The name and address were written on a separate slip of paper.
'So it's to be all right at last then,' said Manston's friend. 'But after all there's another woman in the case. You don't seem very sorry for the little thing who is put to such distress by this turn of affairs? I wonder you can let her go so coolly.' The speaker was looking out between the mullions of the window--noticing that some of the lights were glazed in lozenges, some in squares--as he said the words, otherwise he would have seen the passionate expression of agonized hopelessness that flitted across the steward's countenance when the remark was made. He did not see it, and Manston answered after a short interval. The way in which he spoke of the young girl who had believed herself his wife, whom, a few short days ago, he had openly idolized, and whom, in his secret heart, he idolized still, as far as such a form of love was compatible with his nature, showed that from policy or otherwise, he meant to act up to the requirements of the position into which fate appeared determined to drive him.
'That's neither here nor there,' he said; 'it is a point of honour to do as I am doing, and there's an end of it.' 'Yes. Only I thought you used not to care overmuch about your first bargain.' 'I certainly did not at one time. One is apt to feel rather weary of wives when they are so devilish civil under all aspects, as she used to be. But anything for a change--Abigail is lost, but Michal is recovered. You would hardly believe it, but she seems in fancy to be quite another bride--in fact, almost as if she had really risen from the dead, instead of having only done so virtually.' 'You let the young pink one know that the other has come or is coming?' 'Cui bono?' The steward meditated critically, showing a portion of his intensely wide and regular teeth within the ruby lips.
'I cannot say anything to her that will do any good,' he resumed.
'It would be awkward--either seeing or communicating with her again.
The best plan to adopt will be to let matters take their course --she'll find it all out soon enough.' Manston found himself alone a few minutes later. He buried his face in his hands, and murmured, 'O my lost one! O my Cytherea! That it should come to this is hard for me! 'Tis now all darkness--"a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness."' Yes, the artificial bearing which this extraordinary man had adopted before strangers ever since he had overheard the conversation at the inn, left him now, and he mourned for Cytherea aloud.