‘How comes she ill?’ Owen inquired of the coachman.
‘She caught a violent cold by standing out of doors in the damp, on the night the steward ran away. Ever since, till this morning, she complained of fulness and heat in the chest. This morning the maid ran in and told her suddenly that Manston had killed himself in gaol—she shrieked—broke a blood-vessel—and fell upon the floor. Severe internal haemorrhage continued for some time and then stopped. They say she is sure to get over it; but she herself says no. She has suffered from it before.’
Cytherea was ready in a few moments, and entered the carriage.
3. SEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.
Soft as was Cytherea’s motion along the corridors of Knapwater House, the preternaturally keen intelligence of the suffering woman caught the maiden’s well-known footfall. She entered the sick-chamber with suspended breath.
In the room everything was so still, and sensation was as it were so rarefied by solicitude, that thinking seemed acting, and the lady’s weak act of trying to live a silent wrestling with all the powers of the universe. Nobody was present but Mr. Raunham, the nurse having left the room on Cytherea’s entry, and the physician and surgeon being engaged in a whispered conversation in a side-chamber. Their patient had been pronounced out of danger.
Cytherea went to the bedside, and was instantly recognized. O, what a change—Miss Aldclyffe dependent upon pillows! And yet not a forbidding change. With weakness had come softness of aspect: the haughtiness was extracted from the frail thin countenance, and a sweeter mild placidity had taken its place.
Miss Aldclyffe signified to Mr. Raunham that she would like to be alone with Cytherea.
‘Cytherea?’ she faintly whispered the instant the door was closed.
Cytherea clasped the lady’s weak hand, and sank beside her.