Miss Aldclyffe’s tenderness towards Cytherea, between the hours of her
irascibility, increased till it became no less than doting fondness.
Like Nature in the tropics, with her hurricanes and the subsequent
luxuriant vegetation effacing their ravages, Miss Aldclyffe compensated
for her outbursts by excess of generosity afterwards. She seemed to be
completely won out of herself by close contact with a young woman whose
modesty was absolutely unimpaired, and whose artlessness was as perfect
as was compatible with the complexity necessary to produce the due charm
of womanhood. Cytherea, on her part, perceived with honest satisfaction
that her influence for good over Miss Aldclyffe was considerable. Ideas
and habits peculiar to the younger, which the elder lady had originally
imitated as a mere whim, she grew in course of time to take a positive
delight in. Among others were evening and morning prayers, dreaming over
out-door scenes, learning a verse from some poem whilst dressing.
Yet try to force her sympathies as much as she would, Cytherea could
feel no more than thankful for this, even if she always felt as much
as thankful. The mysterious cloud hanging over the past life of her
companion, of which the uncertain light already thrown upon it only
seemed to render still darker the unpenetrated remainder, nourished
in her a feeling which was scarcely too slight to be called dread. She
would have infinitely preferred to be treated distantly, as the mere
dependent, by such a changeable nature--like a fountain, always
herself, yet always another. That a crime of any deep dye had ever been
perpetrated or participated in by her namesake, she would not believe;
but the reckless adventuring of the lady’s youth seemed connected with
deeds of darkness rather than of light.
Sometimes Miss Aldclyffe appeared to be on the point of making some
absorbing confidence, but reflection invariably restrained her. Cytherea
hoped that such a confidence would come with time, and that she might
thus be a means of soothing a mind which had obviously known extreme
suffering.
But Miss Aldclyffe’s reticence concerning her past was not imitated by
Cytherea. Though she never disclosed the one fact of her knowledge
that the love-suit between Miss Aldclyffe and her father terminated
abnormally, the maiden’s natural ingenuousness on subjects not set down
for special guard had enabled Miss Aldclyffe to worm from her, fragment
by fragment, every detail of her father’s history. Cytherea saw how
deeply Miss Aldclyffe sympathized--and it compensated her, to some
extent, for the hasty resentments of other times.
Thus uncertainly she lived on. It was perceived by the servants of the
House that some secret bond of connection existed between Miss Aldclyffe
and her companion. But they were woman and woman, not woman and man, the
facts were ethereal and refined, and so they could not be worked up
into a taking story. Whether, as old critics disputed, a supernatural
machinery be necessary to an epic or no, an ungodly machinery is
decidedly necessary to a scandal.
Another letter had come to her from Edward--very short, but full of
entreaty, asking why she would not write just one line--just one line of
cold friendship at least? She then allowed herself to think, little by
little, whether she had not perhaps been too harsh with him; and at last
wondered if he were really much to blame for being engaged to another
woman. ‘Ah, Brain, there is one in me stronger than you!’ she said. The
young maid now continually pulled out his letter, read it and re-read
it, almost crying with pity the while, to think what wretched suspense
he must be enduring at her silence, till her heart chid her for her
cruelty. She felt that she must send him a line--one little line--just a
wee line to keep him alive, poor thing; sighing like Donna Clara--
‘Ah, were he now before me,
In spite of injured pride,
I fear my eyes would pardon
Before my tongue could chide.’