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