L'amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle
attaque à la fois la tête, le coeur et le corps.
I
All over the East, and even nearer home, on the Continent, old women
take a great place, and are even permitted to play a great rôle, in the
human affairs of those about them. Here in England it is otherwise. Here
they are allowed but grudgingly the privilege of standing on the bank
whence they see helpless boats, laden with freights to them so precious,
drifting down a current of whose dangerous places, of whose shoals and
shallows, their knowledge and experience are counted of no moment.
In a French country-house three such women as Lady Wantley, Theresa
Wake, and the old nurse, Mrs. Mote, would have been the pivots round
which the younger people would have naturally revolved. At Monk's Eype
their presence--and this although each was singularly individual in
character and disposition--did not affect or modify one jot the actions
of the men and women about them.
Mrs. Robinson, now weaving with unfaltering hand her own destiny,
absorbed in her own complicated emotions of fear, love, and pain, would
have listened incredulously indeed, had a seer, greatly daring, warned
her that each of these three old women might well, were she not careful
to respect their several prejudices, bring her to shipwreck.
Downing, whose business it had long been to study those about him with
reference to their attitude to himself, instinctively avoided the
solitary company of Lady Wantley, for in her he recognized a possible
and formidable opponent. But of old Miss Wake's presence in the villa he
was scarcely conscious. Penelope's maid he knew to be a point of danger,
the living spark which might set all ablaze.
The day after his coming to Monk's Eype, Sir George Downing and Mrs.
Mote had met face to face, and he had turned on his heel without a word
of greeting. Yet when he had last seen her they had parted pleasantly,
the servant believing, foolishly enough, that she and her mistress were
then seeing the last of one who had been their inseparable companion for
many, to her increasingly anxious, days.
Mrs. Mote's crabbed face and short, ungainly figure were burnt into
Downing's memory as having cast the only shadow on the sunny stretch of
time which had so marvellously renewed his youth, brought warmth about
his chilled heart, and made the future bright exceedingly. And so the
meeting with the old nurse had been to him a sharp reminder that one
person at least at Monk's Eype already wished him ill, and would fain
see him go away for ever.
The maid also avoided him, though she sat long hours at her window,
taking note of his comings and goings, jealously counting the moments
that her mistress chose to spend in his company, either down in the
Beach Room, or, more often, pacing up and down on the broad terrace, and
under the ilex-trees which protected from relentless sea-winds the
delicate flowering shrubs that were counted among the greatest glories
of Monk's Eype.
It was there, under those trees, completely screened from the windows
which swept the terrace, that Mrs. Robinson preferred to spend what
leisure Sir George Downing allowed himself from his work. More than once
Motey had come down from her watching-place, and had crept into the
little pine-wood to watch, to overhear, what was being done and what was
being said in the ilex grove. But the old woman's unhappy, suspicious
eyes only saw what they had seen so often before: her mistress and
Downing walking slowly side by side, she listening, absorbed, to his
utterances. Sometimes Penelope would lay her hand a moment on his arm,
with a curious, familiar, tender gesture--curious as coming from one who
avoided alike familiarity and tenderness when dealing with her friends.
Only once, however, had Mrs. Mote surprised a gesture which might not
have been witnessed by all the world. One afternoon when a strand of
Mrs. Robinson's beautiful hair had become loosened, and so uncoiled its
length upon her shoulder, Downing, turning towards her, had suddenly
taken it up between his fingers and raised it to his lips. Then the old
nurse had seen the bright gleam of what was so intimately a part of her
mistress mingling for a moment with the dark moustache heavily streaked
with white, and she had clenched her hands in impotent anger and
disgust.
II
Her aunt's presence at Monk's Eype scarcely affected Cecily Wake. The
two had never become intimate; the girl's young eagernesses and
enthusiasms disturbed Miss Wake, and even her sunny good temper and
buoyancy were a source of irritation to one who had led so grey and
toneless a life.
On the other hand, Miss Theresa Wake was really attached to the
beautiful woman whom she called cousin.
She watched Penelope far more closely than the latter knew during those
still, hot August days, when the thin, shrunken figure of the spinster
lady, wrapped, in spite of the heat, in an old-fashioned cashmere shawl,
sat back in one of the hooded chairs set on the eastern side of the
terrace. When out in the open air Miss Wake always armed herself with
one of the novels which had been thoughtfully provided by her kind
hostess for her entertainment; but often she would lay the volume down
on her knee, and gaze, her dim eyes full of speculation, at Mrs.
