I

When the man who remained in local story as the Popish Lord Wantley built Monk's Eype, he planned the arrangements of the lower floor of his villa in a way which was approved by neither his Neapolitan architect nor his English acquaintances.

From the broad terrace overhanging the sea, the row of high narrow windows on either side of the shallow stone steps giving access to the central hall, seemed strictly symmetrical. But there was nothing uniform behind the stately faÇade. Instead of a suite of reception-rooms opening the one out of the other on either side of the frescoed hall, the whole left side of the villa—excepting the wing, which stretched, as did its fellow, landward, and in which were the servants' quarters—was occupied by one vast apartment.

In this great room the creator of Monk's Eype had gathered together most of his treasures, including the paintings which he had acquired during a long sojourn in Italy; and his Victorian successor had added many beautiful works of art to the collection.

In the Picture Room, as it was called, Penelope's mother always sat when at Monk's Eype, sometimes working at delicate embroidery, oftener writing busily at an inlaid ivory table close to one of the windows opening on to the terrace.

On the other side of the circular hall the Italian architect had had his way. Here there was a suite of lofty, well-proportioned rooms opening the one out of the other.

Of these rooms, the first was the dining-room, of which the painted ceiling harmonized with the panels of old Flemish tapestry added to the treasures of Monk's Eype by Penelope's parents. Then came another spacious room, of much the same proportions, which had now been for many years regarded as specially set apart for the use of young Lord Wantley, Mrs. Robinson's cousin and frequent guest. In this pleasant room Wantley read, painted, and smoked, and there also he would entertain those of Penelope's visitors whose sex made him perforce their host. Still, even his occupancy of what some of Mrs. Robinson's friends considered the most agreeable room in the villa was poisoned by a bitter memory. Not long after the death of the man whom he had been taught to call uncle, he had heard his plea for a billiard-table set aside by the new mistress of Monk's Eype with angry decision, and he had been made to feel that he had unwittingly offered an insult to her father's memory.

Beyond Lord Wantley's special quarters there was a third room, more narrow, less well lighted than the others. There were those, nevertheless, who would have regarded it as the most interesting apartment at Monk's Eype, for there the greatest of Victorian philanthropists had worked, spending long hours of his holiday at the large plain knee-table so placed as both to block and to command the one window. Here also hung a portrait which many would have come far to see. If vile as a work of art, it was almost startlingly like the late owner of the room, and this resemblance was the more striking because of the familiar attitude, the left hand supporting the chin, which had had for most of the sitter's fellow-countrymen the ridiculous associations of caricature.

Mrs. Robinson disliked both the room and the portrait. But mingled feelings of respect, of affection, and of fear, had caused her to leave the room as it had been during her father's occupancy, and it was only used by her on the rare occasions when she was compelled to have a personal interview with one of her tenants from neighbouring Wyke Regis.

II

On the evening of the day, a Saturday, when Miss Wake's and her niece's arrival had taken place, Lord Wantley had returned somewhat unexpectedly from a visit paid in the neighbourhood, which had been cut short by the sudden illness of the hostess.

After the cheerful, if commonplace, house and party he had just left, Monk's Eype struck him as strangely quiet and depressing, though, as always, the beauty of the villa impressed him anew as he passed through into the circular hall, now flooded with the light of the setting sun.

'I wonder who she has got here now,' he said to himself as he noticed a man's hat, roomy travelling-coat, and stick laid across the top of the Italian marriage-chest, the brilliancy of whose armorial ornaments and bright gilding had been dimmed by a hundred years of the salt wind and soft mists of the Dorset coast.

Mrs. Robinson was fond of entertaining those of her fellow-painters whose work attracted her fancy or excited her admiration, and Wantley's fastidious taste sometimes revolted from the associations into which she thrust him.

The young man's relations to his beautiful cousin were at once singular and natural—best, perhaps, explained by a word said in the frankness of grief during the hours which had immediately followed his predecessor's death. 'You know, Penelope,' the heir had said in all good faith, if a little awkwardly—for at that time nothing was definitely known of the famous philanthropist's will, and none doubted that the new peer would find himself to have been treated fairly, if not generously, by the great Lord Wantley—'you know that now you must consider me as your brother; your father himself told me he hoped it would be so.'

