1. THE FIFTH OF JANUARY. BEFORE DAWNWe pass over the intervening weeks. The time of the story is
thus advanced more than a quarter of a year.
On the midnight preceding the morning which 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 amid the years of her short though
varied past, and thinking of the threshold upon which she stood.
Days and months had dimmed the form of Edward Springrove like the
gauzes 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 admit: that she did not
approach Manston