Robinson's brilliant figure coming and going across the terrace, to and
from the studio, sometimes--nay, generally--accompanied, shadow-wise, by
the tall, lean form of Sir George Downing.
After watching these two for a while, Miss Wake would find her
interrupted novel oddly uninteresting and dreary.
To Cecily these holiday days were not passing by as happily as she had
thought they would. She felt for the first time in her short life
disturbed, she knew not why; distressed, she knew not by what.
The hours spent with Mrs. Robinson, doing work she had looked forward to
doing, seemed strangely dull compared with those briefer moments when
Wantley strolled or sat by her side, looking down smiling into her eyes,
asking whimsical questions concerning the Settlement, with a view--or so
he said--of settling there himself, if Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Pomfret
would accept him as a disciple!
Twice in those ten days he had gone with her to early Mass at Beacon
Abbas; and oh, how pleasant had been the walks along the cliff path, how
soothing the half-hours spent in the beautiful chapel, with Wantley
standing and kneeling by her side. But on the second occasion of their
return from Beacon Abbas Penelope had greeted the two walkers, or rather
had greeted Cecily, with a questioning piercing look. Was it one of
dissatisfaction, of slight jealousy, or simply of surprise? That one
glance--and Wantley was well aware that it was so--put an end to any
further joint expeditions to the monastery chapel.
During these same unquiet days, when Cecily's heart would beat without
reason, when she seemed to be always waiting, she knew not for what, the
girl became fond, in a shy, childish way, of Penelope's mother.
Perhaps because she was utterly unlike any other woman Cecily Wake had
ever seen, or even imagined, Lady Wantley exercised a curious
fascination over her heart and mind. The tall, stately figure, wrapped
in sweeping black and white garments, was seen but seldom in the
sunshine, out of doors. Since her widowhood she had lived a life
withdrawn from the world about her, and she had occupied what had been a
sudden and unwelcome leisure by writing two mystical volumes, which had
enjoyed great popularity among those ever ready to welcome a new
interpretation of the more esoteric passages of the Scriptures.
When staying at Monk's Eype, Lady Wantley would spend long hours of
solitude in the Picture Room; and there Cecily would sometimes find
her, absorbed in a strangely-worded French or English book of devotion,
from which, looking up, she would make the girl read her short passages.
At other moments Cecily would discover her engaged in writing long
letters of spiritual advice to correspondents, almost always unknown to
her, who had read her books, and who wished to consult her concerning
their own spiritual difficulties and perplexities.
When not thus employed Lady Wantley sat idle, her long,
delicately-modelled hands clasped loosely together, enjoying, as she
believed, actual communion with her own dead--with the fine,
true-hearted father, whose earthly memory was so dear to her; with the
beloved mother, to whom as she grew older she felt herself to be growing
more alike and nearer; with the husband who, however stern and
awe-inspiring to others, had ever been fond and tender to herself. The
little group of strangely assorted souls seemed ever gathered about her,
and in no distant, inaccessible heaven.
Once, when Cecily Wake had come upon her in one of these strange
companied trances, Lady Wantley had said very simply: 'I have been
telling Penelope's father of her many perfections: of her goodness to
those who, if they are the disinherited of the earth, are yet the heirs
of the kingdom--those whom he himself ever made his special care. I
think, dear child, that, if you would not mind my doing so, I will also
some day tell him--my husband, I mean--of you, and of Penelope's love
and care for you.' And she had added, as if to herself: 'But how could
she be otherwise? Was she not, even before her birth, dedicated to the
Lord in His temple?'
Lady Wantley was sometimes in a sterner mood, when hell seemed as near
as--ay, nearer than--heaven. Evil spirits then appeared to encompass
her, and she would feel herself to be wrestling with their dread master
himself. When this was so, her delicate, bloodless face would become
transfigured, and the large, heavy-lidded grey eyes would seem to flash
out fire, while Cecily listened, awed, to strange majestic utterances,
of which she knew not that their source was the Apocalypse.
That this convent-bred girl had a genuine belief in the Evil One, and a
due fear of his cunning ways, was undoubtedly a link between Lady
Wantley and herself; as was also the softer fact of her great affection
for the one creature whom Lady Wantley loved with simple human devotion.
