The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Lady Wantley's face looked very grey and drawn in the yellow light, but it was set in stern lines. 'Hush!' she said: 'you forget yourself, Motey,' and you are making a great mistake. If you refer to Sir George Downing'—she brought out the name with a certain effort—'you cannot be aware of what is known quite well to your mistress, for she herself told me that he is married. His wife, who is an American lady, once came to see your master.'

There was a long silence. Lady Wantley was waiting for the other to make some sign of submission, but the old servant only gave the woman who had been for so many years her own mistress a quick, furtive look, full of mingled pity and contempt, of fierce personal distress and impatience.

'Were they together then?' she said at last, and with apparent inconsequence she added; 'Does your ladyship remember Mrs. Winfrith, and what happened to her?'

Lady Wantley deigned no answer to Motey's questions. 'I know that you love my daughter,' she said slowly, almost reluctantly; but the servant, with a quick movement, shrank back, and her look, her gesture, forbade the other—the more fortunate woman who had borne the child Motey loved so well—to intrude on the nurse's relation to that child.

'Love her!' Motey was repeating to herself, though no words passed her lips, 'why, I'd give my body and soul for her, which is more than you would do!' But Mrs. Mote mis-estimated the mother-instinct in the woman who was now standing opposite to her.

Then, quickly, vehemently, the old nurse told of what she knew and what she feared with so great a dread, and the story which Lady Wantley heard, still standing, in dead silence, though it might have seemed very unconvincing to a lawyer, brought absolute conviction to Penelope's mother.

She was told in Motey's rough, expressive words of that first meeting in the great Paris station, when Mrs. Robinson, as if hypnotized by this singular-looking man, then a complete stranger, had accepted from him a real service, thus opening the door to an acquaintance which, with scarce any interval, had ripened into an absorbing passion. The maid recalled her own dawning suspicions, her powerlessness to stay the feeling which had seemed suddenly to overpower her mistress, her vain attempts to persuade Penelope to leave Pol les Thermes. Then the silent listener heard of the journey back, with Downing in close attendance, of Mrs. Mote's hope that this was the end of the affair, finally of the nurse's dismay when she discovered that he was actually coming to Monk's Eype.

The story the more impressed Lady Wantley because it was the first time she had received such confidences. She did not know, and Mrs. Mote saw no reason to enlighten her, that Penelope had always been fond of passing adventure, and she would have been astonished indeed had she known that, just at first, her daughter's vigilant companion had troubled but little about her mistress and Sir George Downing. Mrs. Mote had so often seen Penelope come forth, apparently unscathed, from romantic encounters, from long sentimental duels, in which the woman had always been an easy victor.

At last the nurse had said all there was to say. She had even shown Lady Wantley the letter which she regarded as such absolute evidence of what she feared, when again the door suddenly opened, and the two within the room started, or so it seemed to themselves, guiltily apart, as Mrs. Robinson, travel-stained and weary, and yet scarcely dishevelled, and with a bright colour in her cheeks, stood before them.

'I had an accident,' she said, rather breathlessly. 'The left wheel came off the pony-cart. That made me late, the more so that I was caught in the great storm which you do not seem to have had here.'