It was there, under those trees, completely screened from the windows which swept the terrace, that Mrs. Robinson preferred to spend what leisure Sir George Downing allowed himself from his work. More than once Motey had come down from her watching-place, and had crept into the little pine-wood to watch, to overhear, what was being done and what was being said in the ilex grove. But the old woman's unhappy, suspicious eyes only saw what they had seen so often before: her mistress and Downing walking slowly side by side, she listening, absorbed, to his utterances. Sometimes Penelope would lay her hand a moment on his arm, with a curious, familiar, tender gesture--curious as coming from one who avoided alike familiarity and tenderness when dealing with her friends. Only once, however, had Mrs. Mote surprised a gesture which might not have been witnessed by all the world. One afternoon when a strand of Mrs. Robinson's beautiful hair had become loosened, and so uncoiled its length upon her shoulder, Downing, turning towards her, had suddenly taken it up between his fingers and raised it to his lips. Then the old nurse had seen the bright gleam of what was so intimately a part of her mistress mingling for a moment with the dark moustache heavily streaked with white, and she had clenched her hands in impotent anger and disgust. II Her aunt's presence at Monk's Eype scarcely affected Cecily Wake. The two had never become intimate; the girl's young eagernesses and enthusiasms disturbed Miss Wake, and even her sunny good temper and buoyancy were a source of irritation to one who had led so grey and toneless a life. On the other hand, Miss Theresa Wake was really attached to the beautiful woman whom she called cousin. She watched Penelope far more closely than the latter knew during those still, hot August days, when the thin, shrunken figure of the spinster lady, wrapped, in spite of the heat, in an old-fashioned cashmere shawl, sat back in one of the hooded chairs set on the eastern side of the terrace. When out in the open air Miss Wake always armed herself with one of the novels which had been thoughtfully provided by her kind hostess for her entertainment; but often she would lay the volume down on her knee, and gaze, her dim eyes full of speculation, at Mrs. Robinson's brilliant figure coming and going across the terrace, to and from the studio, sometimes--nay, generally--accompanied, shadow-wise, by the tall, lean form of Sir George Downing. After watching these two for a while, Miss Wake would find her interrupted novel oddly uninteresting and dreary. To Cecily these holiday days were not passing by as happily as she had thought they would. She felt for the first time in her short life disturbed, she knew not why; distressed, she knew not by what.