‘Yes—­say I should be pleased if he would,’ repeated Miss Aldclyffe, smiling.  ’Good-bye.  Don’t hurry in your walk.  If you can’t get easily through your task to-day put off some of it till to-morrow.’

Each then started on her rounds:  Cytherea going in the first place to the old manor-house.  Mr. Manston was not indoors, which was a relief to her.  She called then on the two gentleman-farmers’ wives, who soon transacted their business with her, frigidly indifferent to her personality.  A person who socially is nothing is thought less of by people who are not much than by those who are a great deal.

She then turned towards Peakhill Cottage, the residence of Miss Hinton, who lived there happily enough, with an elderly servant and a house-dog as companions.  Her father, and last remaining parent, had retired thither four years before this time, after having filled the post of editor to the Casterbridge Chronicle for eighteen or twenty years.  There he died soon after, and though comparatively a poor man, he left his daughter sufficiently well provided for as a modest fundholder and claimant of sundry small sums in dividends to maintain herself as mistress at Peakhill.

At Cytherea’s knock an inner door was heard to open and close, and footsteps crossed the passage hesitatingly.  The next minute Cytherea stood face to face with the lady herself.

Adelaide Hinton was about nine-and-twenty years of age.  Her hair was plentiful, like Cytherea’s own; her teeth equalled Cytherea’s in regularity and whiteness.  But she was much paler, and had features too transparent to be in place among household surroundings.  Her mouth expressed love less forcibly than Cytherea’s, and, as a natural result of her greater maturity, her tread was less elastic, and she was more self-possessed.

She had been a girl of that kind which mothers praise as not forward, by way of contrast, when disparaging those warmer ones with whom loving is an end and not a means.  Men of forty, too, said of her, ‘a good sensible wife for any man, if she cares to marry,’ the caring to marry being thrown in as the vaguest hypothesis, because she was so practical.  Yet it would be singular if, in such cases, the important subject of marriage should be excluded from manipulation by hands that are ready for practical performance in every domestic concern besides.

Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.

’Good afternoon!  O yes—­Miss Graye, from Miss Aldclyffe’s.  I have seen you at church, and I am so glad you have called!  Come in.  I wonder if I have change enough to pay my subscription.’  She spoke girlishly.

Adelaide, when in the company of a younger woman, always levelled herself down to that younger woman’s age from a sense of justice to herself—­as if, though not her own age at common law, it was in equity.

‘It doesn’t matter.  I’ll come again.’

’Yes, do at any time; not only on this errand.  But you must step in for a minute.  Do.’