After hearing the older woman talk, as she so often did talk, of her
loved and admired daughter, Cecily would feel grieved, even a little
perplexed, when next she perceived how lightly Penelope esteemed this
boundless mother-love.
In no material thing did Mrs. Robinson neglect Lady Wantley. Every
morning she would make her way into the Picture Room, ready with some
practical suggestion designed to further her mother's comfort during the
coming day; but to Penelope, much as she loved her, Lady Wantley never
alluded to the matters which lay nearest to her heart. She found it
easier to do so to the Catholic girl than to the creature she had
herself borne, over whose upbringing she had watched so zealously, and,
as she sometimes admitted to herself in moments of rare self-sincerity,
with so little success.
III
Wantley only so far remembered the presence at Monk's Eype of Penelope's
mother as to thank Heaven that she had nothing in common with the
match-making dowagers, of whom he had met certain types in his way
through life, and who at this moment would have brushed some of the
bloom from his fragrant romance.
Absorbed as he had already become in the novel feeling of considering
another more than himself, he yet found the time now and again to wonder
why it was that he saw so little of the remarkable man to whom he stood
in at least the nominal relation of host. That first evening they had
sat up together long into the night, and there had been, not only no
apparent barrier between them, but the younger man had been both
fascinated and interested by the other's account of the land where he
had already spent the best half of his life. Such had been the magic of
Downing's manner, such the infectious quality of his sustained
enthusiasm, that for a moment Wantley had wondered whether he also might
not create a career for himself in that country of which the boundless
resources and equally boundless necessities had now been made real to
him for the first time.
Then, as it had seemed, gradually, but looking back he saw that the
change had come very quickly, Wantley had perceived that Downing avoided
instead of seeking or welcoming his company. True, the other man was
engaged in heavy work, spending much of his time in the Beach Room, and
often returning there late in the evening; but even so Wantley could not
understand why Downing now seemed desirous of seeing as little of him as
possible. The knowledge made him a little sore, the more so that he
attributed the change in the other's manner to some careless word
uttered by Penelope.
Another grievance, and one which pushed the other into the background of
his mind, was the fact that Mrs. Robinson, more capricious, more
restless than her wont, absorbed each day much of the time and attention
of Cecily Wake. That the latter apparently regarded this constant call
on her leisure as a privilege, in no sense softened the young man's
irritation: it seemed to him that his cousin took an impish delight in
frustrating his attempts--somewhat shamefaced at first, openly eager as
time went on--to be with the girl.
Wantley consoled himself by bestowing on the aunt the time and the
attention he would fain have bestowed on the niece. The elder Miss Wake
soon came to regard him as an exceptionally agreeable and well-bred man,
with a strong leaning to Catholicism--even, she sometimes ventured to
hope, to the priesthood; for many were Lord Wantley's questions
concerning monasteries and convents, and had he not on two week-day
mornings escorted her niece to Mass at Beacon Abbas? According to Miss
Wake's limited knowledge of the ways of men, and especially of the ways
of noblemen, such zeal, if it involved early rising, was quite
exceptional, and must surely be done with an object.
Poor Wantley, unconscious of these hopes, his sense of humour for the
moment more or less suspended, found the mornings especially hang heavy
on his hands, for Cecily, after an hour spent with Penelope in the
studio, generally disappeared upstairs into her own room till lunch; and
this absorption, as he supposed, in business connected with the
Melancthon Settlement did not increase his liking for the place which
filled so much of Cecily's heart, and took up so much of the time he
might have spent with her.
At last the day came when the young man solved the innocent mystery of
how Cecily Wake spent her mornings. Passing along the terrace, he
overheard a fragmentary conversation which showed him that his cousin
was using her young friend as secretary, handing over to her the large
correspondence which dogs the hours of every man and woman known to have
the disposal of great wealth. When there had been no one at hand more
compliant, Wantley had himself undertaken the task of dealing with the
hundred and one absurd, futile, often pathetic, requests for help,
which filled by far the greater part of Mrs. Robinson's letter-bag. Too
well he knew the tenor of the various remarks which now fell upon his
ear; one sentence, however, at once compelled closer attention: 'I have
had a letter--to which I should like you also to send an answer. It's
from David Winfrith. Please say I'm glad he's back, and that we will
drive over there to-morrow. Write to him and say I have asked you to do
so, as I am too busy to answer his letter to-day.'
