To hasten away at the end of the toilet, to tell Mrs. Morris—­who stood waiting in a little room prepared for her, with tea poured out, bread-and-butter cut into diaphanous slices, and eggs arranged —­that she wanted no breakfast:  then to shut herself alone in her bedroom, was her only thought.  She was followed thither by the well-intentioned matron with a cup of tea and one piece of bread-and-butter on a tray, cheerfully insisting that she should eat it.

To those who grieve, innocent cheerfulness seems heartless levity.  ‘No, thank you, Mrs. Morris,’ she said, keeping the door closed.  Despite the incivility of the action, Cytherea could not bear to let a pleasant person see her face then.

Immediate revocation—­even if revocation would be more effective by postponement—­is the impulse of young wounded natures.  Cytherea went to her blotting-book, took out the long letter so carefully written, so full of gushing remarks and tender hints, and sealed up so neatly with a little seal bearing ‘Good Faith’ as its motto, tore the missive into fifty pieces, and threw them into the grate.  It was then the bitterest of anguishes to look upon some of the words she had so lovingly written, and see them existing only in mutilated forms without meaning—­to feel that his eye would never read them, nobody ever know how ardently she had penned them.

Pity for one’s self for being wasted is mostly present in these moods of abnegation.

The meaning of all his allusions, his abruptness in telling her of his love, his constraint at first, then his desperate manner of speaking, was clear.  They must have been the last flickerings of a conscience not quite dead to all sense of perfidiousness and fickleness.  Now he had gone to London:  she would be dismissed from his memory, in the same way as Miss Aldclyffe had said.  And here she was in Edward’s own parish, reminded continually of him by what she saw and heard.  The landscape, yesterday so much and so bright to her, was now but as the banquet-hall deserted—­all gone but herself.

Miss Aldclyffe had wormed her secret out of her, and would now be continually mocking her for her trusting simplicity in believing him.  It was altogether unbearable:  she would not stay there.

She went downstairs and found Miss Aldclyffe had gone into the breakfast-room, but that Captain Aldclyffe, who rose later with increasing infirmities, had not yet made his appearance.  Cytherea entered.  Miss Aldclyffe was looking out of the window, watching a trail of white smoke along the distant landscape—­signifying a passing train.  At Cytherea’s entry she turned and looked inquiry.

‘I must tell you now,’ began Cytherea, in a tremulous voice.

‘Well, what?’ Miss Aldclyffe said.

’I am not going to stay with you.  I must go away—­a very long way.  I am very sorry, but indeed I can’t remain!’

‘Pooh—­what shall we hear next?’ Miss Aldclyffe surveyed Cytherea’s face with leisurely criticism.  ’You are breaking your heart again about that worthless young Springrove.  I knew how it would be.  It is as Hallam says of Juliet—­what little reason you may have possessed originally has all been whirled away by this love.  I shan’t take this notice, mind.’