‘Yes, madam, I did,’ said Cytherea to Miss Aldclyffe’s reflected face.
Miss Aldclyffe again looked at Cytherea’s reflection as if she were on the point of explaining. Again she checked her resolve, and said lightly—
‘Few of my maids discover that I wear it always. I generally keep it a secret—not that it matters much. But I was careless with you, and seemed to want to tell you. You win me to make confidences that....’
She ceased, took Cytherea’s hand in her own, lifted the locket with the other, touched the spring and disclosed a miniature.
‘It is a handsome face, is it not?’ she whispered mournfully, and even timidly.
‘It is.’
But the sight had gone through Cytherea like an electric shock, and there was an instantaneous awakening of perception in her, so thrilling in its presence as to be well-nigh insupportable. The face in the miniature was the face of her own father—younger and fresher than she had ever known him—but her father!
Was this the woman of his wild and unquenchable early love? And was this the woman who had figured in the gate-man’s story as answering the name of Cytherea before her judgment was awake? Surely it was. And if so, here was the tangible outcrop of a romantic and hidden stratum of the past hitherto seen only in her imagination; but as far as her scope allowed, clearly defined therein by reason of its strangeness.
Miss Aldclyffe’s eyes and thoughts were so intent upon the miniature that she had not been conscious of Cytherea’s start of surprise. She went on speaking in a low and abstracted tone.
‘Yes, I lost him.’ She interrupted her words by a short meditation, and went on again. ‘I lost him by excess of honesty as regarded my past. But it was best that it should be so.... I was led to think rather more than usual of the circumstances to-night because of your name. It is pronounced the same way, though differently spelt.’