Wantley, with keen irritation, heard the low, hesitating answer: 'If you
don't mind, I would so much prefer not to write to Mr. Winfrith. You
know he has never liked me, and I am sure he would feel very much
annoyed if he thought'--the soft voice paused, but went bravely on--'if
he thought I had seen any letter of his to you----'
'But you have not seen his letter! Still, I dare say you're right. We
will drive over there to-day--the more so that I have something else to
do in that neighbourhood.'
A moment later Wantley heard the door of the studio opening and
shutting, and knew that his cousin was alone. He walked in through the
window prepared to tell Mrs. Robinson, and that very plainly, his
opinion of what he considered her gross selfishness. But quickly she
carried the war into the enemy's country.
'I saw you,' she said, with heightened colour, 'and I didn't think it
very pretty of you to stand listening out there!'
Then, struck by the look of suppressed anger which was his only answer,
she added: 'Perhaps I've been rather selfish the last few days, but you
and she see quite as much of each other as is good for you, just at
present. And, Ludovic, I've been longing to show you something which, I
think even you will agree, exactly fits your present condition.'
She took from the table a prettily bound volume, in which had been
thrust an envelope as marker. 'Listen!' she cried, and then declaimed
with emphasis, and partly in the faultless French which he had always
envied her:
'_First Old Bachelor_: "Et les jeunes filles? Aime-tu ça? Toi?"
'_Second Old Bachelor_: "Hélas! mon ami, je commence!"'
Wantley bit his lip. He could not help smiling. 'You have not shown her
that?' he asked suspiciously.
'No, indeed! How could you think such a thing, even of me?' Mrs.
Robinson rose; she came and stood by him, and as their eyes met he saw
that she was strangely moved. 'Ah, Ludovic,' she said softly, 'you are a
lucky man!'
He looked away. 'Do you really think that she likes being with me?' he
asked awkwardly.
'Yes, even better than with me--now!' The young man knew, rather than
saw, that her eyes were full of tears, and in spite of his absorption in
himself and his own affairs, he found time to wonder why Penelope was so
unlike herself--so gentle, so moved. Her next words confirmed his
feeling of uneasy astonishment, for, 'You won't ever set her against
me,' she asked, 'whatever happens, will you?'
Wantley felt amused and a little touched. 'My dear Penelope!' he cried,
'I think it's my turn now to ask you how you could think such a thing,
even of me? Also I must say you do her a great injustice. Why, she loves
you with all her heart! Not even'--he used the first simile that came
into his mind--'not even an angel with a flaming sword would keep her
from you.'
'No; but some Roman Catholic notion of obedience to one's lawful owner
might prove more tangible than a flaming sword!'
The harsh words grated on Wantley's ear; he wondered why women
sometimes put things so much more coarsely than a man, in a similar
case, would do.
But before he could answer Penelope had moved away, and, with a complete
change of voice, and a return of her usual rather disdainful serenity of
manner, was saying: 'I see Sir George Downing coming up from the Beach
Room. By the way, I want to tell you that he finds he can't work
properly with so many people about, and I have suggested that he should
put in a few days at Kingpole Farm. I believe the lodgings there are
very comfortable, and the place has the further advantage of being near
Shagisham. You know he wishes to meet David Winfrith, and I thought,
perhaps, that the introduction'--Penelope now spoke with nervous
hesitation--'would come better from you.'
Wantley assented cordially, pleased that his cousin should for once
propose a common-sense plan in which he, Wantley, would play a proper
part.
Wantley, as Penelope shrewdly suspected--for to her he had never worn
his heart upon his sleeve--had spent from boyhood onwards much more time
than was good for his soul's health in self-pity and self-examination.
This was especially true during that portion of the year when he was in
England, and especially the case when he was staying, as he did each
summer, at Monk's Eype. In his heart he grudged his beautiful cousin the
possession of a place created by a man to whom they stood in equal
relationship, but which, as he never failed to remind himself when in
Dorset, had always belonged to the Lord Wantley of the day. At Monk's
Eype he felt himself a stranger where he ought to have felt at home; and
this was the more painful to him because the villa had been the creation
of the one man with whom he believed himself to be in closer affinity
than with any other former bearer of his name.
