'He is going off early to–morrow morning. 'Twas a shame of him to win you away from me, and cruel of you to keep the growth of this attachment a secret.'
'We couldn't help it,' she said, and then jumping up—'Owen, has he told you all?'
'All of your love from beginning to end,' he said simply.
Edward then had not told more—as he ought to have done: yet she could not convict him. But she would struggle against his fetters. She tingled to the very soles of her feet at the very possibility that he might be deluding her.
'Owen,' she continued, with dignity, 'what is he to me? Nothing. I must dismiss such weakness as this—believe me, I will. Something far more pressing must drive it away. I have been looking my position steadily in the face, and I must get a living somehow. I mean to advertise once more.'
'Advertising is no use.'
'This one will be.' He looked surprised at the sanguine tone of her answer, till she took a piece of paper from the table and showed it him. 'See what I am going to do,' she said sadly, almost bitterly. This was her third effort:—
'LADY'S–MAID. Inexperienced. Age eighteen.—G., 3 Cross Street, Budmouth.'
Owen—Owen the respectable—looked blank astonishment. He repeated in a nameless, varying tone, the two words—
'Lady's–maid!'
'Yes; lady's–maid. 'Tis an honest profession,' said Cytherea bravely.
'But you, Cytherea?'
'Yes, I—who am I?'
'You will never be a lady's–maid—never, I am quite sure.'
'I shall try to be, at any rate.'
'Such a disgrace—'
'Nonsense! I maintain that it is no disgrace!' she said, rather warmly. 'You know very well—'
'Well, since you will, you must,' he interrupted. 'Why do you put "inexperienced?"'
'Because I am.'
'Never mind that—scratch out "inexperienced." We are poor, Cytherea, aren't we?' he murmured, after a silence, 'and it seems that the two months will close my engagement here.'
'We can put up with being poor,' she said, 'if they only give us work to do…Yes, we desire as a blessing what was given us as a curse, and even that is denied. However, be cheerful, Owen, and never mind!'
In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter endurance of women at these epochs—invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is—owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the leaden–eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to quell them.
IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. AUGUST THE FOURTH. TILL FOUR O'CLOCK
The early part of the next week brought an answer to Cytherea's last note of hope in the way of advertisement—not from a distance of hundreds of miles, London, Scotland, Ireland, the Continent—as Cytherea seemed to think it must, to be in keeping with the means adopted for obtaining it, but from a place in the neighbourhood of that in which she was living—a country mansion not twenty miles off. The reply ran thus:—
KNAPWATER HOUSE,
August 3, 1864.
'Miss Aldclyffe is in want of a young person as lady's–maid. The duties of the place are light. Miss Aldclyffe will be in Budmouth on Thursday, when (should G. still not have heard of a place) she would like to see her at the Belvedere Hotel, Esplanade, at four o'clock. No answer need be returned to this note.'
A little earlier than the time named, Cytherea, clothed in a modest bonnet, and a black silk jacket, turned down to the hotel. Expectation, the fresh air from the water, the bright, far–extending outlook, raised the most delicate of pink colours to her cheeks, and restored to her tread a portion of that elasticity which her past troubles, and thoughts of Edward, had well–nigh taken away.
She entered the vestibule, and went to the window of the bar.
'Is Miss Aldclyffe here?' she said to a nicely–dressed barmaid in the foreground, who was talking to a landlady covered with chains, knobs, and clamps of gold, in the background.
'No, she isn't,' said the barmaid, not very civilly. Cytherea looked a shade too pretty for a plain dresser.
'Miss Aldclyffe is expected here,' the landlady said to a third person, out of sight, in the tone of one who had known for several days the fact newly discovered from Cytherea. 'Get ready her room —be quick.' From the alacrity with which the order was given and taken, it seemed to Cytherea that Miss Aldclyffe must be a woman of considerable importance.
'You are to have an interview with Miss Aldclyffe here?' the landlady inquired.
'Yes.'
'The young person had better wait,' continued the landlady. With a money–taker's intuition she had rightly divined that Cytherea would bring no profit to the house.
Cytherea was shown into a nondescript chamber, on the shady side of the building, which appeared to be either bedroom or dayroom, as occasion necessitated, and was one of a suite at the end of the first–floor corridor. The prevailing colour of the walls, curtains, carpet, and coverings of furniture, was more or less blue, to which the cold light coming from the north easterly sky, and falling on a wide roof of new slates—the only object the small window commanded —imparted a more striking paleness.
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