Once, when Cecily Wake had come upon her in one of these strange companied trances, Lady Wantley had said very simply: 'I have been telling Penelope's father of her many perfections: of her goodness to those who, if they are the disinherited of the earth, are yet the heirs of the kingdom--those whom he himself ever made his special care. I think, dear child, that, if you would not mind my doing so, I will also some day tell him--my husband, I mean--of you, and of Penelope's love and care for you.' And she had added, as if to herself: 'But how could she be otherwise? Was she not, even before her birth, dedicated to the Lord in His temple?' Lady Wantley was sometimes in a sterner mood, when hell seemed as near as--ay, nearer than--heaven. Evil spirits then appeared to encompass her, and she would feel herself to be wrestling with their dread master himself. When this was so, her delicate, bloodless face would become transfigured, and the large, heavy-lidded grey eyes would seem to flash out fire, while Cecily listened, awed, to strange majestic utterances, of which she knew not that their source was the Apocalypse. That this convent-bred girl had a genuine belief in the Evil One, and a due fear of his cunning ways, was undoubtedly a link between Lady Wantley and herself; as was also the softer fact of her great affection for the one creature whom Lady Wantley loved with simple human devotion. After hearing the older woman talk, as she so often did talk, of her loved and admired daughter, Cecily would feel grieved, even a little perplexed, when next she perceived how lightly Penelope esteemed this boundless mother-love. In no material thing did Mrs. Robinson neglect Lady Wantley. Every morning she would make her way into the Picture Room, ready with some practical suggestion designed to further her mother's comfort during the coming day; but to Penelope, much as she loved her, Lady Wantley never alluded to the matters which lay nearest to her heart. She found it easier to do so to the Catholic girl than to the creature she had herself borne, over whose upbringing she had watched so zealously, and, as she sometimes admitted to herself in moments of rare self-sincerity, with so little success. III Wantley only so far remembered the presence at Monk's Eype of Penelope's mother as to thank Heaven that she had nothing in common with the match-making dowagers, of whom he had met certain types in his way through life, and who at this moment would have brushed some of the bloom from his fragrant romance.