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1 THE FIFTH OF JANUARY BEFORE DAWN We pass over the intervening weeks The time of the story is thus advancedthewhich would make her the wife of a man whose presence fascinated her into involuntariness of bearing, and whom in absence she almost dreaded, Cytherea lay in her little bed, vainly endeavouring to sleep

She had been looking back a of the threshold upon which she stood Days and auzes of a vanishing stage-scene, but his dying voice could still be heard faintly behind That a soft small chord in her still vibrated true to his memory, she would not ads which could by any stretch of words be called hymeneal, she calmly owned

'Why do I marry him?' she said to herself 'Because Owen, dear Owen my brother, wishes me to marry him Because Mr Manston is, and has been, uniformly kind to Owen, and to me "Act in obedience to the dictates of co of poverty How many thousands of women like you marry every year for the same reason, to secure a hoo far to ht, I suppose, for him to say that O, if people only knehat a tirows up in the heart of a friendless woman who is blown about like a reed shaken with the wind, as I anation of one's self by the naet a husband Scheme tomy heart; I know that if I only were concerned, I should like risking a single future But why should I pleaseotherwise I please those who are more valuable than I?' In the midst of desultory reflections like these, which alternated with surmises as to the inexplicable connection that appeared to exist between her intended husband and Miss Aldclyffe, she heard dull noises outside the walls of the house, which she could not quite fancy to be caused by the wind She seemed doomed to such disturbances at critical periods of her existence 'It is strange,' she pondered, 'that this ht in Knapwater House should be disturbed precisely asintervened' As theas if so the wall below her ith a bunch of switches