rector, though a solitary bachelor, was as gallant and courteous
to womankind as an ancient Iberian; and, moreover, he was Cytherea's
friend in particular, to an extent far greater than she had ever
surmised. Rarely visiting his relative, Miss Aldclyffe, except on parish
matters, more rarely still being called upon by Miss Aldclyffe, Cytherea
had learnt very little of him whilst she lived at Knapwater. The
relationship was on the impecunious paternal side, and for this branch
of her family the lady of the estate had never evinced much sympathy. In
looking back upon our line of descent it is an instinct with us to feel
that all our vitality was drawn from the richer party to any unequal
marriage in the chain.

Since the death of the old captain, the rector's bearing in Knapwater
House had been almost that of a stranger, a circumstance which
he himself was the last man in the world to regret. This polite
indifference was so frigid on both sides that the rector did not concern
himself to preach at her, which was a great deal in a rector; and she
did not take the trouble to think his sermons poor stuff, which in a
cynical woman was a great deal more.

Though barely fifty years of age, his hair was as white as snow,
contrasting strangely with the redness of his skin, which was as fresh
and healthy as a lad's. Cytherea's bright eyes, mutely and demurely
glancing up at him Sunday after Sunday, had been the means of driving
away many of the saturnine humours that creep into an empty heart during
the hours of a solitary life; in this case, however, to supplant them,
when she left his parish, by those others of a more aching nature
which accompany an over-full one. In short, he had been on the verge
of feeling towards her that passion to which his dignified self-respect
would not give its true name, even in the privacy of his own thought.

He received her kindly; but she was not disposed to be frank with him.
He saw her wish to be reserved, and with genuine good taste and good
nature made no comment whatever upon her request to be allowed to see
the Chronicle for the year before the last. He placed the papers before
her on his study table, with a timidity as great as her own, and then
left her entirely to herself.

She turned them over till she came to the first heading connected
with the subject of her search--'Disastrous Fire and Loss of Life at
Carriford.'

The sight, and its calamitous bearing upon her own life, made her