Each day a man rode over from the villa to Wyke Regis to fetch the contents of the second post, and to-day the letters had come, by Mrs. Robinson's orders, rather earlier than usual. Wantley lingered about in the hall while the bag was being opened by Penelope. There were several letters addressed to Downing, and these he saw, with a slight pang, were quickly put aside with Penelope's own. Two parcels, both small, both oblong in shape, were addressed in an uneducated handwriting to 'Miss Cecily Wake,' and, puzzled, he peered down at them curiously.
Then Wantley watched his cousin start off on her lonely way, while she noted, with discomfort, that he asked no questions as to her destination. The hour that followed was spent by him in walking up and down the terrace, in reading the day's paper, which he thought had never been so empty of interesting news, and in wondering why Cicely did not come downstairs. He also asked himself, with some anxiety, what there could possibly be in the second parcel that had arrived for her that day. He thought he knew all about the contents of the first, and it seemed odd that on the same day there should have come two....
At last a happy inspiration led him to the studio, and there he found the girl sitting, various of her treasures—for, like a child, she was fond of bearing about with her her favourite possessions—spread out on Penelope's painting-table.
Physical delicacy is too often associated in people's minds with goodness, but, as a matter of fact, to be good in anything but a very passive sense almost always requires the possession of health. It was because Cecily Wake had brought from her convent school unbroken strength of body, and a mind which had never concerned itself with any of the more painful problems of life, that she proved so valuable a helper to Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Pomfret. Thanks to her perfect physical condition, she was always ready to start off, at a moment's notice, on the most tiring and the most dispiriting expeditions. Her feet seemed never weary, her brain never exhausted, and, though she was sometimes disappointed when things went wrong, she was always ready to start again with unabated vigour to try and set them right.
To Cecily Wake heaven and hell, the world and purgatory, were all equally real, matter of fact, and to be accepted without question. She knew nothing of the hell which people may make for themselves, and only now, since she had been at Monk's Eype, had she realized that it is possible to find a very fair imitation of heaven on this earth.
Cecily's hell was very sparsely peopled, and that entirely with historical characters. As to those who fill the dread place, they were, to her thinking, an ill-sorted company, and probably very few of those about her, while believing the numbers to be much greater, would have included those whom she believed to be there. Judas, Henry VIII., the man who tortured the little Dauphin in the Temple, the Bishop who condemned Joan of Arc to be burnt—they, she thought, must surely all be there. But, as regarded the world about her, Cecily was quite convinced that, like William of Deloraine, 'Between the saddle and the ground, they mercy sought and mercy found.'
This little analysis of Cecily Wake's character and point of view is necessary to explain one of the two gifts which had come to her by the second post—that with which Wantley had not only had nothing to do, but which had caused him some searching of heart, for he had been afraid that it might be the outcome of one of those misunderstandings, those misreadings of orders, which affect and annoy men so much more than women.
But the girl knew quite well from whom had come the six woolwork table-napkin rings, although the only indication of the sender had been the words, written on a piece of common note-paper
'This is from a friend
Who loves you no end.'