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.