believing they do great justice to my memory by this.  But they will never, never realize that it was my single opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily held in those two words of pity, “Poor girl!” was a whole life to me; as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads, smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs:  that it was my world, what is to them their world, and they in that life of mine, however much I cared for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be.  Nobody can enter into another’s nature truly, that’s what is so grievous.’

‘Well, it cannot be helped,’ said Owen.

‘But we must not stay here,’ she continued, starting up and going.  ‘We shall be missed.  I’ll do my best, Owen—­I will, indeed.’

It had been decided that on account of the wretched state of the roads, the newly-married pair should not drive to the station till the latest hour in the afternoon at which they could get a train to take them to Southampton (their destination that night) by a reasonable time in the evening.  They intended the next morning to cross to Havre, and thence to Paris—­a place Cytherea had never visited—­for their wedding tour.

The afternoon drew on.  The packing was done.  Cytherea was so restless that she could stay still nowhere.  Miss Aldclyffe, who, though she took little part in the day’s proceedings, was, as it were, instinctively conscious of all their movements, put down her charge’s agitation for once as the natural result of the novel event, and Manston himself was as indulgent as could be wished.

At length Cytherea wandered alone into the conservatory.  When in it, she thought she would run across to the hot-house in the outer garden, having in her heart a whimsical desire that she should also like to take a last look at the familiar flowers and luxuriant leaves collected there.  She pulled on a pair of overshoes, and thither she went.  Not a soul was in or around the place.  The gardener was making merry on Manston’s and her account.

The happiness that a generous spirit derives from the belief that it exists in others is often greater than the primary happiness itself.  The gardener thought ‘How happy they are!’ and the thought made him happier than they.

Coming out of the forcing-house again, she was on the point of returning indoors, when a feeling that these moments of solitude would be her last of freedom induced her to prolong them a little, and she stood still, unheeding the wintry aspect of the curly-leaved plants, the straw-covered beds, and the bare fruit-trees around her.  The garden, no part of which was visible from the house, sloped down to a narrow river at the foot, dividing it from the meadows without.

A man was lingering along the public path on the other side of the river; she fancied she knew the form.  Her resolutions, taken in the presence of Owen, did not fail her now.  She hoped and prayed that it might not be one who had stolen her heart away, and still kept it.  Why should he have reappeared at all, when he had declared that he went out of her sight for ever?