When she and Cecily were once more standing on the broad terrace spread out before the villa, Mrs. Robinson broke her long silence. Resolutely she put from her the painful thoughts and the perplexities which had possessed her, and 'It must be very nice,' she said, 'to be a good girl. I was always a very naughty girl; but I am good now, and I want to beg your pardon for having been so very horrid to you yesterday--I mean about the ring.' 'Be horrid to me again,' said Cecily, 'but never beg my pardon; I don't like to hear you do it. Besides,' she added quaintly, 'you can never be really horrid to me, for I shall not let you be.' 'You are a comfortable friend, child, if even rather absurd at times. But now about this morning. I have arranged for Ludovic to drive you and Miss Theresa over to the monastery. We won't mention the plan to mamma, because she thinks Beacon Abbas the abiding-place of seven devils.' 'I'm afraid Aunt Theresa won't be well enough to get up to-day; but, of course, I can go to church by myself.' 'In that case, you and Ludovic can walk across the cliffs. It will be a good opportunity for you to describe to him the delights of the Settlement, and perhaps to make him feel a little ashamed of having done so little to help us.' They were now close to the open windows of the dining-room, and Cecily could see the stately figure of Lady Wantley bending over a small table, on which lay, open, a large Bible. IV An hour later an oddly-assorted couple set out for Beacon Abbas, bound for the monastery which had been so great an eyesore to the famous Evangelical peer. Wantley's critical taste soon found secret fault with the blue-and-white check cotton gown, which, if it intensified the wearer's pure colouring, was surely unsuited to do battle with sea-wind; the sailor-hat, however, was more what the young man, to himself, called _de circonstance_; but he groaned inwardly over the clumsy shape of the brown laced shoes which encased what he divined to be the pretty, slender feet of his companion, and he thoroughly disapproved of a shabby little black bag fastened to her belt. It must be admitted that Cecily did not compare, outwardly at least, very favourably with the three girls who had formed part of the house-party he had left the day before, though even in them, as regarded their minds, however, not their appearance, Wantley had found plenty to cavil at. Perhaps Cecily's critic would have been surprised and rather nettled, had he known that he also was undergoing a keen scrutiny, and one not altogether favourable, from the candid eyes which he had soon decided were the best feature in the girl's serious face.