The wilful girl had looked at him in silence for a moment, and then, very deliberately, had answered: 'What nonsense! Did my father ever treat you as a son? No, Ludovic, we will go on as we have always done. But if you like'—and she had smiled satirically—'I will look upon you as a kind and well-meaning stepbrother!' And it was with the eyes of a critical, but not unfriendly stepbrother that Wantley came in due course to regard her.

Concerning his cousin's—to his apprehension—extraordinary marriage, he had not been in any way consulted. Indeed, at the time the engagement and marriage took place he had been far away from England; but after Melancthon Robinson's tragic death Penelope for a moment had clung to him as if he had indeed been her brother, showing such real feeling, such acute pain, such bitter distress, that he had come to the conclusion that the tie between the oddly-assorted couple had been at any rate one worthy of respect.

When, somewhat later, Mrs. Robinson had begged Wantley to help her with the complicated business details connected with the Melancthon Settlement, he had drawn back, or rather he had advised her, not unkindly, to hand the work over to one of the great social philanthropic organizations already provided with suitable machinery.

As he had learnt to expect, his cousin entirely disregarded his advice; instead, she found another to give her the help the head of her family refused her, and this other, as the young man sometimes remembered with an uneasy conscience, was one whom they should both have spared, partly because he was engaged in public affairs which took up what should have been the whole of his working time, partly because he had been the hero of Penelope's first romance, and had once been her accepted lover.

Wantley had watched the renewal of the link between the grave young statesman and his old love with a certain cynical interest.

Penelope had not cared to hide her annoyance and disappointment at her cousin's somewhat pusillanimous refusal of responsibility, and so he had not been asked to take any part in the conferences which were held between David Winfrith and the widow of the philanthropic millionaire; but weeks, months, and even the first years, of Penelope's widowhood wore themselves away, and to Wantley's astonishment the relations between Mrs. Robinson and her adviser and helper remained unchanged.

The Melancthon Settlement went on its way, nominally under the management of its founder's widow, in reality owing everything in it that was practical and worthy of respect to the mind and to the tireless industry of the man who had come to regard this work of supererogation as the principal relaxation of a somewhat austere existence. But Winfrith was not able to conceal from himself the fact that the necessary interviews with his old love were the salt of what was otherwise a laborious and often thankless task.

Of course at one time his marriage with Mrs. Robinson had been regarded as a certainty, but, as the years had gone on, the gossips admitted their mistake, and, according to their fancy, declared either the lovely widow or Winfrith disappointed.

Alone, Wantley arrived very near the truth. He was sure that there had been no renewal of the offer made and accepted so ardently in the days when the two had been boy and girl; but a subtle instinct warned him that Winfrith still regarded Penelope as nearer to himself than had been, or could ever be, any other woman; and of the many things which he envied his cousin, the young peer counted nothing more precious than the chivalrous interest and affection of the man who most realized his own ideal of the public-spirited Englishman who, born to pleasant fortune, is content to work, both for his country and for his countrymen, for what most would consider an inadequate reward.

David Winfrith's existence formed a contrast to his own life of which Wantley was ashamed. He was well aware that had the other been in his place, even burdened with all his own early disadvantages, Winfrith would by now have made for himself a position in every way befitting that of the successor of such a man as had been Penelope's father.

III

On the evening of his unexpected return to the villa, an evening long to be remembered by him, Wantley dressed early and made his way into the Picture Room. He went expecting to find an ill-assorted party, for Mrs. Robinson was one of those women whose own personal relationship to those whom they gather about them is the only matter of moment, and whose guests are therefore rarely in sympathy one with another.

All that Wantley knew concerning those strangers he was about to meet was that he would be called upon to make himself pleasant to an elderly Roman Catholic spinster, and to her niece, a girl closely associated with the work of the Melancthon Settlement; and the double prospect was far from being agreeable to him.

