Prayers were read as usual that morning, and immediately afterwards the routine of the school began. The girls drifted away into their several classes. The special teachers who lived in the house performed their duties. The music masters and drawing masters, who came from some little distance, arrived in due course. Morning school passed like a flash. Then came early dinner, and then that delightful time known as "recess." It was during that period that Cara and Mary had resolved to ask Penelope Carlton to give her decision. Penelope knew perfectly well that they would approach her then. She had been, as she said, present in the arbour on the previous night, and knew that Mrs Hazlitt had made up her mind to give up the idea of Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women," if a suitable Helen was not to be found within twenty-four hours. It was essential, therefore, for Penelope to declare her purpose during the recess. She had by no means faltered in that purpose. During morning school she had worked rather better than usual, had pleased her teacher--as indeed she always did--by the correctness of her replies and the sort of quaint originality of her utterances. She was a girl who by no means as yet had come to her full powers, but these powers were stirring within her, dimly perhaps, perhaps unworthily. But, nevertheless, they were most assuredly there, and in themselves they were of no mean order. Penelope now walked slowly in the direction of the old Queen Anne parterre. This had not been touched since the days when that monarch held possession of the throne. It was a three-cornered, lozenge-like piece of ground, with the most lovely turf on it--that soft, very soft green turf which can only come after the lapse of ages. Mrs Hazlitt was very proud of the Queen Anne parterre, and never allowed the girls to walk on the turf, insisting on their keeping to the narrow gravel walk which ran round it. There were high, red brick walls to the parterre on three sides, but the fourth was open and led away into a dim forest of trees of all sorts and descriptions, and these trees made the place shady and comparatively cool, even on the hottest days. Penelope, wearing a very shabby brown holland skirt and a white muslin blouse of at least three years of age, looked neither picturesque nor interesting as she strolled towards the parterre. She had not troubled herself to put on a hat. Her complexion was of the dull, fair sort which does not sunburn. She was destitute of any particle of colour; even her lips were pale; her eyes were of the lightest shade of blue; her eyelashes and eyebrows were also nearly white. As she walked along now, slightly hitching her shoulders, there came a whoop of delight from the younger children, and, amongst several others, Juliet L'Estrange leaped towards her.