I

'But there's one happy moment when the mindIs left unguarded, waiting to be kind,Which the wise lover understanding right,Steals in like day upon the wings of light.'

'But there's one happy moment when the mind

Is left unguarded, waiting to be kind,

Which the wise lover understanding right,

Steals in like day upon the wings of light.'

The absence of Mrs. Robinson from the villa, even for only a few hours, afforded a curious relief, a distinct lightening of the atmosphere, to all those—if one important exception be made, that of Mrs. Mote—whom she had left at Monk's Eype on the afternoon of her expedition to Kingpole Farm.

Penelope's unquietude of mind had gradually affected all her guests. Even her mother, the person of whom she saw least, had become dimly aware that all was not as it should be, and, while not in any way as yet connecting her daughter with Sir George Downing, she regarded him as an evil and alien influence.

Lady Wantley had taken an intuitive, unreasoning dislike to the remarkable man whose presence she realized her daughter would have wished her to regard as an honour; and though she was quite unaware of it, a word ventured by Mrs. Mote very early in Downing's stay at Monk's Eype had contributed to this feeling of discomfort and suspicion.

Like most gifts, that of intuition can be cultivated, and Lady Wantley had done all in her power to increase and fructify that side of her nature. The merepresence of Downing in the same room with herself made her feel as if she was suddenly thrust amid warring elements, and her mind became shadowed by the suspicion that this man, when a dweller in the Eastern country famed immemorially for the potency of its magic, had foregathered with spirits of evil. That his going had not lifted the clouds which seemed to hang so darkly over the whole of the little company about her, Lady Wantley regarded as a proof that her suspicions were well founded, for to her thinking it is far easier to evoke than to lay demoniac influences.

These thoughts, however, she kept to herself, and no knowledge that in her mother Downing had a watchful antagonist came to increase Mrs. Robinson's nervous unrest.

During those same days following Downing's departure from Monk's Eype, Mrs. Robinson and Wantley left off sparring, and Penelope would debate uneasily whether it was his own affairs—or hers—which had so much altered her cousin's manner, and made him become, to herself, more kindly and considerate than she had ever before known him. But the young man kept his own counsel. He and old Miss Wake never referred to the conversation they had held the day Penelope and Cecily had driven over to Shagisham; each, however, was aware that the other had felt relieved, perhaps unreasonably so, to see Persian Downing leave Monk's Eype.

Sometimes Wantley was inclined to think that Miss Wake had been utterly misled, and then, again, some trifling circumstance would make him fear that she had been right.

The doubt was sufficiently strong to convince him that this was no moment to speak—upon another matter—to Cecily Wake: In London, amid the impersonal surroundings of the Melancthon Settlement, he would pursue and bring to a happy ending—nay, to an exquisite beginning—his and Cecily's simple romance. But in the meanwhile he saw no reason for denying himself the happiness of being with her every moment of the day not given up by her to Penelope.

Once, when they were thus together, Cecily had said a word—only a word, and in defence of a toy fund organized by a great London newspaper—concerning her own giftless childhood and girlhood.

There had been no kind relatives or friends to remember the convent-bred child. Miss Wake's Christmas present had always been something useful and, indeed, necessary, and Cecily, remembering, pleaded for the useless doll and the unnecessary toy.

Wantley, while pretending to be only half convinced, was composing in his own mind a letter to the old servant who kept for him his few family relics, his father's books, his mother's lace and simple jewels. Even now, or so he told himself, the girl walking by his side, talking with the youthful energy and certainty of being right which always both amused and moved him, was herself sufficiently a child to enjoy a gift, especially an anonymous gift, by post.

And this was why the young man, usually so ready to grumble at the inscrutable ways of Providence, hailed his cousin's departure, for what she had announced would be a long afternoon's expedition, as a piece of amazing good fortune.

Each day a man rode over from the villa to Wyke Regis to fetch the contents of the second post, and to-day the letters had come, by Mrs. Robinson's orders, rather earlier than usual. Wantley lingered about in the hall while the bag was being opened by Penelope. There were several letters addressed to Downing, and these he saw, with a slight pang, were quickly put aside with Penelope's own. Two parcels,both small, both oblong in shape, were addressed in an uneducated handwriting to 'Miss Cecily Wake,' and, puzzled, he peered down at them curiously.

Then Wantley watched his cousin start off on her lonely way, while she noted, with discomfort, that he asked no questions as to her destination. The hour that followed was spent by him in walking up and down the terrace, in reading the day's paper, which he thought had never been so empty of interesting news, and in wondering why Cicely did not come downstairs. He also asked himself, with some anxiety, what there could possibly be in the second parcel that had arrived for her that day. He thought he knew all about the contents of the first, and it seemed odd that on the same day there should have come two....

At last a happy inspiration led him to the studio, and there he found the girl sitting, various of her treasures—for, like a child, she was fond of bearing about with her her favourite possessions—spread out on Penelope's painting-table.

Physical delicacy is too often associated in people's minds with goodness, but, as a matter of fact, to be good in anything but a very passive sense almost always requires the possession of health. It was because Cecily Wake had brought from her convent school unbroken strength of body, and a mind which had never concerned itself with any of the more painful problems of life, that she proved so valuable a helper to Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Pomfret. Thanks to her perfect physical condition, she was always ready to start off, at a moment's notice, on the most tiring and the most dispiriting expeditions. Her feet seemed never weary, her brain never exhausted, and, though she was sometimes disappointed when things went wrong, she was always ready to start again with unabated vigour to try and set them right.

To Cecily Wake heaven and hell, the world and purgatory, were all equally real, matter of fact, and to be accepted without question. She knew nothing of the hell which people may make for themselves, and only now, since she had been at Monk's Eype, had she realized that it is possible to find a very fair imitation of heaven on this earth.