He was therefore relieved to find the Picture Room empty, save for the immobile presence of Lady Wantley. She was sitting gazing out of the window, her hands clasped together, absorbed in meditation. As he came in she turned and smiled, but said no word of welcome; and he respected her mood, knowing well that she was one of those who feel the invisible world to be very near, and who believe themselves surrounded by unseen presences.

Lady Wantley's personality had always interested and fascinated the young man. Even as a child he had never sympathized with his mother's dislike of her, for he had early discerned how very different she was from most of the people he knew; and to-night, fresh as he was from the company of cheerful dowagers who were of the earth earthy, this difference was even more apparent to him than usual.

Penelope's mother doubtless owed something of her aloofness of appearance to her singular and picturesque dress, of which the mode had never varied for twenty years and more. The long sweeping skirts of black silk or wool, the cross-over bodice and the lace coif, which almost wholly concealed her banded hair, while not hiding the beautiful shape of her head, had originally been designed for her by the painter to whom, as a younger woman, she had so often sat. Since the great artist had first brought her the drawing of the dress in which he wished once more to paint her, she had never given a thought to the vagaries of fashion, so it came to pass that those about her would have found it impossible to think of her in any other garments than those composing the singular, stately costume which accentuated the mingled severity and mildness of her pale cameo-like face.

After Melancthon Robinson's death, his widow had at once made it clear that she had no intention of returning to her mother; but every winter saw the two ladies spending some weeks together in London, and each summer Lady Wantley became her daughter's guest at Monk's Eype.

The rest of the year was spent by the elder woman at Marston Lydiate, the great Somersetshire country-seat to which she had been brought as a bride, and for which she now paid rent to her husband's successor. To Wantley the arrangement had been a painful one. He would have much preferred to let the place to strangers, and he had always refused to go there as Lady Wantley's guest.

As he stood, silent, by one of the high windows of the Picture Room, he remembered suddenly that the next day, August 8th, was his birthday, and that no human being, save a woman who had been his mother's servant for many years, was likely to remember the fact, or to offer him those congratulations which, if futile, always give pleasure. The bitterness of the thought was perhaps the outcome of foolish sentimentality, but it lent a sudden appearance of sternness and of purpose to his face.

Mrs. Robinson, coming into the room at that moment, was struck, for a moment felt disconcerted, by the look on her cousin's face. She was surprised and annoyed that he had returned so soon from the visit which, of course unknown to him, she had herself arranged he should make, in order that he might be absent at the time of the assembling of her ill-assorted guests.

Penelope feared the young man's dispassionate powers of observation; and as she walked down the long room, at the other end of which she saw first her mother's seated figure, and then, standing by one of the long, uncurtained windows, the unwelcome form of her cousin, her heart beat fast, for the little scene with Cecily Wake, added to other matters of more moment, had set her nerves jarring. She dreaded the evening before her, feared the betrayal of a secret which she wished to keep profoundly hidden. Still, as was her wont, she met danger halfway.

'I am glad you are back to-night,' she said, addressing Wantley, 'for now you will be able to play host to Sir George Downing. I met him abroad this spring, and he has come here for a few days.'

'The Persian man?' She quickly noted that the young man's voice was full of amused interest and curiosity, nothing more; and, as she nodded her head, assurance and confidence came back.

'Well, you are certainly a wonderful woman.' He turned, smiling, to Lady Wantley, who was gazing at her daughter with her usual almost painful tenderness of expression. 'Penelope's romantic encounters,' he said gaily, 'would fill a book. Such adventures never befall me on my travels. In Spain a fascinating stranger turns out to be Don Carlos in disguise! In Germany she knocks up against Bismarck!'

'I knew the son!' she cried, protesting, but not ill-pleased, for she was proud of the good fortune that often befell her during her frequent journeys, of coming across, if not always famous, at least generally interesting and noteworthy people.

'And now,' concluded Wantley, 'the lion whom most people—unofficial people of course I mean'—he spoke significantly—'are all longing to see and to entertain, is bound to her chariot wheels!'

