‘By such toilsome labour as this I got him here as my steward. And I wanted to see him your husband, Cytherea!—the husband of my true lover’s child. It was a sweet dream to me.... Pity me—O, pity me! To die unloved is more than I can bear! I loved your father, and I love him now.’
That was the burden of Cytherea Aldclyffe.
‘I suppose you must leave me again—you always leave me,’ she said, after holding the young woman’s hand a long while in silence.
‘No—indeed I’ll stay always. Do you like me to stay?’
Miss Aldclyffe in the jaws of death was Miss Aldclyffe still, though the old fire had degenerated to mere phosphorescence now. ‘But you are your brother’s housekeeper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, of course you cannot stay with me on a sudden like this.... Go home, or he will be at a loss for things. And to-morrow morning come again, won’t you, dearest, come again—we’ll fetch you. But you mustn’t stay now, and put Owen out. O no—it would be absurd.’ The absorbing concern about trifles of daily routine, which is so often seen in very sick people, was present here.
Cytherea promised to go home, and come the next morning to stay continuously.
‘Stay till I die then, will you not? Yes, till I die—I shan’t die till to-morrow.’
‘We hope for your recovery—all of us.’