Very unwillingly he had brought Cecily with him to Marston Lydiate. But he had found it impossible to give any adequate reason why she should be left to spend a lonely Christmas in London; further, she had expressed, with more strength than was usual with her, a desire to accompany him, and he had been surprised at the warm affection with which she had spoken of Penelope's mother. He was quite determined that his own first meeting with Lady Wantley should take place alone; and so at last, when he felt the moment he dreaded could no longer be postponed, Cecily had to submit to being placed on a sofa, and left, wondering, perplexed, even a little hurt, while Wantley, guided by Mrs. Moss, went to face an ordeal which his wife actually envied him. So little really intimate had been the Hall with the Rectory in the days of Wantley's childhood and boyhood, that there were many rooms of the vast eighteenth-century mansion which now belonged to him into which he had never been led as child and boy. And it was with a certain surprise that he became aware, when standing on its threshold, that Lady Wantley's bedroom was situated over the round Cedar Drawing-room, and so was of exactly the same proportions, though the general impression produced by the colouring and furnishing was amazingly other. Long before they became the fashion, Lady Wantley had realized the beauty and the value of white backgrounds, and no touch of colour, save that provided by the fine old furniture, marred the delicate purity and severity of an apartment where, even as a young woman, she had spent much of her time when at Marston Lydiate. In this moment of profound emotion and of fear, Wantley's mind and eyes yet took delight in the restful whiteness which from the very threshold seemed to envelop him. The small bed, shrouded tent-wise with white curtains, concealed from him, but only for an instant, the sole occupant of the circular room; for suddenly he saw, sitting in a large armchair placed close to the fire, a strange shrunken figure, wrapped and swathed in black from head to foot. Even the white coif which had always formed part of Lady Wantley's costume since her widowhood had been put aside for a scarf of black silk, so arranged as to hide the upper part of the broad forehead, while accentuating the attenuation of the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, and the still delicately modelled nose and chin. As he gazed, horror-struck, at the sinister-looking figure, by whose side, heaped up in confusion on a small table, lay numberless packets of letters, some yellow with the passage of time, others evidently written very lately, Wantley's repugnance became merged in great concern and pity.