'Ah!' she cried eagerly, 'but that's just the point: he has a horror of being lionized. He's promised to write a report, and I suggested that he should come and do it here, where there's no fear of his being run to earth by the wrong kind of people. I don't suppose Theresa Wake knows there's such a person in the world as "Persian Downing."'

'And the niece, the young lady who is to be my special charge?' Wantley was still smiling. 'She's sure to know something about him—that is, if you take in a daily paper at the Settlement.'

'Cecily?' Mrs. Robinson's voice softened. 'Dear little Cecily won't trouble her head about him at all.' She turned away quickly as Lady Wantley's gentle, insistent voice floated across the room to where the two cousins were standing.

'George Downing? I remember your father bringing a youth called by that name to our house, many years ago, when you were a child, my love.' She hesitated, as if seeking to remember something which only half lingered in her memory.

Her daughter waited in painful silence. 'Would the ghost of that old story of disgrace and pain never be laid?' she asked herself rebelliously.

But Lady Wantley was not the woman to recall a scandal, even had she been wont to recall such things, of one who was now under her daughter's roof. Her next words were, however, if a surprise, even less welcome to one of her listeners than would have been those she expected to hear.

'There was an American Mrs. Downing, a lady who came with an introduction to see your father. She wished to consult him about a home for emigrant children, and I heard—now what did I hear?' Again Lady Wantley paused.

Mrs. Robinson straightened her well-poised head.

'You probably heard, mamma, what is, I believe, true: that Lady Downing, as she is of course now, is not on good terms with her husband. They parted almost immediately after their marriage, and I believe that they have not met for years.'

Wantley looked at his cousin with some surprise; she spoke impetuously, a note of deep feeling in her voice, and as if challenging contradiction. Then, suddenly, she held up her hand with a quick warning gesture.

Her ears had caught the sound of footsteps for whose measured tread she had learnt to listen, and a moment later the door opened, and the man of whom they had been speaking, advancing into the great room, stood before them.

IV

Few of us realize how very differently our physical appearance and peculiarities strike each one of any new circle of persons to whose notice we are introduced; and, according to whether we are humble-minded or the reverse, the results of such inspection, were they suddenly revealed, would surprise or amaze us.

When Sir George Downing came forward to greet his hostess, and to be introduced to her mother and to her cousin, his outer man impressed each of them with direct and almost startling vividness. But in each case the impression produced was a very different one.

The first point which struck Lady Wantley in the tall, loosely-built figure was its remaining look of youth, of strength of will, and of purpose. This woman, to whom the things of the body were of such little moment, yet saw how noteworthy was the brown sun-burnt face, with its sharply-outlined features, and she gathered a very clear impression of the distinction and power of the man who bowed over her hand with old-fashioned courtesy and deference; more, she felt that there had been a time in her life when her daughter's guest would have attracted and interested her to a singular degree.

As he raised his head, their eyes met—deep-sunk, rather light-grey eyes, in some ways singularly alike, as Penelope had perceived with a certain shock of surprise, very soon after her first meeting with Sir George Downing. As these eyes, so curiously similar, met for a moment, fixedly, Downing, with a tightening of the heart, said to himself: 'She I must count an enemy.'

Lord Wantley, as he came forward to meet the distinguished stranger to whom he had just been told he must play host, observed him at once more superficially, and yet more narrowly and in greater detail, than Penelope's mother had done.

In the pleasant country-house—of the world worldly—from which Wantley had come, the man before him had been the subject of eager, amused discussion.

One of the talkers had known him as a youth, and had some recollection (of which he made the most) of the romantic circumstances which had attended his disgrace. His return was generally approved, all hoped to meet him, and even, vaguely, to benefit in purse by so doing; but it had been agreed that the recent change of Government lessened Downing's chances of persuading the Foreign Office to carry out the policy which he was known to have much at heart, and on which so many moneyed interests depended. It was said that the Prime Minister had refused to see him, that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had left town to avoid him! On the other hand, a lady present had heard, 'on the best authority,' that he had not been in England two days before he had been sent for by the Sovereign, with whom he had had a long private talk.

