I

When Penelope Wantley became the mistress of Monk's Eype, she left the villa as she had always known it, for her sense of beauty compelled her to approve the few changes which had been made to the great bare rooms during her father's long tenure of the place. As child and as girl she had found there much that satisfied her craving for the romantic and the exquisite in nature and in art; and long after she was a grown-up woman the flagged terraces, each guarded by a moss-grown balustrade, broken at one end by steep stone steps which led from one rampart to another, commanding all the way down the blue-green and grey bars of moving water below, served as background to the memoried delights of her childhood.

Penelope the woman had but to withdraw herself from what was about her to see once more the child Penelope, watching with fascinated gaze the stone and marble denizens of the gardens and the wood. In the summer twilight, just before little Penelope went up to bed, the graceful water-nymphs sometimes came down from their pedestals on the bowling-green which lay beyond the western wing of the villa, and the malicious, teasing faun, leaving the spot from which he gazed over the changing seas, ranged at will through the little pine-wood edging the open down. Even in the daylight the little girl sometimes thought she caught glimpses of gentle green-capped fairies—a whole world of strange, uncanny folk—who played 'touch' and blind-man's buff among the hanging creepers and at the foot of each of the flower-laden bushes which covered the slopes of this enchanted garden.

In these fancies the young friends who occasionally came over to see her, riding their ponies or driving their governess-carts, from distant country-houses, had never any share. More was told to a boy with whom at one time little Penelope had been much thrown. David Winfrith, the son of a neighbouring clergyman, who, when shunned for no actual fault of his own, had seen himself and his only child received very kindly by Lord and Lady Wantley, was older than Penelope by those three or four years which in childhood count so much, and later count so little. He had spent more than one holiday at Monk's Eype, sharing Penelope's play-room, which, partly hollowed out of the cliff, was lifted a few feet above the beach by rude stone pillars. There a large solid table, filling up the whole space in front of the wide window, made a fine 'vantage-ground for the display of the boy's skill as toy-maker and boat-builder.

Penelope, looking back, associated David Winfrith with her earliest memories of Monk's Eype, and for her the villa, especially certain of the great rooms of which the furnishings had been so little disturbed for close on a hundred years, was instinct also with the thought and the vanished figure of her father, who, when wearied and cast down by being brought into contact with the misery he did so much to relieve, found in his western home a great source of consolation and peace.

II

Lord Wantley, or rather his wife, had been among the first and most ardent patrons of the group of painters who chose to be known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. More than one of these had spent happy days at Monk's Eype, and it had been owing to the advice of the most famous survivor of the early P.R.B. that Penelope had been allowed, and even encouraged, to devote much of her early girlhood to the serious pursuit of art. How far her parents had been right her mother sometimes doubted; but there could be no doubt that the great artist had truly divined in the beautiful girl a touch of exceptional power—some would have called it by a rarer name. It was not his fault if such circumstances as youth, rank, beauty, and ultimately great wealth, had asserted their claims, and turned one who might have been a great woman artist into an amateur.

Therefore it was rather as a lover of beauty and as a woman, fully, if rather disdainfully, conscious of her own feminine supremacy, that Mrs. Robinson had been so far well content to leave the spacious rooms of her own, as it had been her father's, favourite home, in much the same order as when they had been arranged under the eye of her great-uncle Ludovic, known in local story as the Popish Lord Wantley.

There was a side of her nature which made her feel peculiarly at ease among the faded splendours of these Italian-looking rooms. Her tall figure, slenderly stately in its proportions; the small, well-poised head; clear-cut, delicate features; deep, troubled-looking blue eyes; masses of red-brown hair, drawn high above the broad low forehead, in the fashion worn when powdered locks lent charm to the plainest face—in short, her whole presence and individuality made a satisfying harmony with faded brocades, the ivory inlaid chairs and tables, and the massive gilt dower-chests, which had no desecration to fear from their present owner's beautiful hands.

That Penelope could create as well as preserve beauty of surroundings—the one power seems nowadays as rare as the other—was seen in the room, half studio, half library, where, when at Monk's Eype, she chose to spend much of her time.

Situated at the extreme western end of the villa, on which, indeed, it still formed a strange excrescence, the room had been added to the main building at a time when Penelope's parents had been inclined to believe much more than they afterwards came to do in the power of eloquent speech. The substantial brick walls of the hall, as it was still called by some of the older servants, had witnessed curious gatherings, and heard the voices of many a famous lay-preacher dealing with schemes which, whether practical or nebulous, had all the same single purpose—that of leaving the world better than it had been before.

