ss 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