All that Wantley knew concerning those strangers he was about to meet was that he would be called upon to make himself pleasant to an elderly Roman Catholic spinster, and to her niece, a girl closely associated with the work of the Melancthon Settlement; and the double prospect was far from being agreeable to him. He was therefore relieved to find the Picture Room empty, save for the immobile presence of Lady Wantley. She was sitting gazing out of the window, her hands clasped together, absorbed in meditation. As he came in she turned and smiled, but said no word of welcome; and he respected her mood, knowing well that she was one of those who feel the invisible world to be very near, and who believe themselves surrounded by unseen presences. Lady Wantley's personality had always interested and fascinated the young man. Even as a child he had never sympathized with his mother's dislike of her, for he had early discerned how very different she was from most of the people he knew; and to-night, fresh as he was from the company of cheerful dowagers who were of the earth earthy, this difference was even more apparent to him than usual. Penelope's mother doubtless owed something of her aloofness of appearance to her singular and picturesque dress, of which the mode had never varied for twenty years and more. The long sweeping skirts of black silk or wool, the cross-over bodice and the lace coif, which almost wholly concealed her banded hair, while not hiding the beautiful shape of her head, had originally been designed for her by the painter to whom, as a younger woman, she had so often sat. Since the great artist had first brought her the drawing of the dress in which he wished once more to paint her, she had never given a thought to the vagaries of fashion, so it came to pass that those about her would have found it impossible to think of her in any other garments than those composing the singular, stately costume which accentuated the mingled severity and mildness of her pale cameo-like face. After Melancthon Robinson's death, his widow had at once made it clear that she had no intention of returning to her mother; but every winter saw the two ladies spending some weeks together in London, and each summer Lady Wantley became her daughter's guest at Monk's Eype. The rest of the year was spent by the elder woman at Marston Lydiate, the great Somersetshire country-seat to which she had been brought as a bride, and for which she now paid rent to her husband's successor. To Wantley the arrangement had been a painful one. He would have much preferred to let the place to strangers, and he had always refused to go there as Lady Wantley's guest.