Penelope Wantley, as a little girl, had once been taken, when in Paris, to see a certain old lady, who had in her day played a considerable rÔle in the brilliant society of the forties. The room in which the English visitors had been received made a deep impression on the child's imagination. The walls were painted in that soft shade of blue which the turquoise is said to assume when a heart is untrue to its wearer, and which is of all tints that best suited to be a background, whether of human beings or of paintings; and the old lady's furniture had been hidden in what the little Penelope had likened to herself as white dimity overalls. The windows looked out on a fine old garden, along whose shady paths had once walked blind ChÂteaubriand, led by Madame RÉcamier.

Many years later, when Mrs. Robinson was arranging and transforming the one room at Monk's Eype which she felt at liberty to alter and to arrange after her own fancy, she followed, perhaps unconsciously, the scheme of colouring which had so much pleased her childish fancy. But whereas in the French lady's salon there had been no books—indeed, no sign that such a thing as literature existed in the world—books were not lacking at Monk's Eype. Had Penelope followed her own natural instinct, perhaps she would have kept even more closely than she had done to the Frenchwoman's example; but, though she prided herself on being one of the most unconventional of human beings, she was naturally influenced by the atmosphere in which she had always moved and lived.

'By Penelope's books you may know, not Penelope, but Penelope's friends,' her cousin, Lord Wantley, had once observed. He had been tempted to substitute the word 'adorers' for 'friends,' but had checked himself in time, recollecting that the man with whom he was speaking was one to whom the warmer term was notoriously applicable.

As to what the books were—for there was no lack of variety—French novels, much old and modern verse, mock-erudite volumes, and pamphlets of the type that are written a hundredfold round whatever happens to be the fad of the moment, warred here and there with a substantial Blue-Book, or, stranger still, with some volume which contained deep and painful probings into the gloomier problems of life. Such were the contents of the book-shelves, which, by a curious conceit of the present owner of Monk's Eype, framed the tall narrow door connecting her studio with the rest of the building.

Lord Wantley would also have told you that his brilliant cousin never read. That, however, would have been unjust and untrue. Mrs. Robinson, however deeply absorbed in other things, always found time to glance through the books certain of her friends were good enough to send her.

Sometimes, indeed, she felt considerable interest in what she had been bidden to read, and almost always she showed an extraordinary, if passing, insight into the author's meaning; but to tell the truth, and I hope that in so doing I shall not prejudice my readers against my heroine, she was one of those women, a greater number than is in these days suspected, who regard literature much as the modern civilized man of the world regards art. Such a man goes to those exhibitions which have been specially mentioned to him as worthy of notice, but even to the best of these it would never occur to him to go, save with a pleasant companion, a second time; and in buying, it is always the expert on whom he leans, not his own taste and judgment. In the same way Penelope was always willing to read any volume which her world was discussing at the moment, but she would have been a happier woman had she been able sometimes to take up, not necessarily a classic, but at any rate a book of yesterday rather than of to-day.

But if literature was in her room only used in a decorative sense, the water-colours and drawings, the casts, and the bas-reliefs, which were so hung as to form a low dado down the whole length of the studio, were one and all of remarkable quality, and here you touched the quick reality of Penelope's life. In these matters she needed no advice, for, while as an artist she was truly humble, she only cared to measure herself with the best.

There was something pathetic in this beautiful woman's desire to discover hidden genius; only certain French painters with whom she herself from time to time still studied could have told how generous and how intelligent was the help she was ever ready to bestow on those of her fellow art-students whose means were more slender than their talent. It was to these, so rich and yet so poor, that her heart really warmed; it was on them that she bestowed what time that she could spare from herself.

And yet the room which was specially her own showed very few signs of artistic occupation. True, on a plain table were set out paint-boxes, palettes, sketch-books; but an unobservant visitor might have come and gone without knowing that the woman he had come to see ever took up a pencil or used a brush.

The broad low dado, composed of comparatively small water-colours, drawings, and bas-reliefs, was twice broken, each time by a glazed oil-painting, each time by the portrait of a woman.

To the left of the book-framed door, hung a painting of Penelope's mother, Lady Wantley.

At every period of her life Lady Wantley had been one of those women whom artists delight to paint, and the great artist whose work this was had often had the privilege. But perhaps owing to certain peculiar circumstances connected with this portrait, it was the one of them that he himself preferred. The painting had been a commission from the sitter herself; she had wished to give this portrait to her husband on his sixtieth birthday, and together she and the painter, her friend, who had once owed to her and to Lord Wantley much in the way of sympathy and encouragement, had desired to suggest in the composition something which would be symbolic of what had been an almost ideal wedded life.

