’He has, madam, and you are probably aware that either by the general terms of his holding, or the same coupled with the origin of the fire, the disaster may involve the necessity of his rebuilding the whole row of houses, or else of becoming a debtor to the estate, to the extent of some hundreds of pounds?’

She assented.  ‘I have been thinking of it,’ she went on, and then repeated in substance the words put into her mouth by the steward.  Some disturbance of thought might have been fancied as taking place in Springrove’s mind during her statement, but before she had reached the end, his eyes were clear, and directed upon her.

‘I don’t accept your conditions of release,’ he said.

‘They are not conditions exactly.’

‘Well, whatever they are not, they are very uncalled-for remarks.’

’Not at all—­the houses have been burnt by your family’s negligence.’

’I don’t refer to the houses—­you have of course the best of all rights to speak of that matter; but you, a stranger to me comparatively, have no right at all to volunteer opinions and wishes upon a very delicate subject, which concerns no living beings but Miss Graye, Miss Hinton, and myself.’

Miss Aldclyffe, like a good many others in her position, had plainly not realized that a son of her tenant and inferior could have become an educated man, who had learnt to feel his individuality, to view society from a Bohemian standpoint, far outside the farming grade in Carriford parish, and that hence he had all a developed man’s unorthodox opinion about the subordination of classes.  And fully conscious of the labyrinth into which he had wandered between his wish to behave honourably in the dilemma of his engagement to his cousin Adelaide and the intensity of his love for Cytherea, Springrove was additionally sensitive to any allusion to the case.  He had spoken to Miss Aldclyffe with considerable warmth.

And Miss Aldclyffe was not a woman likely to be far behind any second person in warming to a mood of defiance.  It seemed as if she were prepared to put up with a cold refusal, but that her haughtiness resented a criticism of her conduct ending in a rebuke.  By this, Manston’s discreditable object, which had been made hers by compulsion only, was now adopted by choice.  She flung herself into the work.

A fiery man in such a case would have relinquished persuasion and tried palpable force.  A fiery woman added unscrupulousness and evolved daring strategy; and in her obstinacy, and to sustain herself as mistress, she descended to an action the meanness of which haunted her conscience to her dying hour.

‘I don’t quite see, Mr. Springrove,’ she said, ’that I am altogether what you are pleased to call a stranger.  I have known your family, at any rate, for a good many years, and I know Miss Graye particularly well, and her state of mind with regard to this matter.’

Perplexed love makes us credulous and curious as old women.  Edward was willing, he owned it to himself, to get at Cytherea’s state of mind, even through so dangerous a medium.