During his long idle youth, Wantley's happiest moments had been those
spent in wandering along the byways of France, Spain, and Germany. He
had been denied the ordinary upbringing of his rank and race, but,
during the long Continental journeys in which he had been the companion
of Lord and Lady Wantley and their daughter, he had learnt and seen much
which in later life was to cause him abiding pleasure and comfort, the
more so as he was a fair artist, and came of scholar stock.
Brought up by a mother to whom her son's future had been the only
consoling thought in a middle age of singular trials and perplexities,
Ludovic Wantley had from childhood realized, to an almost pathetic
extent, the pleasant possibilities of life as a British peer. But very
soon after he had succeeded his cousin he discovered that much of the
glories, and all the pleasures attached to the position would be denied
him, partly from want of means, more perhaps from lack of that
robustness of outlook induced, not wholly to his spiritual advantage, in
the average public school boy.
When abroad Wantley never became, as it were, forgetful of his
identity--never affected the incognito so dear, and sometimes so useful,
to the travelling English peer. Indeed, young Lord Wantley had soon
become the Continental innkeeper's ideal 'milord,' content to pay well
for indifferent accommodation, delighted rather than otherwise to meet
with those trifling mishaps which annoy so acutely the ordinary tourist,
and content to come back, winter after winter, to the same auberge,
osteria, or gasthaus.
In yet another matter he differed greatly from the conventional
travelled and travelling Englishman: he came and went alone, apparently
feeling no need, as did most of his countrymen, of congenial
companionship. One day the kindly landlady of one of those stately
posting inns, yclept 'Le Tournebride,' which may still be found
scattered through provincial France, had ventured to suggest that the
next time she had the pleasure of seeing him she hoped he would come
accompanied by 'une belle milady.' He had smiled as he had answered:
'Jamais! jamais! jamais!' But that particular 'Tournebride' had known
him no more.
Wantley had thought much of marriage. What man so situated does not do
so? He knew, or thought he knew, that to him money and marriage must be
synonymous terms, and the knowledge had angered him. In one of his rare
moments of confidence he had said to his cousin: 'Like your eccentric
friend who always knew when there was a baronet in the room, I always
know when there's an heiress there. And, what is more serious, her
presence always induces a feeling of repulsion!'
Penelope had laughed suddenly, and then changed the subject. Any
allusion to Wantley's monetary affairs held for her a sharp if small
pin-prick of conscience. For a while she had tried, it must be admitted
in but a fitful and desultory way, to bring him in contact with the type
of English girl, often, let it be said in parenthesis, a not unpleasing
type of modern girlhood, who is willing to consider very seriously, and
in all good faith, the preliminaries to a bargain in which she and her
fortune, a peer and his peerage, are to be the human goods weighed
opposite one another in the balance of life.
There had also been periods in Wantley's life when he had found himself
in love with love, and ready to weave an ardent romance round every
pretty sentimentalist in search of an adventure. But these feelings had
never deepened into one so strong as to compel the thought of an
enduring tie. His fastidious critical temperament shrank from concrete
realities, and as time went on he had felt, over-sensitively, how little
he had to offer to a woman of the kind to whom he sometimes felt a
strong if temporary attraction.
As he grew older, passed the border-line of thirty, the longing for the
stability afforded by a happy marriage appealed to him, for awhile, far
more than it had done when he was a younger man. And so for some two
years, being then much abroad, he had toyed with the idea of making, in
France or in Italy, a _mariage de convenance_ with some well-born,
well-dowered girl who should leave her convent-school to become his
wife, and with whom he would promise himself, when in the mood, an
after-marriage romance not lacking in piquancy.
Unfortunately, Wantley was an Englishman, and by no means as
unconventional as he liked to think himself. Accordingly, when he came
to consider, and even more when he came to discuss, with some
good-natured French or Italian acquaintance, the preliminaries of such a
marriage as had appealed to his fancy, his gorge rose at certain sides
of the question then closely presented to his notice, and finally he put
the idea from him.
This spring Wantley had returned to England, ready, as usual, to spend
the summer in half-unwilling attendance on his lovely cousin, and
further than he had been for many years from all thought of marriage.
