But Ethel was meek and mild, and followed Penelope at a humble distance, modelling herself on that sweet mould of revolution. So might a penny candle imitate an arc-light; so a glowworm worship the big moon. "But you’ll get married, dear," said Ethel, "of course you’ll get married." Penelope was pensive. "There are other things than marriage," said Penelope. "Oh, are there?" sighed Ethel. She did not think so, for she was in love. Penelope loved theories best. "Which of them will you marry?" asked Ethel. "Which what?" "Silly, them," said Ethel. "What the duchess calls your ’horde.’" "I don’t know," replied Penelope. "I’m like Diogenes, and I’m looking for an honest man." "Oh, honesty,—yes, of course, I know what you mean. But there are plenty of them, Pen dear. "Boo!" said Pen; "so the other Greeks said to the man in the tub." Ethel sighed. "What Greeks and what man in what tub?" she inquired, plaintively. And Penelope did not enlighten her darkness, for in came the Duchess of Goring, her aunt, whose Christian name was Titania. She weighed sixteen stone in glittering bead armour, and had a voice exactly like Rose Le Clerc’s in "The Duchess of Bayswater." She rarely stopped talking, and was ridiculously moral and conventional, and, except for her voice, she might have been a shopkeeper’s wife in any suburb. "My dear Penelope," said Titania, "I’m glad to see you again. You look positively sweet, my darling, after all these parties and carryings-on, and what not, and now at last you are quite grown up and yourself and your own and twenty-one. I wish I was. I was nine stone then exactly,—not a pound more. Oh, and it’s you, Ethel. I hope your dear papa is not overworking himself, now he’s a cabinet minister. Cabinet ministers will overwork themselves. I’ve known them die of it. Tell him what I say, will you? But of course he will pay no attention, and in time will die like the rest. It’s no use advising men to be sensible. I’ve given it up. Ah, here at last is Lord Bradstock." Titania flowed on wonderfully; she flowed exactly like the twisting piece of glass in a mechanical clock which mimics a jet of water. She turned round and never advanced. But Augustin, Lord Bradstock, was as calm as a mill-pond, as a mere in the mountains. He was tall and thin and ruddy and white-haired at fifty. He had been twice a widower. "Why at last, Titania?" he yawned, as he stood with Penelope’s hand in his. He was still her guardian in his heart, though she was out of tutelage. "I say at last, Augustin, because you were not here before me," cried Titania. "And I expected you to be here before me from what you said this morning. I told you I meant to come in and speak quietly and seriously to Penelope, and you said you would come, too." Penelope’s eyes thanked her guardian, and they smiled at him half-secretly, saying as plain as any words: "What a dear you are to come in and dilute aunty for me!"