' 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 w