midnight
` I shall not have it altered , ' said Cytherea firmly ; ` it has been altered once already : I shall let it be . ' We 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 with feelings which could by any stretch of words be called hymeneal , she calmly owned .