For the first time Wantley realized that the girl walking by his side had a peculiarly charming smile, and he altered, because of that smile, what he had meant to be a franker expression of feeling. 'Now, honestly, Miss Wake, can you imagine Penelope, even in intention, living an austere life among the London poor, and occasionally pulling them up by the roots to see if they were growing better under her earnest guidance? The fact that young Robinson thought it possible that she should ever do so added, to my mind, a touch of absurdity to what was, after all, a sad business.' 'And yet he and she did really live and work at the Settlement,' objected Cecily quietly, and he was rather disappointed that she showed so little vehemence in defence of her friend. 'That's true, tho' I believe Penelope was very often away during the four months the marriage lasted, it was a new experience, and we all enjoy--Penelope more than most of us, perhaps--new experiences and new emotions.' 'But our people'--the girl spoke as if she had not heard his last words, and Wantley was pleased with the low, rounded quality of her voice--'our people, those of them who are still there, for you know that they come and go in that part of London, have never forgotten that time: I mean when Penelope lived at the Settlement. Perhaps you think that poor people do not care about beautiful things; if so, you would be surprised to see how those to whom Mrs. Robinson gave drawings treasure them, how they ask after her, how eager they are to see her!' 'She doesn't often give them that pleasure.' The retort was too obvious. He delighted in being Devil's Advocate, and it amused him to see the colour at last come and go in cheeks still pale from too long acquaintance with London air. But the time had come to call a truce. The little town of Wyke Regis lay below them, looking, even to the boats lying on the sea, like a medieval map, and, for some time before they reached the road leading to the monastery, they could see streams of people passing through the great doors, which, forming a true French _porte-cochère_, gave access first to monastic buildings built round three sides of a vast paved courtyard, and then to the spacious gardens and orchard, where jutted out the curious miniature basilica which had been the pride and pleasure of the Popish Lord Wantley. To Cecily's surprise, perhaps a little to her disappointment, Wantley refused to accompany her into the chapel; instead, he remained outside in the sunshine, smoking one cigarette after another, and amusing himself by deciphering the brief inscriptions on the plain slabs of stone which, sunk into the grass under and among the apple-trees, marked the graves of two generations of French monks.