ew the other
letters and memoranda, from which she could gain no fresh information,
fastened up the cabinet, and left everything in its former condition.

Her mind was ill at ease. More than ever she wished that she had never
seen Manston. Where the person suspected of mysterious moral obliquity
is the possessor of great physical and intellectual attractions, the
mere sense of incongruity adds an extra shudder to dread. The man's
strange bearing terrified Anne as it had terrified Cytherea; for with
all the woman Anne's faults, she had not descended to such depths of
depravity as to willingly participate in crime. She had not even known
that a living wife was being displaced till her arrival at Knapwater put
retreat out of the question, and had looked upon personation simply as
a mode of subsistence a degree better than toiling in poverty and alone,
after a bustling and somewhat pampered life as housekeeper in a gay
mansion.

'Non illa colo calathisve Minervae
Foemineas assueta manus.'

2. AFTERNOON

Mr. Raunham and Edward Springrove had by this time set in motion a
machinery which they hoped to find working out important results.

The rector was restless and full of meditation all the following
morning. It was plain, even to the servants about him, that Springrove's
communication wore a deeper complexion than any that had been made to
the old magistrate for many months or years past. The fact was that,
having arrived at the stage of existence in which the difficult
intellectual feat of suspending one's judgment becomes possible, he was
now putting it in practice, though not without the penalty of watchful
effort.

It was not till the afternoon that he determined to call on his
relative, Miss Aldclyffe, and cautiously probe her knowledge of the
subject occupying him so thoroughly. Cytherea, he knew, was still
beloved by this solitary woman. Miss Aldclyffe had made several private
inquiries concerning her former companion, and there was ever a sadness
in her tone when the young lady's name was mentioned, which showed that
from whatever cause the elder Cytherea's renunciation of her favourite
and namesake proceeded, it was not from indifference to her fate.

'Have you ever had any reason for supposing your steward anything but an
upright man?' he said to the lady.

'Never the slightest. Have you?' said she reservedly.

'Well--I have.'

'What is it?'

'I can say nothing plainly, because no