‘I am going back to London again to-morrow,’ said Springrove, ’and I called to say a word before going.  Where is . . . ?’

’She has just run upstairs.  Come in—­never mind scraping your shoes—­we are regular cottagers now; stone floor, yawning chimney-corner, and all, you see.’

‘Mrs. Manston came,’ said Edward awkwardly, when he had sat down in the chimney-corner by preference.

‘Yes.’  At mention of one of his skeletons Owen lost his blitheness at once, and fell into a reverie.

‘The history of her escape is very simple.’

‘Very.’

’You know I always had wondered, when my father was telling any of the circumstances of the fire to me, how it could be that a woman could sleep so soundly as to be unaware of her horrid position till it was too late even to give shout or sound of any kind.’

’Well, I think that would have been possible, considering her long wearisome journey.  People have often been suffocated in their beds before they awoke.  But it was hardly likely a body would be completely burnt to ashes as this was assumed to be, though nobody seemed to see it at the time.  And how positive the surgeon was too, about those bits of bone!  Why he should have been so, nobody can tell.  I cannot help saying that if it has ever been possible to find pure stupidity incarnate, it was in that jury of Carriford.  There existed in the mass the stupidity of twelve and not the penetration of one.’

‘Is she quite well?’ said Springrove.

’Who?—­O, my sister, Cytherea.  Thank you, nearly well, now.  I’ll call her.’

‘Wait one minute.  I have a word to say to you.’

Owen sat down again.

’You know, without my saying it, that I love Cytherea as dearly as ever. . . .  I think she loves me too,—­does she really?’

There was in Owen enough of that worldly policy on the subject of matchmaking which naturally resides in the breasts of parents and guardians, to give him a certain caution in replying, and, younger as he was by five years than Edward, it had an odd effect.

‘Well, she may possibly love you still,’ he said, as if rather in doubt as to the truth of his words.

Springrove’s countenance instantly saddened; he had expected a simple ‘Yes,’ at the very least.  He continued in a tone of greater depression—­

’Supposing she does love me, would it be fair to you and to her if I made her an offer of marriage, with these dreary conditions attached—­that we lived for a few years on the narrowest system, till a great debt, which all honour and duty require me to pay off, shall be paid?  My father, by reason of the misfortune that befell him, is under a great obligation to Miss Aldclyffe.  He is getting old, and losing his energies.  I am attempting to work free of the burden.  This makes my prospects gloomy enough at present.

‘But consider again,’ he went on.  ’Cytherea has been left in a nameless and unsatisfactory, though innocent state, by this unfortunate, and now void, marriage with Manston.  A marriage with me, though under the—­materially—­untoward conditions I have mentioned, would make us happy; it would give her a locus standi.  If she wished to be out of the sound of her misfortunes we would go to another part of England—­emigrate—­do anything.’