"This is a damned rum start," he murmured. "Wot’s up, I wonder? This ’ere Miss Mackarness was ’ousekeeper at Upwell Castle, and I’m a Dutchman if any one of us ’as ever ’eard of Moat ’Ouse. She’s goin’ to do it, as she said, goin’ to be married and keep it dark. Women is wonderful strange and, so to speak, dreadful. I thot I knew ’Arriet Weekes through and through, and she turned out to be a serpent with false teeth, ready to sell Lady Penelope to the _Times_. And my lady ’as turned me round ’er finger. I’m knee-deep in secret hoaths, and, without knowin’ what I was doin’, I’ve swore off drink. Well, I always did like ginger-beer!" But he sighed all the same. And that afternoon he packed up and disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him. Neither he nor any one of those who hunted for news had any notion of the fame which would presently be his. Nor did Penelope see quite what she had done when this nice-looking young man suddenly vanished by her orders. But Penelope was in love. *CHAPTER X.* Love is a pathological state which can only be cured by one means. It is a disease, and robs the most humourous of their humour. When Rabelais was in love he no doubt wrote poems which he afterward destroyed. When Dante was in love he did the Paradiso. When he cheered up he wrote the Inferno. Neither of these is any joke. But then, Dante had no more humour than Penelope. It can be imagined (or it cannot be imagined) how unhumourous Pen became when she found she had made her choice between Plant and De Vere and Goby and Carew and Williams and Bramber and Gordon and Rivaulx. She wept at night over those she could not marry. And it added grief to grief to think that the unmarried would probably relapse into their evil ways. "What can one poor girl do with so many?" she asked. "I’m sure they will turn around on me, and once more follow their dreadful instincts! And they have improved so much!" The result of her sorrow was such pity that every poor wretch of them all was convinced she loved him better and better. They were quite cheerful. They looked at each other almost sympathetically. They grieved for each other, and struggled on the hard cinder-path of duty, with Penelope at least a long lap ahead. The amount of good they did was wonderful. Plant got his university started, Rivaulx went over to Paris and asked Dreyfus to dinner, Goby was deep in Imperial Yeomanry and rifle ranges, Bramber spoke on every opportunity in the House and voted with the insistence of a whip. De Vere wrote a monograph on outdoor sports, with an appendix on bulldogs. He also owned that poetry was not everything, and went so far as to say that the poet laureate was a very good fellow. Gordon floated a company without any water in the capital, and ran the whole affair with absolute honesty and no waiver clause. Carew learned to draw, and spoke sober truth about the Chantry Bequest.