning which would make her the wife
of a man whose presence fascinated her into involuntariness of bearing, and
whom in absence she almost dreaded, Cytherea lay in her little bed, vainly
endeavouring to sleep.
She had been looking back amid the years of her short though varied
past, and thinking of the threshold upon which she stood. Days and months
had dimmed the form of Edward Springrove like the gauzes of a vanishing
stage-scene, but his dying voice could still be heard faintly behind. That a
soft small chord in her still vibrated true to his memory, she would not
admit: that she did not approach Manston with feelings which could by any
stretch of words be called hymeneal, she calmly owned.
‘Why do I marry him?’ she said to herself. ‘Because Owen, dear Owen
my brother, wishes me to marry him. Because Mr. Manston is, and has
been, uniformly kind to Owen, and to me. “Act in obedience to the dictates
of common-sense,” Owen said, “and dread the sharp sting of poverty. How
many thousands of women like you marry every year for the same reason,
to secure a home, and mere ordinary, material comforts, which after all go
far to make life endurable, even if not supremely happy.”
‘’Tis right, I suppose, for him to say that. O, if people only knew what a
timidity and melancholy upon the subject of her future grows up in the heart
of a friendless woman who is blown about like a reed shaken with the wind,
as I am, they would not call this resignation of one’s self by the name of
scheming to get a husband. Scheme to marry? I’d rather scheme to die! I
know I am not pleasing my heart; I know that if I only were concerned, I
should like risking a single future. But why should I please my useless self
overmuch, when by doing otherwise I please those who are more valuable
than I?’