ea, pale and amazed at what she heard, wept for her,
bent over her, and begged her not to go on speaking.

'Yes--I must,' she cried, between her sobs. 'I will--I must go on! And
I must tell yet more plainly!... you must hear it before I am gone,
Cytherea.' The sympathizing and astonished girl sat down again.

'The name of the woman who had taken the child was _Manston_. She was
the widow of a schoolmaster. She said she had adopted the child of a
relation.

'Only one man ever found out who the mother was. He was the keeper of
the inn in which she fainted, and his silence she has purchased ever
since.

'A twelvemonth passed--fifteen months--and the saddened girl met a
man at her father's house named Graye--your father, Cytherea, then
unmarried. Ah, such a man! Inexperience now perceived what it was to
be loved in spirit and in truth! But it was too late. Had he known her
secret he would have cast her out. She withdrew from him by an effort,
and pined.

'Years and years afterwards, when she became mistress of a fortune and
estates by her father's death, she formed the weak scheme of having near
her the son whom, in her father's life-time, she had been forbidden to
recognize. Cytherea, you know who that weak woman is.

* * * * *

'By such toilsome labour as this I got him here as my steward. And I
wanted to see him _your husband_, Cytherea!--the husband of my true
lover's child. It was a sweet dream to me.... Pity me--O, pity me! To
die unloved is more than I can bear! I loved your father, and I love him
now.'

That was the burden of Cytherea Aldclyffe.

'I suppose you must leave me again--you always leave me,' she said,
after holding the young woman's hand a long while in silence.

'No--indeed I'll stay always. Do you like me to stay?'

Miss Aldclyffe in the jaws of death was Miss Aldclyffe still, though the
old fire had degenerated to mere phosphorescence now. 'But you are your
brother's housekeeper?'

'Yes.'

'Well, of course you cannot stay with me on a sudden like this.... Go
home, or he will be at a loss for things. And to-morrow morning come
again, won't you, dearest, come again--we'll fetch you. But you mustn't
stay now, and put Owen out. O no--it would be absurd.' The absorbing
concern about trifles of daily routine, which is so often seen in very
sick people, was present here.

Cytherea promised to go home, and come the next morning to stay
continuously.

'Stay