The gate closed between them.
‘You don’t want me to help you in anything now, Cytherea?’ he repeated.
If he had spoken what he felt, ‘I want very much to help you, Cytherea, and have been watching Manston on your account,’ she would gladly have accepted his offer. As it was, she was perplexed, and raised her eyes to his, not so fearlessly as before her trouble, but as modestly, and with still enough brightness in them to do fearful execution as she said over the gate—
‘No, thank you.’
She returned to Tolchurch weary with her day’s work. Owen’s greeting was anxious—
‘Well, Cytherea?’
She gave him the words from the report of the inquest, pencilled on a slip of paper.
‘Now to find out the name of the street and number,’ Owen remarked.
‘Owen,’ she said, ‘will you forgive me for what I am going to say? I don’t think I can—indeed I don’t think I can—take any further steps towards disentangling the mystery. I still think it a useless task, and it does not seem any duty of mine to be revenged upon Mr. Manston in any way.’ She added more gravely, ‘It is beneath my dignity as a woman to labour for this; I have felt it so all day.’
‘Very well,’ he said, somewhat shortly; ‘I shall work without you then. There’s dignity in justice.’ He caught sight of her pale tired face, and the dilated eye which always appeared in her with weariness. ‘Darling,’ he continued warmly, and kissing her, ‘you shall not work so hard again—you are worn out quite. But you must let me do as I like.’