k it is hardly worth while to trouble you further
in this,' continued the lady. 'He's quite good enough for a little
insignificant place like mine at Knapwater; and I know that I could not
get on with one of the others for a single month. We'll try him.'

'Certainly, Miss Aldclyffe,' said the lawyer. And Mr. Manston was
written to, to the effect that he was the successful competitor.

'Did you see how unmistakably her temper was getting the better of her,
that minute you were in the room?' said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their
client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody's
character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable
slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, the
Improver, into honourable circumspection.

We frequently find that the quality which, conjoined with the simplicity
of the child, is vice, is virtue when it pervades the knowledge of the
man.

'She was as near as damn-it to boiling over when I added up her man,'
continued Nyttleton. 'His handsome face is his qualification in her
eyes. They have met before; I saw that.'

'He didn't seem conscious of it,' said the junior.

'He didn't. That was rather puzzling to me. But still, if ever a woman's
face spoke out plainly that she was in love with a man, hers did that
she was with him. Poor old maid, she's almost old enough to be his
mother. If that Manston's a schemer he'll marry her, as sure as I am
Nyttleton. Let's hope he's honest, however.'

'I don't think she's in love with him,' said Tayling. He had seen but
little of the pair, and yet he could not reconcile what he had noticed
in Miss Aldclyffe's behaviour with the idea that it was the bearing of a
woman towards her lover.

'Well, your experience of the fiery phenomenon is more recent than
mine,' rejoined Nyttleton carelessly. 'And you may remember the nature
of it best.'

VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS

1. FROM THE THIRD TO THE NINETEENTH OF SEPTEMBER

Miss Aldclyffe's tenderness towards Cytherea, between the hours of her
irascibility, increased till it became no less than doting fondness.
Like Nature in the tropics, with her hurricanes and the subsequent
luxuriant vegetation effacing their ravages, Miss Aldclyffe compensated
for her outbursts by excess of generosity afterwards. She seemed to be
completely won out of herself by close contact with a young woman whose
modesty was absolutely unimpaired, and whose artlessness wa