It was further declared that 'the city,' that mysterious potentate, more powerful nowadays than any Sovereign, held him in high esteem, regarding him as a benefactor to that race of investors who like to think that they have Imperial as well as personal interests at heart. And even those who deprecated the fact that one holding no official post should be allowed to influence the policy of their country, admitted that, in the past, England had owed much to such men as Persian Downing. 'Yes, but in these days the soldier of fortune has been replaced by the banker of fortune,' an ex-diplomatist had observed, and the mot had been allowed to pass without challenge.

'And so,' thought Wantley, remembering the things which had been said, 'this is Persian Downing!'

The lean, powerful figure, habited in old-fashioned dress-clothes, looked older than he had imagined the famous man could be. The bushy, dark-brown moustache, streaked with strands of white hair, and the luminous grey eyes, penthoused under singularly straight eyebrows, gave a worn and melancholy cast to the whole countenance.

The younger man also noticed that Downing's hands and feet were exceptionally small, considering his great height. 'I wonder if he will like me,' he said to himself, and this, it must be admitted, was generally Wantley's first thought; but he no longer felt as he had done but a few moments before, listless and discontented with life—indeed, so keenly interested had he, in these few moments, become in Penelope's famous guest that he scarcely noticed the entrance into the room of the young girl of whom his cousin had spoken, and whom she had specially commended to his good offices.

Dressed in a plain white muslin frock, presenting her aunt's excuses in a low, even voice, Cecily Wake suggested to Lady Wantley, who had never seen her before, the comparison, when standing by Penelope, of a snowdrop with a rose. Perhaps this thought passed in some subtle way to Wantley's mind, for it was not till he happened to glance at the girl, across the round table which formed an oasis in the tapestry-hung dining-room, that he became aware that there was something attractive, and even unusual, in the round childish face and sincere, unquestioning eyes.

None of the party, save perhaps Wantley himself, possessed the art of small-talk. Penelope was strangely silent. 'Even she,' her cousin thought with a certain satisfaction, 'is impressed by this remarkable man, who has done her the honour of coming here.'

Then he asked himself, none too soon, what had brought Persian Downing to Monk's Eype? The obvious explanation, that Downing had been attracted by the personality of one who was universally admitted to have an almost uncannily compelling charm, when she cared to exercise it, he rejected as too evident to be true.

Wantley thought he knew his beautiful cousin through and through; yet in truth there were many chambers of her heart where any sympathetic stranger might have easy access, but the doors of which were tightly locked when Wantley passed that way. Like most men, he found it difficult to believe that a woman lacking all subtle attraction for himself could possibly attract those of his own sex whom he favoured with his particular regard. David Winfrith was the exception which always proves a rule, and Wantley admitted unwillingly that in that case there was some excuse; for here, at any rate, had been on Penelope's part a moment of response. But to-night, and for many days to come, he was strangely, and, as he often reminded himself in later life, foolishly, culpably blind.

Gradually the conversation turned on that still so secret and mysterious country with which Sir George Downing was now intimately connected. His slow voice, even, toneless, as is so often that of those who have lived long in the East, acted, Wantley soon found, as a complete screen, when he chose that it should be so, to his thoughts.

Suddenly, and, as it appeared, in no connection with what had just been said at the moment, Lady Wantley, turning to Downing, observed, 'I perceive that you have a number-led mind?'

Penelope looked up apprehensively, but her brow cleared as the man to whom had been addressed this singular remark replied simply and deferentially:

'If you mean that certain days are marked in my life, it is certainly so. Matters of moment are connected in my mind with the number seven.'

Wantley and Cecily Wake both looked at the speaker with extreme astonishment. 'I felt sure that it was so!' exclaimed Lady Wantley. 'Seven has also always been my number, but the knowledge inspires me with no fear or horror. It simply makes me aware that my times are in our Father's hands.' She added, in a lower voice: 'All predestination is centralized in God's elect, and all concurrent wills of the creature are thereunto subordinated.'