Cecily's hell was very sparsely peopled, and that entirely with historical characters. As to those who fill the dread place, they were, to her thinking, an ill-sorted company, and probably very few of those about her, while believing the numbers to be much greater, would have included those whom she believed to be there. Judas, Henry VIII., the man who tortured the little Dauphin in the Temple, the Bishop who condemned Joan of Arc to be burnt—they, she thought, must surely all be there. But, as regarded the world about her, Cecily was quite convinced that, like William of Deloraine, 'Between the saddle and the ground, they mercy sought and mercy found.'

This little analysis of Cecily Wake's character and point of view is necessary to explain one of the two gifts which had come to her by the second post—that with which Wantley had not only had nothing to do, but which had caused him some searching of heart, for he had been afraid that it might be the outcome of one of those misunderstandings, those misreadings of orders, which affect and annoy men so much more than women.

But the girl knew quite well from whom had come the six woolwork table-napkin rings, although the only indication of the sender had been the words, written on a piece of common note-paper

'This is from a friendWho loves you no end.'

'This is from a friend

Who loves you no end.'

She required no signature to tell her that the sender was a certain Charlotte Pidder, with whom, more thana year before, Cecily, for a few days, had been thrown into the most intimate, and it might be said affectionate, contact.

I am writing of a time when there was but one half-penny evening paper in London, and when original, or even unusual, contributions were regarded askance by editors. To the office of that paper came one day a most remarkable letter, setting forth the sad case of a Cornish girl who, having come up to London, and having there met with what the poor, with their apt turn for language, term a 'misfortune,' had found it impossible thenceforward to make an honest living. The writer explained very simply his efforts on her behalf, but added that his resources had come to an end, and that the mere fact that he was a man much in her own class of life made those whom he sought to interest in her case look on him, as well as on her, with suspicion. The editor of the evening paper sent for the writer, convinced himself of the truth of his story, and then printed the letter.

The effect of its publication was instantaneous and extraordinary. To that newspaper office letters poured in from all parts of the country, some of the writers simply offering money, others expressing themselves as willing to adopt the girl, while many were anxious to give her work at a reasonable wage. These last were regarded by both the editor and the girl's workman friend as being alone worthy of consideration.

Then came the difficult question of how a choice among these would-be employers was to be made, and the editor bethought himself of the Melancthon Settlement. Very soon he had laid upon Mrs. Pomfret the whole responsibility of how and where fortunate Charlotte Pidder should find a home. Together Philip Hammond, Cecily Wake, and Mrs. Pomfret looked over the letters. They finally weeded out twelve for further consideration, and the interchangeof further letters brought the number down to four.

To the one who appeared to be the most sensible of these generous folk, Mrs. Pomfret despatched Charlotte Pidder, only to have her sent back the next day with a curt note to the effect that the good Samaritan could not think of taking into her service a girl whose hair was short and curly like a man's! This experience taught wisdom to the three people on whom Charlotte's fate depended, and so it was decided that, before the girl was sent off to another would-be benefactor, Cecily Wake should go and spy out, as it were, the hospitable land.

This is no place to tell the tale of Cecily's experiences, some grotesque and some sinister. Soon a day came when she and Mrs. Pomfret were compelled to look over again the letters which they had at first rejected, and finally after a long journey by train and tram to a comparatively poor neighbourhood, Cecily found two human beings, good, simple-hearted, tender-minded folk, with whom there seemed some hope that Charlotte Pidder would find a peaceful haven, and work her way back to self-respect and some measure of happiness. It was arranged that her 'days out' should be spent at the Settlement, and she formed a deep, dumb attachment to the girl, only a year or two older than herself, whom she had seen take so much trouble on her behalf, and who had treated her during those anxious days with such kindly, unforced sympathy and consideration.

These napkin-rings, with their red and blue pattern worked in Berlin wool, represented many hours of toil, and Cecily, knowing this, was meditating a letter of warm thanks to the sender, when Wantley walked into the studio and looked questioningly at the table. At once he saw the sheet of paper with its rudely-written lines. He looked quickly at the girl, and then remarked: 'Victor Hugo once said that everykind of emotion could be expressed in doggerel, and now I am inclined to think he was right. But I like the poetry better than the present.'

Cecily covered the poor little cardboard box with a sudden protective gesture. 'I like them very much,' she said stoutly. 'The person who made them for me has very little spare time, and it was very good of her to take so much trouble. But I have had another present to-day—one you will like better.'

Wantley's hand went up to his mouth; he even reddened slightly. But Cecily was not looking at him. Her hands were busy with the old-fashioned fastening of a flat red-leather case. At last the little brass hook slipped back, she lifted the lid, and there, lying on a faded white satin pad, lay two rows of finely matched, though not very large, pearls.

The sight affected the two looking down at them very differently. To Wantley the little red case brought back a rush of memories. He saw himself again a little boy, standing by his pretty, fair mother's dressing-table, sometimes allowed as a great treat to fasten the quaint diamond clasp round the slender neck. Cecily simply flushed with pleasure, and she felt full of gratitude to the kind giver, about whose identity she felt no doubt.

'Only the other day,' she said, smiling, 'Penelope noticed that I had no necklace, nothing to wear in the evening—and now you see what she has had sent me!'

'Penelope? Then, do you think these pearls are a gift from my cousin?'

'Of course they are! Who else would think of giving me anything of the kind?'

'Cannot you imagine any other'—Wantley's voice shook a little in spite of himself—'any other person who might wish to give you pleasure?'