Then, with what seemed at times incredible and disconcerting swiftness,
had come over him, in these few days of sunny quietude, a limitless
unreasoning tenderness for a young creature utterly unlike his former
ideals of womanhood. Even when aghast at the thought of how easily he
might have missed her on the way of his life--even when he felt her
already so much a part of himself that he could no longer have described
her, as he had first seen her, to a stranger--Wantley admitted, nay,
forced on himself the knowledge, that she was not beautiful, not even
particularly gifted or clever. One reason why he had always displayed so
sincere a lack of liking for the heiresses, willing to be peeresses,
whom Penelope had thrust upon his notice, had been that to him they had
all looked so unaccountably plain; and yet, compared with Cecily Wake,
he knew that more than one of these young women might well have been
considered a beauty.
Wantley had always been fond of analyzing his own emotions, and now the
simplicity, as well as the strength, of his feeling amazed him. When
with Cecily Wake he felt that he was journeying through some delicious
unknown country, the old Paradise rediscovered by them two, she still a
sweet mysterious stranger, whose better acquaintance he was making day
by day. But when she was no longer by his side, and there were many
hours he could only spend in thinking of her, then Wantley felt as a
mother feels about her own little child, as if he had always known her,
always loved her with this placid and yet uneasy care, this trusting and
yet watchful tenderness.
He had ever deprecated enthusiasm, and had actively disliked
philanthropists, as only those who in early youth are constrained to
endure the company of enthusiasts and the atmosphere of philanthropy can
deprecate the one and dislike the other. Well, now, so the young man
whimsically told himself, had come what his old enemies--those who had
gathered about his uncle and aunt in days he hated to remember--would
doubtless have recognised as a distinct 'call.' It seemed to him that he
had made a good beginning that first Sunday afternoon, when he had kept
the aunt in play while the niece had accomplished her prosaic errand of
mercy.
The same evening, late at night, he had gone into the room which had
been the great Lord Wantley's study, and, under the grim eyes of the man
who had never judged him fairly, he had pulled out faded Blue-Books,
reports, and pamphlets which had been the tools of a mighty worker for
his kind. Then, lamp in hand, he had wandered on into the studio, and
there, oddly out of keeping with their fellows on the pretty quaintly
placed white shelves framing the door, he had found newer, more
digestible, contributions to the problems to which he was now, half
unwillingly, turning his mind.
He took down a slim, ill-printed volume, bearing on the title-page the
name of Philip Hammond, and composed of essays which had first appeared
in the more serious reviews. Setting down his lamp on Penelope's deal
painting-table, he opened the little book with prejudice, read on with
increasing attention, and finally placed it back on the shelf with
respect.
Even so, his lips curled as he remembered the only time he had seen the
writer. The two men had met by accident in Mrs. Robinson's London house,
and Wantley had been amused by Hammond's obvious--too obvious--devotion
to the beautiful widow of the man whose aims and whose ideals he had
known how to describe so well in this very book. For the hundredth time
Wantley asked himself in what consisted Penelope's power of attracting
such men as had been apparently Melancthon Robinson, as was undoubtedly
Philip Hammond, as had become--to give the clinching instance--David
Winfrith.
The day before, when driving back to Monk's Eype from the place where he
had been spending a few pleasant days, he had passed the two riders, and
had seen them so deeply absorbed in one another's conversation that they
had ridden by without seeing him.
For a moment, as he had driven by quickly in a dogcart belonging to his
late host, and therefore unfamiliar to Penelope and her companion, he
had caught a look--an unguarded, unmasked, passionate look--on
Winfrith's strong, plain face.
What glance, what word on his companion's part, had brought it there?
That Winfrith should allow himself to be thus moved angered Wantley. He
set himself to recall very deliberately certain things that his mother,
acting with strange lack of good feeling, had told him, when he was
still a boy, concerning Lady Wantley's mother, Penelope's grandmother.
He wondered if Penelope _knew_. On the whole he thought not. But in any
case, who could doubt from whom she had had transmitted to her that
uncanny power of bewitching men, of keeping them faithful to herself,
while she remained, or at least so he felt persuaded, quite unaffected
by the passions she delighted in unloosing?
In his own mind, and not for the first time, he judged his cousin very
hardly. And yet, after that evening, Wantley never thought so really ill
of her again, for, when he felt tempted to do so, he seemed to hear the
words which he had heard said that day for the first, though by no means
for the last, time: 'Why are you--what makes you--so unfair to
Penelope?'
And even as he walked through the sleeping, silent house he reminded
himself, repentantly, that his cousin's love-compelling power extended
to what was already to him the best and purest, as it was so soon to be
the dearest, thing on earth.