red,
for she added directly afterwards: "O, what have I said!" and was quite
overcome again--this time with fright. Her vexation that the woman now
doubted the genuineness of her other name was very much greater than
that the innkeeper did, and it is evident that to blind the woman was
her main object. He also learnt from words the elderly woman casually
dropped, that meetings of the same kind had been held before, and that
the falseness of the soi-disant Miss Jane Taylor's name had never been
suspected by this dependent or confederate till then.

'She recovered, rested there for an hour, and first sending off her
companion peremptorily (which was another odd thing), she left the
house, offering the landlord all the money she had to say nothing about
the circumstance. He has never seen her since, according to his
own account. I said to him again and again, "Did you find any more
particulars afterwards?" "Not a syllable," he said. O, he should never
hear any more of that! too many years had passed since it happened. "At
any rate, you found out her surname?" I said. "Well, well, that's my
secret," he went on. "Perhaps I should never have been in this part of
the world if it hadn't been for that. I failed as a publican, you know."
I imagine the situation of gateman was given him and his debts paid off
as a bribe to silence; but I can't say. "Ah, yes!" he said, with a long
breath. "I have never heard that name mentioned since that time till
to-night, and then there instantly rose to my eyes the vision of that
young lady lying in a fainting fit." He then stopped talking and fell
asleep. Telling the story must have relieved him as it did the Ancient
Mariner, for he did not move a muscle or make another sound for the
remainder of the night. Now isn't that an odd story?'

'It is indeed,' Cytherea murmured. 'Very, very strange.'

'Why should she have said your most uncommon name?' continued Owen. 'The
man was evidently truthful, for there was not motive sufficient for his
invention of such a tale, and he could not have done it either.'

Cytherea looked long at her brother. 'Don't you recognize anything else
in connection with the story?' she said.

'What?' he asked.

'Do you remember what poor papa once let drop--that Cytherea was
the name of his first sweetheart in Bloomsbury, who so mysteriously
renounced him? A sort of intuition tells me that this was the same
woman.'

'O no--not likely,' said her brother sceptically.