Cecily looked up puzzled. He came round and stood by the table on which lay the two gifts received by her that day. Very deliberately he took up one ofMrs. Robinson's soft lead-pencils, and then wrote across a torn piece of drawing-paper,

'This is from a loverWho will love you for ever,'

'This is from a lover

Who will love you for ever,'

and laid it down so that it covered the pearls. 'You see,' he said, 'this is not, as was the other gift to-day, friendship's offering. But, still, the words I have written there are meant quite as sincerely. These pearls belonged to my mother. They were given to her by my father on the first anniversary of their wedding-day, and I know how happy it would have made her—have made them both—to think that you would wear them.'

He spoke quickly, and yet after the first moment, with great gravity. As Cecily made no answer, he added: 'You will not refuse to take them from me?'

The old nurse had watched Penelope drive off alone that afternoon with deep misgiving and fear, for she was quite sure that her mistress was bound for Kingpole Farm.

Motey had soon become aware that Mrs. Robinson received no letters from Downing, and this, to a mind sharpened by jealousy and semi-maternal instinct, only the more indicated the closeness and the thorough understanding between them, and showed, or so the maid believed, that all their plans as to the future were already arranged.

Again and again she had been on the point of attacking her mistress, of asking Penelope to confirm or to deny her suspicions, and many a night, while lying awake listening through the closed door to Mrs. Robinson's restless movements, always aware when her nursling was not asleep, Mrs. Mote would make up long homely phrases in which to formulate her appeal. But when daylight came, when shefound herself face to face with Penelope, her courage ebbed away, and she became afraid—for herself.

What if anything said by her provoked a sudden separation from her mistress? More than once in the last ten years Motey and Mrs. Robinson had come to moments of sudden warfare, when the younger woman's affection for her old nurse had been sorely tried, and yet on those occasions, as Mrs. Mote was only too well aware, no feeling even approaching that which now bound Penelope to Sir George Downing had been in question.

Sometimes the old woman told herself that she was a fool, and that her terrors were vain terrors, for the actual proofs of what she feared was about to happen were few.

Again and again, during Mrs. Robinson's brief absences from the villa, Motey had sought to find—what?

She hardly knew.

Never had Penelope, careless as she had always been hitherto of such things, left one of Downing's letters about in her room, or, forgotten, in a pocket. In the matter of her searching, the old nurse was troubled by no scruples. She would have smiled grimly had some accident made known to her how some of the people about her would have regarded this turning out of pockets, this trying of locked places with stray keys.

Poor Motey! She felt like a mother whose child has been given a packet of poisoned sweets, and who knows that they must be found at all costs before evil befalls. But so far her unscrupulous seeking had yielded little or nothing to confirm what she was fast coming to believe an absolute certainty—namely, that Penelope was on the eve of forming with Downing what both intended should be a lifelong tie.

Many little incidents, deepening this conviction, crowded on her day by day, as it grew increasinglyclear that Mrs. Robinson was silently preparing for some great change in her life. The maid marvelled at the blindness of Penelope's mother, of Wantley, even of Cecily Wake—how could they help noting that Penelope never now spoke of the future, that she made no plans, as she was so fond of doing, for the coming winter?

Then, late in the afternoon which saw Mrs. Robinson at Kingpole Farm, Motey at last found something which provided, to her mind, undoubted proof. This was a formal business letter from a great London firm, celebrated for the perfection of its Eastern outfits, and it contained answers to a number of questions evidently written by one contemplating a long sojourn in Teheran.

Penelope, before starting out that afternoon, had shown considerable annoyance at having mislaid a paper she wished to take with her. She had made no secret of the fact, and both she and Motey had searched for the envelope all over the large room. After her mistress had left, Mrs. Mote had continued the search, and she had at last found this letter, laid under some gloves which Penelope had at first intended to take, but had rejected in favour of a thicker pair.

The maid carried off this, to her, most sinister sheet of paper into her own room, and as the evening closed in, and Penelope did not come back, she saw in it, or rather in her mistress's desire to take it with her that day, an indication that perhaps Mrs. Robinson had gone, not intending to return, and that she might be at this very moment on her way, and not alone, to London.

Suspense has been described as the most terrible of the many agonies the human heart and mind are so often called upon to endure.

Mrs. Mote, sitting in the twilight watching thegathering storm, listening in vain for the soft rumble of the little pony-cart, felt as if actual knowledge that what she feared had happened would be preferable to this anxiety.

More than once she got up and stood by one of the long narrow windows in the broad passage which commanded a view of the winding road, cut through the down, on which Penelope, if she ever came back, must appear. But Mrs. Mote was in no mood to pass the time of day with the upper housemaid, who would soon be coming to light the tall argand lamp in the corridor, and so at last she retreated into her room, there to remain in still wretchedness, convinced that Penelope had indeed gone, though her ears still remained painfully alive to the slightest sound which might give the lie to her dread.

It was eight o'clock. Already someone, probably Wantley, had ordered dinner to be put back half an hour, when the deep, soft-toned dressing-bell rang in the hall.

The maid listened dully to the comings to and fro up and down the staircase; there was an interval of silence; and then the door of her room suddenly opened, and Lady Wantley's tall figure was outlined for a moment against the dim patch of light afforded by the corridor window opposite.

'Surely your mistress did not intend to stay out so late to-night?' The voice was full of misgiving and agitation.

The old servant stood up; a curious instinct of loyalty to Mrs. Robinson seemed to impel her to say no word of her great fear. And yet she felt it not fair that Lady Wantley should be left in complete ignorance of what, if she, the old nurse, were right, would soon be known to the whole household.

'Perhaps my mistress is not coming back to-night; perhaps she intended to go on to London from Kingpole Farm,' she said in a curious, hesitating tone.

'From Kingpole Farm?' Lady Wantley advanced into the room. She turned and closed the door into the passage, and then seemed to tower above the stout little woman who stood before her in the twilight.

