Concentrated essence of woman pervaded the room rather than air.  ‘She didn’t! and it wasn’t shallowness!’ Cytherea burst out, with brimming eyes. ’’Twas deep deceit on one side, and entire confidence on the other—­yes, it was!’ The pent-up emotion had swollen and swollen inside the young thing till the dam could no longer embay it.  The instant the words were out she would have given worlds to have been able to recall them.

‘Do you know her—­or him?’ said Miss Hinton, starting with suspicion at the warmth shown.

The two rivals had now lost their personality quite.  There was the same keen brightness of eye, the same movement of the mouth, the same mind in both, as they looked doubtingly and excitedly at each other.  As is invariably the case with women when a man they care for is the subject of an excitement among them, the situation abstracted the differences which distinguished them as individuals, and left only the properties common to them as atoms of a sex.

Cytherea caught at the chance afforded her of not betraying herself.  ‘Yes, I know her,’ she said.

‘Well,’ said Miss Hinton, ’I am really vexed if my speaking so lightly of any friend of yours has hurt your feelings, but—­’

‘O, never mind,’ Cytherea returned; ’it doesn’t matter, Miss Hinton.  I think I must leave you now.  I have to call at other places.  Yes —­I must go.’

Miss Hinton, in a perplexed state of mind, showed her visitor politely downstairs to the door.  Here Cytherea bade her a hurried adieu, and flitted down the garden into the lane.

She persevered in her duties with a wayward pleasure in giving herself misery, as was her wont.  Mr. Springrove’s name was next on the list, and she turned towards his dwelling, the Three Tranters Inn.

3.  FOUR TO FIVE P.M.

The cottages along Carriford village street were not so close but that on one side or other of the road was always a hedge of hawthorn or privet, over or through which could be seen gardens or orchards rich with produce.  It was about the middle of the early apple-harvest, and the laden trees were shaken at intervals by the gatherers; the soft pattering of the falling crop upon the grassy ground being diversified by the loud rattle of vagrant ones upon a rail, hencoop, basket, or lean-to roof, or upon the rounded and stooping backs of the collectors—­mostly children, who would have cried bitterly at receiving such a smart blow from any other quarter, but smilingly assumed it to be but fun in apples.

The Three Tranters Inn, a many-gabled, mediaeval building, constructed almost entirely of timber, plaster, and thatch, stood close to the line of the roadside, almost opposite the churchyard, and was connected with a row of cottages on the left by thatched outbuildings.  It was an uncommonly characteristic and handsome specimen of the genuine roadside inn of bygone times; and standing on one of the great highways in this part of England,