Then, without warning, when the scheme had been scarcely sketched out, had come Lord Wantley's death away from home, and the portrait, scarcely begun, had been hastily put away, counted by the artist as among those half-finished things destined to remain tragic in their incompleteness. But some months later his old friend and patroness, clad in no widow's weeds, but in the curious black-and-white flowing draperies, and close Quakerish bonnet, which had become to her friends and acquaintances almost a portion of her identity, had come to see him, and he learnt that she wished her portrait should be finished.

'He always disliked the unfinished, the incomplete,' she had said rather wistfully; and the artist had carried out her wish, finding little to alter, though, perhaps, in the interval between the first and the second sitting the colourless skin of the sitter had lost something of its clearness, the heavy-lidded grey eyes had gained somewhat in dimness, and the hair from dark brown had become grey.

The painter himself substituted, for the lilies which were to have filled in part of the background, a sheaf of rosemary.

The other picture had a less intimate history; and the only two people who ever ventured to criticise Penelope had both, not in any concert with one another, suggested that another place might be found for the kitcat portrait, by Romney, of Mrs. Robinson's famous namesake, than that where it now hung in juxtaposition with that of Lady Wantley.

III

Beneath this last portrait, holding herself upright on the low white couch, a girl, Cecily Wake, sat waiting. She looked round the room with an affectionate appreciation of its special charm—a charm destined to be less apparent when seen as a frame to its brilliant mistress, who had the gift, so often the perquisite of beauty, of making places as well as people seem out of perspective. Cecily herself, all unconsciously, completed the low-toned picture by adding a delicious touch of fragrant youth.

Only Mrs. Robinson in all good faith considered Cecily Wake pretty. True, she had the abundant hair, the clear eyes, the white teeth, which seemed to Mr. Gumberg so essential to feminine loveliness; but beautiful she was not—indeed, none of her friends denied her those qualities which the plain are always being told count so much more than beauty; that is, abundant kindliness, a sterling honesty, and a certain fiery loyalty which both touched and diverted those who knew her.

To be worshipped in the heroic manner—that is, to be the object of hero-worship—is almost always pleasant, especially if the divinity is conscious that he or she has indeed done something to deserve it. Penelope Robinson had rescued her young kinswoman from a mode of living which had been peculiarly trying and unsuitable to one of an active, ardent mind; more, she had provided her with work—something to do which Cecily had felt was worth the doing. As all this had not been achieved without what Penelope considered a great deal of trouble on her part, she did not feel herself wholly undeserving of the deep affection lavished on her by the girl whom she chose to call cousin, though in truth the relationship was a very distant one.

Mrs. Robinson had just now the more reason to be satisfied both with her own conduct and with that of her young friend. When it had been settled that Cecily should spend a portion of her holiday—for she was one of those happy people who, even when grown up, have holidays—at Monk's Eype, it had not occurred to Penelope to include in her invitation the aunt from whom she had rescued her friend, and she had been surprised when Cecily had refused in a short, rather childishly-worded note. 'Of course, I should like to come to you, and it is very kind of you to ask me, but I cannot leave my aunt. She has been so looking forward to my holiday, and, after all, I shall enjoy being at Brighton, near my old convent.' Such had been Cecily's answer to her dear Penelope's invitation, and, though she had shed bitter tears over it, she had sent off her letter without consulting the old lady, to whom she was sacrificing so great a joy.

Happily for the world, there is a kind of unselfishness, which, as a French theologian rather pungently put it, 'fait des petits,' and Mrs. Robinson's answer had been responsive. 'Of course, I meant your aunt to come, too,' she wrote, lying. 'I enclose a note for her. I shall be very glad to see her here.' There she wrote the truth, for only exceptional people object to meet those whom they have vanquished in fair fight.

This was why Cecily Wake, supremely content, was sitting, late in the afternoon of a hot August day, in her cousin's pretty room.

The glass doors were wide open, and from the flagged terrace blew in the warm, gentle sea-wind.

Cecily was still so young in body and in mind that she really preferred work to play; nevertheless, playtime was very pleasant, especially now that she was beginning to feel a little tired after the long journey from town, and the more fatiguing experience of seeing to the unpacking of her aunt's boxes, and of establishing her in bed.

