ooled
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
Ald