‘You would rather not, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

Miss Aldclyffe shifted her ground.  ‘Were you ever in love?’ she inquired suddenly.

Cytherea was surprised to hear how quickly the voice had altered from tenderness to harshness, vexation, and disappointment.

‘Yes—­I think I was—­once,’ she murmured.

‘Aha!  And were you ever kissed by a man?’

A pause.

‘Well, were you?’ said Miss Aldclyffe, rather sharply.

‘Don’t press me to tell—­I can’t—­indeed, I won’t, madam!’

Miss Aldclyffe removed her arms from Cytherea’s neck. ’’Tis now with you as it is always with all girls,’ she said, in jealous and gloomy accents.  ’You are not, after all, the innocent I took you for.  No, no.’  She then changed her tone with fitful rapidity.  ’Cytherea, try to love me more than you love him—­do.  I love you more sincerely than any man can.  Do, Cythie:  don’t let any man stand between us.  O, I can’t bear that!’ She clasped Cytherea’s neck again.

‘I must love him now I have begun,’ replied the other.

‘Must—­yes—­must,’ said the elder lady reproachfully.  ’Yes, women are all alike.  I thought I had at last found an artless woman who had not been sullied by a man’s lips, and who had not practised or been practised upon by the arts which ruin all the truth and sweetness and goodness in us.  Find a girl, if you can, whose mouth and ears have not been made a regular highway of by some man or another!  Leave the admittedly notorious spots—­the drawing-rooms of society—­and look in the villages—­leave the villages and search in the schools—­and you can hardly find a girl whose heart has not been had—­is not an old thing half worn out by some He or another!  If men only knew the staleness of the freshest of us! that nine times out of ten the “first love” they think they are winning from a woman is but the hulk of an old wrecked affection, fitted with new sails and re-used.  O Cytherea, can it be that you, too, are like the rest?’

‘No, no, no,’ urged Cytherea, awed by the storm she had raised in the impetuous woman’s mind.  ‘He only kissed me once—­twice I mean.’

’He might have done it a thousand times if he had cared to, there’s no doubt about that, whoever his lordship is.  You are as bad as I —­we are all alike; and I—­an old fool—­have been sipping at your mouth as if it were honey, because I fancied no wasting lover knew the spot.  But a minute ago, and you seemed to me like a fresh spring meadow—­now you seem a dusty highway.’

‘O no, no!’ Cytherea was not weak enough to shed tears except on extraordinary occasions, but she was fain to begin sobbing now.  She wished Miss Aldclyffe would go to her own room, and leave her and her treasured dreams alone.  This vehement imperious affection was in one sense soothing, but yet it was not of the kind that Cytherea’s instincts desired.  Though it was generous, it seemed somewhat too rank and capricious for endurance.