The elder Miss Wake was one of those women who, perhaps not altogether unfortunately for their friends, enjoy poor health, and make it the excuse for seldom doing anything which either annoys or bores them. Occasionally, however, to her own surprise and disgust, Poor Health the servant became Ill Health the master, and to-day outraged nature had insisted on having the last word. This was why the aunt, really tired, and suffering from a real headache, was lying upstairs, thinking, not ungratefully, that Cecily, in spite of many modern peculiarities and headstrong theories of life, was certainly in time of illness as comforting a presence as might have been that ideal niece the aunt would fain have had her be.

Perhaps the great characteristic of youth is the power of ardently looking forward to the enjoyment of an ideal pleasure. To retain even the power of keen disappointment is to retain youth. Cecily Wake had longed for this visit to Monk's Eype much as a different kind of girl longs for her first ball, but, instead of feeling disappointed at being received with the news that her hostess, after making all kinds of small arrangements for her own and her aunt's comfort, had gone out riding, she had felt relieved that the meeting between Miss Wake and Mrs. Robinson had been put off till the former had regained her usual tart serenity.

The girl enjoyed these moments of quiet in what was, to one who had had few opportunities of living amid beautiful surroundings, the most charming room she had ever seen. Most of all, she delighted in one exquisite singularity which it owed to the fancy of Lady Wantley. Not long after it had been built, and while it was still being used as a lecture-hall, Lady Wantley had had an oblong opening effected in the brickwork just above the plain stone mantelpiece.

This opening, filled with clear glass, was ever bringing into the room, as no mere window could have done, a sense of nearness to the breezy stretch of down, studded with gnarled, wind-twisted pine-trees, standing out darkly against the irregular coast-line which stretched itself, with many a fantastic turn, towards Plymouth.

IV

The tall book-framed door suddenly opened, and Mrs. Robinson walked swiftly in. As she came down the room, a smile of real pleasure and welcome lighting up her face, Cecily was almost startled by the look of vigorous grace and vitality with which the whole figure was instinct, and which was accentuated rather than lessened by the short skirt, the dun-coloured coat, and soft hat, which fashion, for once wedded to sense, has decreed should be the modern riding-dress.

Almost involuntarily the girl exclaimed: 'How well you look!'

'Do I?' Penelope sat down close to Cecily; then she leant across and lightly kissed the young girl's round cheek. 'I ought to look well after a long ride with David Winfrith. You know, he has just been made Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the new Government.'

'Oh, is he here, too?' Cecily spoke disappointedly. She had hoped, rather foolishly, that Penelope would be alone at Monk's Eype.

'No, he's not staying here. His own home is close by. We must go over there some time and see his old father; you would like him, Cecily, better than you do the son.' She hesitated, then continued in the curiously modulated voice which was one of her peculiarities: 'We had such a ride—such a discussion—such a quarrel—such a reconciliation! Oh yes, I feel much better than I did yesterday.'

'Was it about the Settlement?' Cecily fixed her thoughtful, honest eyes on her friend's face.

'Our discussion? No, no! My dear child, you must forget all about the Settlement while you are here. I want to tell you about the people you are going to meet. First, there's my mother, who, in theory, will spend a good deal of time with your aunt, though in practice I shall be surprised if they often speak to one another, for they are too utterly unlike even to differ. Then there's my cousin, Lord Wantley. I'm afraid you won't like him very much, for he makes fun of me—and of the Settlement, too. But it isn't fair to tell you that! I want you to make friends with him. You must spare him some of the pity you are so ready to lavish on poor people who are unhappy or unlucky—Ludovic has been rather unlucky, and he has a perfect genius for making himself unhappy.'

'Lord Wantley is Catholic, is he not?' Cecily spoke with some hesitation. She knew her aunt had told her something concerning Penelope's cousin, but she could not remember what it was which had been told her.

Penelope looked up from the task of unbuttoning her gloves. 'No, he's nothing of the kind,' she said decidedly, 'but perhaps he ought to be. Who knows—Miss Wake may perhaps convert him,' she smiled rather satirically. Cecily looked troubled; she was beginning to realize that her holiday would be very different from what she had hoped and expected it to be. 'Seriously, I want you to interest him in the Settlement. We cannot expect David Winfrith to go on doing as much for us as he has been doing. Besides'—she hesitated, and a shadow crossed the radiant face—'I am thinking of making certain arrangements which will greatly alter his position in the whole affair.'

'But what would the Settlement do without Mr. Winfrith?' There was utter dismay in the tone.

