But there, in the clear September sunshine, cooled by the keen sea-wind, he felt, if anything, even more ill at ease. Every flagstone of the terrace, every bend of the path leading down to the pine-wood and to the ilex-grove, reminded him of delicious moments spent with Cecily. He felt a pang of sharp self-pity, blaming Penelope, even more blaming Providence, for the spoiling of his idyl. 'After last night,' he said to himself, 'Cecily will never again be quite the same, bless her!' And so, walking very slowly, his eyes bent on the ground, he gave himself up actively to dislike and condemnation of his cousin. Wantley was an intensely proud man. Perhaps because he had nothing personally to be proud of, he took the more intense, if not very justifiable, pride in his unsullied name, in his respectable lineage, even in the fine traditions left by his predecessor. From boyhood he had acted according to the theory, 'If I do nothing good or worthy, I will yet avoid what is evil and unworthy.' And to this not very exalted ideal of conduct he had remained faithful. True, Penelope, whatever his griefs against her, would give him and the world no right to despise her. Condemn her wrong-headedness, her selfishness, he was free to do; but he knew well enough how far heavier would have been his condemnation had he discovered that his cousin had become in secret Downing's mistress. But the knowledge that this would never have been possible, brought to-day but scant consolation; indeed, Wantley found it in his heart to wish that Penelope had been more akin to some of the women whom he and she had known, and to whose frailties she had always extended a haughty tolerance. Yet he told himself that he understood her point of view. After all, she was her own mistress, in the matter of herself owing none but that same self a duty. But this was not so--ah no, indeed!--in the matter of her name and of her good repute: those belonged not only to her own self, but also to others, some dead, some living, and some--so Wantley now reminded himself--to come. In happier, more careless days, when he had been so discontented and dissatisfied with the way his life had shaped itself, the young man had lamented his small circle of friends and acquaintances, and he had envied his contemporaries their school and college friends; but now, to-day, it seemed to him that he knew and was known to all the world--that is, to the world whose good opinion he naturally valued. He looked into the future, and realized with shame and anger what would be said by the kind and by the unkind, by the evil-mind and by the prudish, in the boudoirs and in the smoking-rooms, when it became known that Mrs. Robinson, Penelope Wantley--the Perdita of a younger, idler hour--had 'gone off' with Persian Downing!