Cecily walked on in silence. 'I admit there is some truth in what you say,' she said at last; 'but I am sure, _sure_, Ludovic, that you are wrong about Mr. Winfrith.' Wantley looked at her thoughtfully. 'A bet, a little bet, my dearest, is a very good way of proving the faith that is in you. Here and now I propose that, if I prove right and you prove wrong after, let us say, two years----' 'Please--please,' she said, 'do not make a joke of this matter; it hurts me.' 'Forgive me,' he cried repentantly. 'I am rather light-headed to-day, and you know I always feel rather jealous of Penelope. After all that's come and gone, it's rather hard that she should take also my wife from me!' III Of the many ill things done in the name of beauty during the last hundred years, none, surely, can compare in sheer wantonness with the restorations of our old village churches. In this matter pious iconoclasts have wrought more mischief than Cromwell and his Ironsides ever succeeded in doing, and the lover of rural England, in the course of his pilgrimage, has perpetually thrust on his notice the loveliness without, wedded to the plaintive ugliness within, of buildings raised to the glory of God in a more creative as well as in a holier age than ours. Here and there, becoming, however, pitifully few as time goes on, the seeker may even now find a village church to the interior of which no desecration has as yet been offered. But such survivals owe their temporary lease of life either to the happy indifference of a wise neighbourhood, or to the determined eccentricity and obstinate conservatism of an incumbent happening to be on intimate terms of friendship--or enmity will serve as well--with the patron of the living. Such had been the fortunate case of the parish church of Marston Lydiate, and Wantley felt a thrill of pleasure when he saw how completely untouched everything had been left since the distant days of his childhood. Together he and his wife made their way among the square old-fashioned pews, first to one and then to another of the holly-decked tombs and monuments of long-dead Wantleys. At last the young man led Cecily up to the most ancient, as also to the most ornate, of these, one taking up the greater part of one aisle. The monument represented Sir George Wantley, of Marston Lydiate, Knight, who in the year 1609 had rebuilt the church. His effigy in armour, bare-headed and kneeling, was under a pillared canopy, and at some little distance was the statue of his wife under a similar canopy. The inscription set forth that their married life, if brief, had been unclouded by dissension, and that 'His lady, left alone, lived alone,' till, having attained her eightieth year, 'she was again joined unto her husband in this place.' 'So,' said Wantley, very soberly, 'would you wish our poor Penelope to be. She has been left alone, and now you would condemn her to live alone.'