Mrs. Mote had taken up a corner of the black apron she always wore, and she was twisting it up and down in her fingers, remaining silent the while.

'Motey, what do you mean?' Lady Wantley spoke with a touch of haughty decision in her voice.

'What led you to suppose for a moment that my daughter has gone to Kingpole Farm? That, surely, is where Sir George Downing is staying!'

Then Mrs. Mote lost her head. She was spent with trouble, sick with suspense, and exasperated by Lady Wantley's clearly-conveyed rebuke. After all, Penelope was as dear—ay, perhaps dearer—to herself, the nurse, as to the mother who had had so little of the real trouble entailed by the rearing of her child. Was it likely that she, Motey, would say anything reflecting on the creature whom she loved so well, for whose honour she had often shown herself far more jealous than Lady Wantley had seemed to be, and whom she had saved, or so she firmly believed, from so many pitfalls?

'What made me think of it?' she repeated violently. 'Why, Iknowshe's there! She wasn't likely to keep away any longer! Oh, my lady, how is it you've not seen, that you haven't come to understand, how it is with her? I should have thought that anyone who cared for her, and who isn't blind, must surely know, know that——'

Mrs. Mote's voice fell almost to a whisper as she added, throwing out her hands: 'Shedolike him; it's no good my saying anything else! Why didn't his lordship let her have Master David? He was the one for her; she's never liked anyone so well till just now.'

Then the speaker turned and nervously struck a match, lighting one of two tall candles standing on the chest of drawers behind her.

Lady Wantley's face looked very grey and drawn in the yellow light, but it was set in stern lines. 'Hush!' she said: 'you forget yourself, Motey,' and you are making a great mistake. If you refer to Sir George Downing'—she brought out the name with a certain effort—'you cannot be aware of what is known quite well to your mistress, for she herself told me that he is married. His wife, who is an American lady, once came to see your master.'

There was a long silence. Lady Wantley was waiting for the other to make some sign of submission, but the old servant only gave the woman who had been for so many years her own mistress a quick, furtive look, full of mingled pity and contempt, of fierce personal distress and impatience.

'Were they together then?' she said at last, and with apparent inconsequence she added; 'Does your ladyship remember Mrs. Winfrith, and what happened to her?'

Lady Wantley deigned no answer to Motey's questions. 'I know that you love my daughter,' she said slowly, almost reluctantly; but the servant, with a quick movement, shrank back, and her look, her gesture, forbade the other—the more fortunate woman who had borne the child Motey loved so well—to intrude on the nurse's relation to that child.

'Love her!' Motey was repeating to herself, though no words passed her lips, 'why, I'd give my body and soul for her, which is more than you would do!' But Mrs. Mote mis-estimated the mother-instinct in the woman who was now standing opposite to her.

Then, quickly, vehemently, the old nurse told of what she knew and what she feared with so great a dread, and the story which Lady Wantley heard, still standing, in dead silence, though it might have seemedvery unconvincing to a lawyer, brought absolute conviction to Penelope's mother.

She was told in Motey's rough, expressive words of that first meeting in the great Paris station, when Mrs. Robinson, as if hypnotized by this singular-looking man, then a complete stranger, had accepted from him a real service, thus opening the door to an acquaintance which, with scarce any interval, had ripened into an absorbing passion. The maid recalled her own dawning suspicions, her powerlessness to stay the feeling which had seemed suddenly to overpower her mistress, her vain attempts to persuade Penelope to leave Pol les Thermes. Then the silent listener heard of the journey back, with Downing in close attendance, of Mrs. Mote's hope that this was the end of the affair, finally of the nurse's dismay when she discovered that he was actually coming to Monk's Eype.

The story the more impressed Lady Wantley because it was the first time she had received such confidences. She did not know, and Mrs. Mote saw no reason to enlighten her, that Penelope had always been fond of passing adventure, and she would have been astonished indeed had she known that, just at first, her daughter's vigilant companion had troubled but little about her mistress and Sir George Downing. Mrs. Mote had so often seen Penelope come forth, apparently unscathed, from romantic encounters, from long sentimental duels, in which the woman had always been an easy victor.

At last the nurse had said all there was to say. She had even shown Lady Wantley the letter which she regarded as such absolute evidence of what she feared, when again the door suddenly opened, and the two within the room started, or so it seemed to themselves, guiltily apart, as Mrs. Robinson, travel-stained and weary, and yet scarcely dishevelled, and with a bright colour in her cheeks, stood before them.

'I had an accident,' she said, rather breathlessly. 'The left wheel came off the pony-cart. That made me late, the more so that I was caught in the great storm which you do not seem to have had here.'

As she spoke she was glancing sharply from her mother to her maid. 'Were you afraid? I fear you have both been very anxious.' She added, 'I should have wired from Burcombe, but as I drove through I saw that the post-office was shut.' Again, as she spoke, she looked from the one to the other, and said rather coldly, 'But it's not so very late, after all.' Then she passed through into her own room, and Motey silently followed her.

That same night Wantley was sitting up, fully an hour after every one else had gone up to bed, smoking and reading, when Lady Wantley came into the room, which, as far as he knew, had never been entered by her since it had been set apart for his own use.

The young man rose, and tried to keep the surprise he felt out of his face. For a moment—a very disagreeable moment—he wondered if she had come to speak to him about Cecily Wake.

The great Lord Wantley had had a strong prejudice against Roman Catholics, and it was, of course, quite possible that his widow might consider herself bound to protest against the idea of a marriage between his successor and a Catholic girl. But he soon felt reassured on this point.