'Well, we needn't discuss all that now. I only mean that Lord Wantley is what people used to call a man of parts, and I have never been able to see why he should not do more for me—I mean, of course, in this one matter of the Settlement—than he has done as yet. He has led a very selfish life.' Penelope spoke with much vigour. 'He has never done anything for anybody, not even for himself, and what energy he has had to spare has always been expended in the wrong direction. The only time I have ever known him show any zeal was just after my father's death, when he presented the chapel of the monastery at Beacon Abbas, near here, with a window in memory of his father.' A whimsical smile flitted across her face. 'I rather admired his pluck, but of course if my mother had been another kind of woman it would have meant that we should have broken with him. For my father, as all the world knew, had a great prejudice against Roman Catholics, and Ludovic could not have done a thing which would have annoyed him more.'

Cecily made no comment. Instead, she observed, diffidently, 'I will certainly try and interest him in the Settlement. I have brought down the new report.'

A delightful dimple came and went on Mrs. Robinson's curved cheek. 'I think your spoken remarks,' she said seriously, 'will impress Ludovic more than the new report; in fact, he would probably only pretend to read it. Most people only pretend to read reports.'

She got up, and walked to the plain deal table where lay a half-finished sketch of the flagged terrace and the pierced stone parapet; then she opened the drawer where she kept various odds and ends connected with her work.

'Tell me,' she said a little hurriedly, her face bent over the open drawer as if seeking for something she had mislaid—'tell me, Cecily, have you had any weddings at the Settlement? In my time there was much marrying and giving in marriage.'

'So there is now.' Cecily was eager to prove that the Settlement was not deteriorating. Even to her loyal heart there was something strange and unsatisfactory in Mrs. Robinson's apparent lack of interest in the work to which she devoted so considerable a share of her large income each year. But often she would tell herself that it was natural that her friend should shrink from mentioning, more than was necessary, the place which had been so intimately bound up with the tragedy of her husband's early and heroic death.

Cecily had never seen Melancthon Robinson, but she had of late been constantly thrown in company with those over whom even his vanished personality exercised an extraordinary influence. The fact that Penelope had been his chosen coadjutor, that she was now, in spite of any appearance to the contrary, his ever-mourning widow, was never absent from the girl's mind. When the two young women were together this belief added a touch of reverence to the affection with which Cecily regarded her brilliant friend. And now she blushed with pleasure even to hear this passing careless word of interest in the place and in the human beings round whom she was now weaving so much innocent and practical romance.

In her eagerness Cecily also got up, and stood on the other side of the table, over whose open drawer Penelope was still bending. 'Perhaps you remember the Tobutts—the man who got crushed by a barrel? Well, his daughter, who is in my cooking class, is engaged to a very nice drayman. She is such a good girl, and I——'

Penelope suddenly raised her head. She had at last found what she had been seeking.

Cecily stopped speaking somewhat abruptly. She felt a little mortified, a little injured, as we are all apt to do when we feel that we have been talking to space, for Mrs. Robinson's face was filled with the spirit of withdrawal. It often was so when anything reminded her of that fragment of her past life to which she looked back with a sense of almost angry amazement. And yet she had surely heard what her companion had been saying—

'A good girl?' she repeated absently! then, hurrying over the words as if anxious they should get themselves said and heard: 'I wish you to give to her, or to some other girl you really like, and whose young man you think well of, this wedding ring. Please don't say it comes from me. And, Cecily, one thing more—you need not tell me to whom you have given it.'

Poor Cecily! perhaps she was slow-witted, but no thought of the true significance of the little incident crossed her mind. Mrs. Robinson was famed among the workers of the Settlement for her odd, intelligent little acts of kindness, accordingly a pretty romance somewhat in this wise thistle-downed itself on the girl's brain: Characters—Penelope and Poor Lady. Poor Lady—stress of poverty—having to part with cherished possessions, has good luck to meet Mrs. Robinson who buys from her, among other things—of course at a fancy price—her wedding-ring. Remembering that gold wedding-rings are prized heirlooms in the neighbourhood of the Settlement——

'It would greatly add to the value of the gift,' Cecily said shyly, 'if I might say it came from you.'

'No, no, no!' Mrs. Robinson spoke with sharp decision; her blue eyes narrowed and darkened in displeasure. 'My dear child, you don't understand. Come!'—she made an effort to speak lightly, even caressingly—'do not let us say anything more about it.' Then, looking rather coldly into the other's startled eyes, she added: 'I have never before known you wanting in la politesse du coeur. Haven't you heard the expression before? No? Well, it was a famous Frenchman's definition of tact.'

She laid her left hand on the girl's arm, and, as they moved together towards the door, Cecily became aware that the hand lying on her arm was ringless.