Though barely fifty years of age, his hair was as white as snow, contrasting strangely with the redness of his skin, which was as fresh and healthy as a lad’s. Cytherea’s bright eyes, mutely and demurely glancing up at him Sunday after Sunday, had been the means of driving away many of the saturnine humours that creep into an empty heart during the hours of a solitary life; in this case, however, to supplant them, when she left his parish, by those others of a more aching nature which accompany an over-full one. In short, he had been on the verge of feeling towards her that passion to which his dignified self-respect would not give its true name, even in the privacy of his own thought. He received her kindly; but she was not disposed to be frank with him. He saw her wish to be reserved, and with genuine good taste and good nature made no comment whatever upon her request to be allowed to see the Chronicle for the year before the last. He placed the papers before her on his study table, with a timidity as great as her own, and then left her entirely to herself. She turned them over till she came to the first heading connected with the subject of her search--‘Disastrous Fire and Loss of Life at Carriford.’ The sight, and its calamitous bearing upon her own life, made her so dizzy that she could, for a while, hardly decipher the letters. Stifling recollection by an effort she nerved herself to her work, and carefully read the column. The account reminded her of no other fact than was remembered already. She turned on to the following week’s report of the inquest. After a miserable perusal she could find no more pertaining to Mrs. Manston’s address than this:-- ‘ABRAHAM BROWN, of Hoxton, London, at whose house the deceased woman had been living, deposed,’ etc. Nobody else from London had attended the inquest. She arose to depart, first sending a message of thanks to Mr. Raunham, who was out of doors gardening. He stuck his spade into the ground, and accompanied her to the gate. ‘Can I help you in anything, Cytherea?’ he said, using her Christian name by an intuition that unpleasant memories might be revived if he called her Miss Graye after wishing her good-bye as Mrs. Manston at the wedding. Cytherea saw the motive and appreciated it, nevertheless replying evasively-- ‘I only guess and fear.’ He earnestly looked at her again. ‘Promise me that if you want assistance, and you think I can give it, you will come to me.’ ‘I will,’ she said. The gate closed between them. ‘You don’t want me to help you in anything now, Cytherea?’ he repeated. If he had spoken what he felt, ‘I want very much to help you, Cytherea, and have been watching Manston on your account,’ she would gladly have accepted his offer. As it was, she was perplexed, and raised her eyes to his, not so fearlessly as before her trouble, but as modestly, and with still enough brightness in them to do fearful execution as she said over the gate-- ‘No, thank you.’