In a few moments he learnt that Lady Wantley had sought him out for a very different reason. 'I have to see Mr. Gumberg on urgent private business,' she said, 'and I have come to ask you if you will accompany me to London to-morrow morning. It is all-important that we should go quite early.'

'Certainly,' he said quickly; 'I will arrange everything.'

'Everything is arranged,' observed Lady Wantleyvery quietly. 'I have ordered the carriage for seven, and I have written a note to Penelope explaining my absence, but I have not mentioned the name of the person I am going to see. To do so was not necessary, and I beg that you also will keep it secret.'

'When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?'Indian Proverb.

'When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?'

Indian Proverb.

Lady Wantley, as she journeyed up to town, tended very kindly by her companion, who possessed the power the normal man often lacks of making any woman in his charge feel comfortable and at ease, thought intensely of her coming interview with Mr. Julius Gumberg. She had a sincere belief in his worldly wisdom, and a vague conviction—not the less real in that she could not have given any reason for her feeling—that the power of his guile, combined with that of her prayers, would succeed where either alone might fail. Thus had she persuaded herself in the long watches of the night, while debating whether she should go to town and entreat her old friend's help.

In spite of what the censorious may say and believe, there is no chasm, among the many which yawn round our poor humanity, on the brink of which there is so much hesitation, and drawing back at the last moment, as on that where the leap involves a loss of moral reputation.

Even in the course of what had been a very sheltered life, Lady Wantley had become aware of many such averted tragedies, of more than one arrested flight, of more than one successful conflict against tremendous odds—tremendous because the victory hadremained with one whose own heart had been traitor to the cause.

But her intuitive knowledge of her daughter's character warred with any hope that Penelope, having once made up her mind, would draw back. The mother was dimly aware that the barrier must be raised from the outside, and that the appeal must be made in this case to the man, and not to the woman.

So little like her father in most things, Mrs. Robinson had inherited from him a quality which his critics had called 'obstinacy,' and his admirers 'exceptional steadfastness of character.' Opposition had always strengthened Lord Wantley's power of performance, and, as his wife remembered only too clearly, in Penelope's early love affair it had been David Winfrith, and not the impulsive, headstrong girl, who had given way before the father's stern and inexorable command.

Lady Wantley was one of those fortunate people—more often to be found in a former generation than in our own—to whom their human possessions appear to be well-nigh perfect. In her eyes Mrs. Robinson was the most beautiful, the most gifted, the most generous-hearted, of God's creatures; and though she reluctantly admitted to herself that her daughter lacked spiritual perfection, the mother believed that in time this also would be added to her beloved child. Even now it did not occur to Lady Wantley that Penelope might be, in this matter, herself to blame. Instead, she reserved the whole strength of her condemnation for Sir George Downing, and she was on the way to persuade herself—as, indeed, she did in time come to do—that, in order to accomplish his fell purpose, this strange man had used unholy Eastern arts to snare Penelope, the fair guerdon for whom such a fighter as Persian Downing might well be willing to risk body and soul.

Wantley, as he lay back in the railway-carriage, hiseyes half closed, holding a French novel open in his left hand, looked at the figure sitting opposite to him with a good deal of sympathy and curiosity. He knew a little, and guessed much more, concerning that which had brought about this hurried journey. But he wondered how Lady Wantley's eyes had been opened to a state of things none seemed to have suspected save Miss Wake. Indeed, as regarded himself, his cousin's odd, altered manner had been so far the only confirmation of Theresa Wake's suspicion.

Perhaps, after all, Lady Wantley had reason to fear something tangible, definite. If so, if Penelope was contemplating any act of open folly, then, so said Wantley to himself, her mother was well advised to seek the help of such a man as was Mr. Julius Gumberg.

This curious journey, taken at such short notice and so secretly, reminded Wantley of other and very different journeys taken by him as a boy and youth in Lady Wantley's company—Progresses (he recalled with a smile his mother's satirical word) during which Lord and Lady Wantley had headed a retinue consisting, not only of courier, secretary, maids, valets, and nurses, but also of humble friends in need of rest and change, while he, Ludovic Wantley, had been the only 'odd man out' of the party.

Those days had not been happy days, but his heart involuntarily softened as he looked at his companion and saw the worn face, the sunken eyes. They made him realize how greatly Lady Wantley had aged and altered during her years of widowhood.

In her husband's lifetime she had been a singularly lovely and gracious figure, of curiously still demeanour and abstracted manner, treated with an almost idolatrous devotion by those about her. In those far-away days his aunt—for so he had been taught to call her—had always worn, even when on long, dusty Continental journeys, pale lavenders, soft greys, and ivorywhites, each of her garments being fashioned in a way which, while scrupulously simple, yet heightened the quality of her physical beauty, and set her apart as on a pinnacle of exquisite and spotless womanliness.

Wantley remembered the kind of sensation which the great English milord and his lady naturally created in the little-frequented French and German towns selected by them for sometimes prolonged halts.

To-day, as he sat opposite to her, there came over him with extraordinary vividness the recollection of one such sojourn in a Bavarian village overhung by an historic castle, the owner of which had invited Lord Wantley and his whole party to spend a day there. The young man recalled with whimsical clearness each incident of what had been an enchanting episode—the hours spent in the green alleys of a park of which the still canals, stone terraces, and formal statuary recalled, as they were meant to do, Versailles, for the place had been designed in those far-off days when France and the French ideal of life still ruled the German imagination.

He remembered the fair-haired German girl whose gentle presence had for him dominated the scene, her shy kindliness, the contrast between her good English and his own and his cousin's indifferent German; and then the feeling with which he had heard some passing words—a brief question and a briefer answer—exchanged between the hospitable Prince and the noble philanthropist: 'A charming lad—doubtless your eldest son?' And the quick answer, 'No, no! quite a distant kinsman.' The words had rankled, and over years.

