The foremost figure within Cytherea’s horizon, exclusive of the inmates
of Knapwater House, was now the steward, Mr. Manston. It was impossible
that they should live within a quarter of a mile of each other, be
engaged in the same service, and attend the same church, without meeting
at some spot or another, twice or thrice a week. On Sundays, in her
pew, when by chance she turned her head, Cytherea found his eyes waiting
desirously for a glimpse of hers, and, at first more strangely, the eyes
of Miss Aldclyffe furtively resting on him. On coming out of church he
frequently walked beside Cytherea till she reached the gate at
which residents in the House turned into the shrubbery. By degrees a
conjecture grew to a certainty. She knew that he loved her.
But a strange fact was connected with the development of his love. He
was palpably making the strongest efforts to subdue, or at least to
hide, the weakness, and as it sometimes seemed, rather from his own
conscience than from surrounding eyes. Hence she found that not one
of his encounters with her was anything more than the result of pure
accident. He made no advances whatever: without avoiding her, he never
sought her: the words he had whispered at their first interview now
proved themselves to be quite as much the result of unguarded impulse as
was her answer. Something held him back, bound his impulse down, but
she saw that it was neither pride of his person, nor fear that she would
refuse him--a course she unhesitatingly resolved to take should he think
fit to declare himself. She was interested in him and his marvellous
beauty, as she might have been in some fascinating panther or
leopard--for some undefinable reason she shrank from him, even whilst
she admired. The keynote of her nature, a warm ‘precipitance of soul,’
as Coleridge happily writes it, which Manston had so directly pounced
upon at their very first interview, gave her now a tremulous sense of
being in some way in his power.
The state of mind was, on the whole, a dangerous one for a young and
inexperienced woman; and perhaps the circumstance which, more than any
other, led her to cherish Edward’s image now, was that he had taken no
notice of the receipt of her letter, stating that she discarded him. It
was plain then, she said, that he did not care deeply for her, and she
thereupon could not quite leave off caring deeply for him:--
‘Ingenium mulierum,
Nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro.’
The month of October passed, and November began its course. The
inhabitants of the village of Carriford grew weary of supposing that
Miss Aldclyffe was going to marry her steward. New whispers arose and
became very distinct (though they did not reach Miss Aldclyffe’s ears)
to the effect that the steward was deeply in love with Cytherea Graye.
Indeed, the fact became so obvious that there was nothing left to
say about it except that their marriage would be an excellent one for
both;--for her in point of comfort--and for him in point of love.
As circles in a pond grow wider and wider, the next fact, which at first
had been patent only to Cytherea herself, in due time spread to her
neighbours, and they, too, wondered that he made no overt advances. By
the middle of November, a theory made up of a combination of the other
two was received with general favour: its substance being that a guilty
intrigue had been commenced between Manston and Miss Aldclyffe, some
years before, when he was a very young man, and she still in the
enjoyment of some womanly beauty, but now that her seniority began
to grow emphatic she was becoming distasteful to him. His fear of the
effect of the lady’s jealousy would, they said, thus lead him to conceal
from her his new attachment to Cytherea. Almost the only woman who did
not believe this was Cytherea herself, on unmistakable grounds, which
were hidden from all besides. It was not only in public, but even more
markedly in secluded places, on occasions when gallantry would have been
safe from all discovery, that this guarded course of action was pursued,
all the strength of a consuming passion burning in his eyes the while.