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Eight names were printed in the report as belonging to Miss Aldclyffe's list, with the amount of subscription-money attached to each. 'I will collect the first four, whilst you do the same with the last four, said Miss Aldclyffe. The names of two tradespeople stood first in Cytherea's share: then came a Miss Hinton: last of all in the printed list was Mr. Springrove the elder.
Cytherea was as firm as he at this critical moment, but as cold as the air surrounding her. The few persons forming the wedding-party were constrained in movement and tone, and from the nave of the church came occasional coughs, emitted by those who, in spite of the weather, had assembled to see the termination of Cytherea's existence as a single woman. Many poor people loved her.
The next minute Cytherea stood face to face with the lady herself. Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age. Her hair was plentiful, like Cytherea's own; her teeth equalled Cytherea's in regularity and whiteness. But she was much paler, and had features too transparent to be in place among household surroundings.
Yet, for all that, it does not awaken the emotion in one that the earlier and more delicate spring flowers do, the hepatica, say, with its shy wood habits, its pure, infantile expression, and at times its delicate perfume; or the houstonia, "innocence," flecking or streaking the cold spring earth with a milky way of minute stars; or the trailing arbutus, sweeter scented than the English violet, and outvying in tints Cytherea's or any other blooming goddess's cheek.
Miss Aldclyffe would never have known had her companion stayed in the house all night; but the honesty of Cytherea's nature rebelled against even the friendly deceit which such a proceeding would have involved.
He was enraged with Springrove for what he considered an unwarrantable intrusion. But Edward was not in the chantry. As he had come, so he had gone, nobody could tell how or whither. It might almost have been believed that a transmutation had taken place in Cytherea's idiosyncrasy, that her moral nature had fled. The wedding-party returned to the house.
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.
But it was best that it should be so.... I was led to think rather more than usual of the circumstances to-night because of your name. It is pronounced the same way, though differently spelt. The only means by which Cytherea's surname could have been spelt to Miss Aldclyffe must have been by Mrs. Morris or Farmer Springrove.
She used to be the sprightliest of living creatures, and to judge by her letters, that has not faded. She 's in the market, General. Lord Larrian nodded to everything he heard, concluding with a mock doleful shake of the head. 'My poorest subaltern! he sighed, in the theatrical but cordially melancholy style of green age viewing Cytherea's market.
Her neck was again quite open and uncovered, and though hidden from the direct line of Cytherea's vision, she saw it reflected in the glass the fair white surface, and the inimitable combination of curves between throat and bosom which artists adore, being brightly lit up by the light burning on either side. And the lady's prior proceedings were now explained in the simplest manner.
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