Lady Wantley had never been to London in August, and so she had thought to find a town deserted, save for the consoling oasis of St. James's Place.

She looked through the windows of the four-wheeled cab, also an utterly unfamiliar form of conveyance,with a feeling of alarm and discomfort. 'How many people there seem to be left in London!' she said at last, rather nervously.

'You need not fear that you will see any one that you know,' Wantley answered dryly. 'Still Mr. Gumberg is not the only Londoner who stays in London through the summer. The difference between himself and his fellow-townsmen is that he chooses to remain, and that they must do so.'

No other word was said during the long, slow drive, spent by Wantley in wondering whether he would find his club open, and how, if not, he should dispose of himself during Lady Wantley's interview with Mr. Gumberg. But for the parting for a whole day from Cecily Wake, he would have enjoyed rather than otherwise this strange expedition, for he had been flattered and touched by the confidence reposed in him.

As the cab finally turned down St. James's Street, he took the hand, still soft and of perfect shape, which lay nearest to his on Lady Wantley's knee. 'We are nearly there,' he said. 'I will see you into the hall, and then go off for an hour.'

Mr. Gumberg was one of those who early school themselves to wait on life. Sitting in the pretty, gay morning-room, which opened upon a stately little garden—designed in the days when Italy was to the cultivated Englishman what the England of to-day is to the travelled American—he was rarely disappointed, even in August, as to what the day would bring forth.

Few afternoons went by but some acquaintance journeyed westward from the City to ask his advice concerning matters of business moment. In the hottest summer weather foreigners of distinction would find their way to St. James's Place, bearingletters of courteous introduction, couched in well-turned phrases, of which the diction, even in France and Austria, will soon be a lost art. And then, again, friends passing through town would remember the old man, and hasten to spend with him an idle hour, bearing with them a budget of the news he loved to hear.

But it was the day bringing forth the utterly unexpected that renewed Mr. Julius Gumberg's grip on life. It was then that he felt he was still taking part in the world's affairs, for the unexpected, in his case, almost always meant an appeal connected with one of those byways of human life in which he still took so vivid and so practical an interest.

To the old worldling a call from Lady Wantley had always been something of an event, and this over fifty years of their two lives. He respected her reserve, he admired her reticence, and, while himself so deeply interested in those about him, he yet delighted in the company of the one woman of his acquaintance whom he knew to have ever regarded the soul and the future life as of such infinitely more moment than the body and the pleasant world about her.

She was herself quite unaware of the peculiar feeling with which her old friend regarded her, and ignorant that on the rare occasions of her visits to St. James's Place no other visitor was welcome, or, indeed, tolerated. Still, at this painful, anguished moment of her life some subtle instinct caused her to turn to one with whom, in many ways, she had so little in common. She felt secure of his sympathy, and had implicit trust in his discretion; indeed, her belief in him extended to the hope that he would suggest a way by which Penelope should surely be saved from what the mother, full of pain and shrinking terror, could not but regard as a most awful fate.

The interview began badly. The gay little garden room, which still kept something of the insouciant,roguish charm of the famous eighteenth-century beauty from whose executors Mr. Julius Gumberg had originally purchased the house, formed an incongruous background to the shrunken figure, the parchment-coloured face, the hairless head, always, however, covered with a skull-cap, of Lady Wantley's old friend.

Gilt-rimmed, tarnished mirrors destroyed the sense of solitude, and seemed to Mr. Gumberg's visitor to reflect shadowy witnesses and mocking eavesdroppers of her shame and distress.

So strong was this impression that Lady Wantley doubted whether she had been well advised in coming. She felt inclined to get up and go away; and something of what was passing in her mind was divined by her host.

When the first long pause between them became oppressive, the old man, lifting himself somewhat painfully from his chair, rang the bell which always stood at his elbow. 'We shall be more at ease, and less likely to be disturbed upstairs,' he said briefly.

He was extremely curious to know what had brought Lady Wantley to town, what could be the matter concerning which she had evidently come to consult him; but he was too experienced a confessor to hasten confidences by a word.

The comfort of no human being, save that of his present visitor, could have made Mr. Julius Gumberg show himself, as he was about to do, and for no tangible reason, at a disadvantage—that is, so weighted with physical infirmity as to be compelled, when walking upstairs, to seek the assistance of his manservant's arm and guiding hand. His acute, well-trained intellect had remained so keen, and his powers of transacting business had diminished so little, that he felt, with a bitterness none the less intense because so gallantly concealed, the humiliations attendant on advancing age.

Accordingly, when quiet, careful Jackson came in answer to his master's summons, her host impatiently motioned Lady Wantley to precede him up the narrow stairs which connected the garden room with the octagon library, where Mr. Gumberg always received his friends in winter and in spring, and which appeared better suited to the receiving of confidences and the giving of advice than did the room below.

Once there—once, as it were, settled against his own familiar background, leaning back in his leather armchair, his man dismissed, his visitor seated opposite him in the pretty, comfortable chair always drawn forward when the old man was honoured by the visit of a fair friend—Mr. Gumberg felt rewarded for the late stripping of himself of personal dignity, for he perceived, by certain infallible signs, that now she would tell him all that was in her mind.

With scarce any preamble, Lady Wantley plunged into the middle of her story. In disconnected, but clearly worded, phrases, she told of her more than suspicion, of her certainty, of the coming peril. But, whereas she spoke of Downing by name, describing his action with a Biblical plainness of language which startled her old friend, she concealed the name of the woman in the case, beseeching Mr. Gumberg's intervention and advice on behalf 'of one known to you, but whose name I beg you not to inquire or try to discover.'

