Lady Wantley had taken an intuitive, unreasoning dislike to the remarkable man whose presence she realized her daughter would have wished her to regard as an honour; and though she was quite unaware of it, a word ventured by Mrs. Mote very early in Downing's stay at Monk's Eype had contributed to this feeling of discomfort and suspicion.
Like most gifts, that of intuition can be cultivated, and Lady Wantley had done all in her power to increase and fructify that side of her nature. The mere presence of Downing in the same room with herself made her feel as if she was suddenly thrust amid warring elements, and her mind became shadowed by the suspicion that this man, when a dweller in the Eastern country famed immemorially for the potency of its magic, had foregathered with spirits of evil. That his going had not lifted the clouds which seemed to hang so darkly over the whole of the little company about her, Lady Wantley regarded as a proof that her suspicions were well founded, for to her thinking it is far easier to evoke than to lay demoniac influences.
These thoughts, however, she kept to herself, and no knowledge that in her mother Downing had a watchful antagonist came to increase Mrs. Robinson's nervous unrest.
During those same days following Downing's departure from Monk's Eype, Mrs. Robinson and Wantley left off sparring, and Penelope would debate uneasily whether it was his own affairs—or hers—which had so much altered her cousin's manner, and made him become, to herself, more kindly and considerate than she had ever before known him. But the young man kept his own counsel. He and old Miss Wake never referred to the conversation they had held the day Penelope and Cecily had driven over to Shagisham; each, however, was aware that the other had felt relieved, perhaps unreasonably so, to see Persian Downing leave Monk's Eype.
Sometimes Wantley was inclined to think that Miss Wake had been utterly misled, and then, again, some trifling circumstance would make him fear that she had been right.
The doubt was sufficiently strong to convince him that this was no moment to speak—upon another matter—to Cecily Wake: In London, amid the impersonal surroundings of the Melancthon Settlement, he would pursue and bring to a happy ending—nay, to an exquisite beginning—his and Cecily's simple romance. But in the meanwhile he saw no reason for denying himself the happiness of being with her every moment of the day not given up by her to Penelope.
Once, when they were thus together, Cecily had said a word—only a word, and in defence of a toy fund organized by a great London newspaper—concerning her own giftless childhood and girlhood.
There had been no kind relatives or friends to remember the convent-bred child. Miss Wake's Christmas present had always been something useful and, indeed, necessary, and Cecily, remembering, pleaded for the useless doll and the unnecessary toy.
Wantley, while pretending to be only half convinced, was composing in his own mind a letter to the old servant who kept for him his few family relics, his father's books, his mother's lace and simple jewels. Even now, or so he told himself, the girl walking by his side, talking with the youthful energy and certainty of being right which always both amused and moved him, was herself sufficiently a child to enjoy a gift, especially an anonymous gift, by post.
And this was why the young man, usually so ready to grumble at the inscrutable ways of Providence, hailed his cousin's departure, for what she had announced would be a long afternoon's expedition, as a piece of amazing good fortune.