'He may be odd, but he must certainly think us odder,' thought Wantley, not without enjoyment.

But a cloud had come over Penelope's face. 'Mamma!' she said anxiously, and then again, 'Mamma!'

'I think he knows what I mean,' said Lady Wantley, fixing the grey eyes which seemed to see at once so much and so little on the face of her daughter's guest.

Again, to Wantley's surprise, Downing answered at once, and gravely enough: 'Yes, I think I do know what you mean, and on the whole I agree.'

Mrs. Robinson, glancing at her cousin with what he thought a look of appeal, threw a pebble, very deliberately, into the deep pool where they all suddenly found themselves. 'Do you really believe in lucky numbers?' she asked flippantly.

Downing looked at her fixedly for a moment. 'Yes,' he replied, 'and also in unlucky numbers.'

'I hope,' she cried—and as she spoke she reddened deeply—'that your first meeting with David Winfrith will take place on one of your lucky days. He is believed to have more influence concerning the matter you are interested in just now than anyone else, for he claims to have studied the question on the spot.'

'Ah!' thought Wantley, pleased as a man always is to receive what he believes to be the answer to a riddle; 'I know now what has brought Persian Downing to Monk's Eype!' and he also took up the ball.

'Winfrith claims,' he said, 'to have made Persia his special study. I believe he once spent six weeks there, on the strength of which he wrote a book. You probably came across him when he was in Teheran.'

But as he spoke he was aware that in Winfrith's book there was no mention of Downing, and that though at the time of the writer's sojourn in Persia no other Englishman had wielded there so great a power, or so counteracted influences inimical to his country's interests.

'No, I did not see him there. At the time of Mr. Winfrith's stay in Teheran'—Downing spoke with an indifference the other thought studied—'I was in America, where I have to go from time to time to see my partners.' He added, with a smile: 'I think you are mistaken in saying that Mr. Winfrith only spent six weeks in Persia. In any case, his book is good—very good.'

'I suppose,' said Wantley, turning to his cousin, 'that you have arranged for Winfrith to come over to-morrow, or Monday?'

'Oh no,' she answered hurriedly. 'He is going to be away for the next few days; after that, perhaps, Sir George Downing will meet him.' She spoke awkwardly, and Wantley felt he had been clumsy. But he thought that now he thoroughly understood what had happened. Winfrith had evidently no wish to meet informally the man whom his chief had not been willing to receive. Doubtless Penelope had done her best to bring her important new friend in contact with her old friend. She had failed, hence her awkward, hesitating answer to his question. But the young man knew his cousin, and the potency of her spell over obstinate Winfrith; he had no doubt that within a week the two men would have met under her roof, 'though whether the meeting will lead to anything,' he said to himself, 'remains to be seen.'

Wantley was, however, quite wrong. During the hours which Mrs. Robinson had spent that day riding with the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the name of Persian Downing had not once been mentioned, and at this very moment David Winfrith, playing, after an early dinner, a game of chess with his old father, saw in imagination his lovely friend acting as kind hostess to her mother, for whom he himself had never felt any particular liking, and to Miss Wake and her niece, against both of whom he had an unreasonable prejudice. Lord Wantley he believed to be still away; and, as he allowed his father to checkmate him, he felt a pang of annoyance at the thought that he himself was going to be absent during days of holiday which might have been so much better employed, in part at least, in Penelope's company. Not for many months, not, when he came to think of it, for some two years, had Mrs. Robinson been at once so joyously high-spirited and yet so submissive, so intimately confidential while yet so willing to take advice—in a word, so enchantingly near to himself, as she had been that day, riding along the narrow lanes which lay in close network behind the bare cliffs and hills bounding the coast.

But to Wantley, doing the honours of his smoking room to Sir George Downing, and later when taking him out to the terrace where Mrs. Robinson and Cecily were pacing up and down in the twilight, the presence of this distinguished visitor at Monk's Eype was fully explained by the fact that Winfrith was not only the near neighbour, but also the very good friend, of Mrs. Robinson, and, the young man ventured to think, of himself.