It was with eager, painful interest and growing excitement that the old man, his hand held shell-like to his ear, heard in silence the story she had come to tell. She had not spoken many words, and had used but little of the innocent craft to which she was so unaccustomed, before Mr. Julius Gumberg knew only too well the name of the woman for whom Lady Wantley was entreating his advice and help.

At last, when she had said all there was to say, she looked at her old friend dumbly, appealingly; and itwas rather in answer to that look than to any word uttered by her that he said:

'Were you anyone else, I would respect your wish to conceal this lady's name. Nay, more: were she other than who she is, you should leave me to-day believing that you had been successful in hiding from me the name of your friend. But, Lady Wantley, I care for you.' He paused, then feelingly added: 'I have cared for you all, too well, during nearly the whole of my life, to tolerate this fiction. What you have come to tell me is indeed news, and painful news, to me, but Sir George Downing himself told me, during the few days he was here, that he was acquainted with Penelope, and that he had met her abroad this spring.'

And having thus cleared the decks for action, he remained silent for a few moments, his domed head sunk on his breast, thinking deeply.

George Downing and Penelope Wantley? Amazing, incredible, and most sinister conjunction! Why, the affair must have been going on—nay, the coming catastrophe, this mad scheme of going away together to form a permanent alliance, 'offensive and defensive' (the old man would have chuckled but for the poignant wretchedness of the face now hidden in Lady Wantley's hands) must have been hatching—when Downing was with him here, in St. James's Place!

He cast his mind back; he tried to remember a conversation held in this very room only two or three weeks ago. But Mr. Gumberg had come to a time of life when it is more easy to recall conversations of half a century old than words uttered yesterday.

He had indeed been blind, 'amazing blind, and stoopid, stoopid, stoopid!' so he exclaimed to himself, vexed that no suspicion of the truth should have crossed his mind while Downing had been asking him those eager, insistent questions concerning Mrs. Robinson and the Wantley family.

And now? Well, now that the house was well alight they came and asked him, Mr. Gumberg, how to extinguish the flames. This was not the first time—no, not by many—that the old man had been required to lend his aid in such a case, and, as a rule, he always advised that the fire be left to burn itself out. The counsellor's long experience had taught him that such flames always did burn out if left severely alone—if no fuel, in the shape of lamentations and good advice, were added by the incautious.

But this matter of Downing and Mrs. Robinson was more complicated than most. Pursuing his favourite metaphor, the old man said to himself that here was no flimsy thatch of straw which, when the embers were cold, could be restored, patched up again, on the old walls. Rather was Penelope like to one of those old-world frigates, proudly riding the sea, all afire and aglow, a wonderful sight to those safe on shore, but of whose splendour there would remain nothing but a shapeless, indescribable hulk, when all she bore had been burnt to the water's edge.

Sitting there, turning about in his still agile mind the story, as just told him in bare outline, he reminded himself that Mrs. Robinson, though a powerful, wilful creature, was not the stuff out of which have been fashioned the great, steadfast lovers of the world.

'Why, if all were well—if she became the man's wife ten times over—she would never be content to spend her whole life in Teheran!' he muttered; and then more loudly: 'No, no; we must find a way out!'

One question he longed to ask of Lady Wantley, for he felt that on the true answer much depended that would modify his judgment, and guide his opinion, as to what the immediate future must bring. But Mr. Gumberg was old-fashioned; his code as to what could, or rather what could not, be said to a lady was strict and meagre. Accordingly, he felt it impossibleto put to this revered and trustful friend the question he longed to utter. Still, there might be a way round. He asked abruptly: 'How much of the six months—I don't think it was more—did Penelope actually spend at the Settlement? I mean, of course, between her wedding-day and poor young Robinson's death?'

Lady Wantley hesitated. She cast her mind back, then answered reluctantly: 'She was often away during the four months—it was only four months. But, then, that was utterly different.' A faint colour came into the mother's pale cheeks. 'Penelope did not care for poor Melancthon as she seems to care, now——'

'I know! I know!' The four words were snarled out rather than spoken. 'Nun and monk, that was the notion! No doubt you're right: there was nothing to keep her there, after all!'

He was so concerned with the problem filling both their minds for the moment he forgot his usual punctiliousness of speech, but to Lady Wantley there came a certain fierce comfort from his amazing frankness. She felt that he knew, that he understood, the unusual difficulty of the case, and in answer to his next words, 'I had actually forgotten all that for the moment, but of course it complicates matters devilishly!' she nodded her head twice in assent.

'You see them together,' he went on abruptly. 'Does she seem'—sought for a word, weighed one or two, rejected them, and finally chose 'bewitched?'

And then—but this time so much to himself that his listener heard no word of it—he added: 'Lucky George! Eh? Lucky George!'

Lady Wantley bent forward. Her grey eyes shone with excitement and anger. 'Yes, bewitched—that's the right word! Sir George Downing has bewitched my poor unhappy child. One who was there, our old nurse—you remember Mrs. Mote?—declares that she altered completely from the moment they first met.Why, she hasn't known him three months, and yet he's persuaded her to contemplate this thing—this going with him——'

She stopped speaking abruptly, choked with the horror of the thought, and then slowly added: 'I know—at least, I think I know—that you do not believe, as I believe, in the active, all-devouring power of the Evil One.' Her voice sank, but Mr. Gumberg caught the muttered words, 'Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.'

Mr. Gumberg smiled a queer little enigmatical smile. 'The old nurse was there, you say? She never left her mistress, eh?' He waited, and looked hard at Lady Wantley. But no gleam of comprehension of his meaning came into her worn eyes. 'What does she think? what does the old nurse say to it all?'

Again Lady Wantley covered her face with her hands. 'She's known it all longer than I have. She's in agony—agony, for she feels surer every day that the child means to go away with him—soon—at once—if we cannot devise some means of stopping them.'

