Manston was silent awhile.  Then he said impetuously:  ’Miss Graye, I will not mince matters—­I love you—­you know it.  Stratagem they say is fair in love, and I am compelled to adopt it now.  Forgive me, for I cannot help it.  Consent to be my wife at any time that may suit you—­any remote day you may name will satisfy me—­and you shall find him well provided for.’

For the first time in her life she truly dreaded the handsome man at her side who pleaded thus selfishly, and shrank from the hot voluptuous nature of his passion for her, which, disguise it as he might under a quiet and polished exterior, at times radiated forth with a scorching white heat.  She perceived how animal was the love which bargained.

‘I do not love you, Mr. Manston,’ she replied coldly.

5.  FROM THE FIRST TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST

The long sunny days of the later summer-time brought only the same dreary accounts from Budmouth, and saw Cytherea paying the same sad visits.

She grew perceptibly weaker, in body and mind.  Manston still persisted in his suit, but with more of his former indirectness, now that he saw how unexpectedly well she stood an open attack.  His was the system of Dares at the Sicilian games—­

     ’He, like a captain who beleaguers round
      Some strong-built castle on a rising ground,
      Views all the approaches with observing eyes,
      This and that other part again he tries,
      And more on industry than force relies.’

Miss Aldclyffe made it appear more clearly than ever that aid to Owen from herself depended entirely upon Cytherea’s acceptance of her steward.  Hemmed in and distressed, Cytherea’s answers to his importunities grew less uniform; they were firm, or wavering, as Owen’s malady fluctuated.  Had a register of her pitiful oscillations been kept, it would have rivalled in pathos the diary wherein De Quincey tabulates his combat with Opium—­perhaps as noticeable an instance as any in which a thrilling dramatic power has been given to mere numerals.  Thus she wearily and monotonously lived through the month, listening on Sundays to the well-known round of chapters narrating the history of Elijah and Elisha in famine and drought; on week-days to buzzing flies in hot sunny rooms.  ‘So like, so very like, was day to day.’  Extreme lassitude seemed all that the world could show her.

Her state was in this wise, when one afternoon, having been with her brother, she met the surgeon, and begged him to tell the actual truth concerning Owen’s condition.

The reply was that he feared that the first operation had not been thorough; that although the wound had healed, another attempt might still be necessary, unless nature were left to effect her own cure.  But the time such a self-healing proceeding would occupy might be ruinous.

‘How long would it be?’ she said.

‘It is impossible to say.  A year or two, more or less.’