Of course Denas recognised the differences in her friend’s life and her own. Mr. Tresham’s old stone mansion was large and lofty. It had fine gardens, and it had been well furnished from the wreck of the London house. Elizabeth played on the harp and piano in a pretty, fashionable way, and she had jewelry, and silk dresses, and many adornments quite outside of the power of Denas to obtain. But Denas never envied her these things. She looked on them as the accidentals of a certain station, and God had not put her in that station. In her own she had the very best of all that belonged to it. And as far as personal adornment went, she was neither vain nor envious. Her dark-blue merino dress and her wide straw hat satisfied her ideas of propriety and beauty. A shell comb in her fair hair and a few white hyacinths at her throat were all the ornaments she desired. So dressed that Easter Eve, she had stood a moment with her hat in her hand before her mother, and asked, with a merry little movement of her eyes and head, “what she thought of her?” and Joan Penelles had told her child promptly:
“You be sweet as blossoms, Denas.”
There was an engagement between her and Elizabeth to adorn the altar for the Resurrection Service, and it was mainly this duty which had delayed her until John Penelles began to worry about her long absence. He did not ask himself why he had all in 14 a moment thought of Roland Tresham and felt a shiver of apprehension. He was not accustomed to reason about his feelings, it was so much easier to go to Joan with them. But this evening Joan did not quite satisfy him. He drank his tea and ate plentifully of his favourite pie, of fresh fish and cream and young parsley, and then said:
“Joan, my dear, I have an over-mind to light my pipe and saunter up the cliff-breast. I may meet Denas.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go, father. It do look as if you had lost trust in Denas––misdoubting one’s own is a whist poor business and not worth the following.”
“Aw, my dear, I just want to talk a few words to her quiet-like. If Denas is companying with Roland Tresham she oughtn’t to do it, and I must tell her so, that I must. My dear girl, right is right in the devil’s teeth.”
He said the words so sternly that they seemed to make a gloom in the cottage, but Joan’s cheerful laugh cleared it away. “You be such a dear, good, careful father, John,” she said, as she tucked in with a caressing movement the long ends of his kerchief. “I was only thinking that if it be good to watch, it is far better to trust––there then, isn’t it, father?”
“Why, my dear, I’ll watch first and I’ll trust after––that’s right enough, isn’t it, Joan?”
Joan sighed and smiled, and Penelles, with his pipe in his mouth, turned his face landward. Joan thought a moment and then called to him:
“Father! Paul Tynton is very bad to-day. He 15 was taken ill when the moon was three days old; men die who sicken on that day. Hadn’t you better call and speak a word with him? He is in your class, you know.”