But again Penelope felt suddenly afraid--of herself, perhaps, rather than of him. 'No, no!' she said hurriedly; 'it would be wrong, unkind, to your old friend--to Mrs. Delacour.' CHAPTER XIII '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.' I 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 mere presence 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.