'I take it that you have said nothing to your daughter—to Penelope—as yet?'

Lady Wantley raised her head, and he saw for a moment her convulsed, disfigured features. 'No, I have said nothing. I cannot speak to her on such a matter as this. Besides, she would not tolerate it. But you, dear friend——'

She suddenly rose from her chair, a tall, imposing figure, then moved closer to him, and looked imploringly down into the wrinkled, impassive face. 'I have thought that you, perhaps, would consent to speak to Sir George Downing? I know it is asking much of your old friendship for us.'

Mr. Gumberg coughed. He moved uneasily in hischair. 'In such a matter,' he began, 'one man can scarcely interfere with another man's business. Supposing I do as you wish, can we expect Downing to draw back now, if she—Penelope—has made up her mind to go on? Would you have him put on her so mortal an affront?'

Lady Wantley only looked at him bewildered. Such sophistry was not for her.

'But from the point of view of Sir George Downing's own life and career,' she said falteringly, 'I understand—indeed, Penelope herself has told me—that the one object of his life for many years past has been to rehabilitate himself. Could you not point out to him how greatly this would injure him with those whose good opinion he wishes to retain? Think of what all my husband's old friends and colleagues will feel;' and he saw that her hands were trembling.

Mr. Gumberg looked at Lady Wantley consideringly. He was surprised that she had brought herself to think over the matter from so practical a point of view. She had again sat down, and was gazing at him in a collected, earnest manner.

'He has weighed all that, depend upon it,' he said shortly. 'No, no! with such a man as George Downing one must appeal to something higher than self-interest. We must realize—it's no use blinking the fact—that we are now dealing, or attempting to deal, with a feeling none the less strong because you and I happen to have no sympathy with it—or perhaps I should say, as regards myself, have outlived it.'

He waited a moment, then concluded deliberately:

'In your place, Lady Wantley, I should make a personal appeal to Downing. Choose a time when Penelope is out of the way, and tell him the truth—that he does not know her as you know her, and that, even putting aside other and more obvious reasons which should make him pause, you are sure that shewould not be happy in the life he has to offer her. Lastly, and most urgently, appeal to him for time. Time,' repeated the old man, with a certain solemnity—'time smooths out many crooked things. But why should I try and prompt you? You will know what to say better than I could tell you. And Downing, take my word for it, is not the man to seize an unfair advantage. Ask him to go away, alone, to give her more time for consideration. Such a serious business as they apparently both regard it—and most creditable it is to both of them that they should do so,' he added in a half-aside—'should not be settled in a hurry. Why, a few weeks ago each didn't know the other lived, and now nothing short will content them but the spending of their whole lives together! Though I have but little belief in its being of any use, I will comply with your request that I should write to him. As to what I say when I do write, you must leave that to me; but be sure that I will do my best.'

'You will write to him? Oh, how can I thank you adequately, my friend—my good friend!'

Lady Wantley's eyes filled with grateful tears, and a stifling weight seemed lifted from her heart. She felt that she had accomplished that which she had come to do, and she paid no heed to the admonition, 'Don't count too much on my influence with Downing.'

They both stood up, Mr. Gumberg leaning his left hand on his stick, while the other clasped hers in kindly, mute farewell.

'Do you remember,' she asked, rather shyly, 'your first visit to Oglethorpe, when I was a little girl? My mother, my dear, dear mother, was so interested in you. I remember she said you were such a well-behaved and intelligent youth. Of course, I know you came again when we were both older, but when I see you I always think of our first meeting. I saw no young folk at all in those years.'

'No,' said Mr. Gumberg, a little stiffly, 'I have forgotten nothing. Your parents, both then and later, were very kind to me, and I have always felt grateful for my reception at Oglethorpe.' He hesitated a moment, and then added, with an odd little old-fashioned bow over the hand he still held: 'And also for that in later days, at Monk's Eype and at Marston Lydiate.'

'Ah yes,' she said, 'I know how sincere a friendship my husband felt for you. But, as I said just now, I myself prefer to associate you in my own mind with my own home—with my dear father and mother.'

When Lady Wantley had left him, and after the house had settled down again into its usual summer stillness and silence, Mr. Gumberg, acting on a sudden impulse, did that which he lived to regret—though only, it must be admitted, when in a cynical mood—to the end of his life. Slowly he made his way to the mahogany cupboard where he kept some of his choicest treasures, including the rarer of his unframed prints. From there he extracted a small portfolio, and returning to his armchair, he propped it up on the sloping desk at his elbow. For a few moments his fingers fumbled with the green silk strings, and he turned over the contents with eager hands.

'The Lady and her Pack.' Mr. Gumberg peered musingly at the curious rudely-coloured design. He wondered half suspiciously whether it was only his fancy that detected a certain similarity between the horsewoman, sitting so squarely and so gallantly on her huge roan, and the lady who had just left him. Both figures—that of Rosina Bellamont and that of Lady Wantley—had about them a certain dauntlessness, a look of high courage.

Mr. Gumberg hastily turned the little print about. He took up a magnifying-glass, and carefully read through the notes with which the reverse side wascovered, and which, in addition to names and dates, gave a number of more intimate particulars concerning the various human-faced hounds composing the pack.

Then, with a certain deliberateness, he lighted the little red taper with the help of which he always sealed his letters, and, holding what had been the most valued of his minor treasures over the flame, Mr. Gumberg watched it vanish into the flickering air above the taper. But during the rest of that afternoon and evening his eyes often turned towards the little tear-bottle, brought to him by a friend from Rome, where he had carefully placed the pinch of brown ash which was all that now remained of 'The Lady and her Pack.'

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