The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

From the broad terrace overhanging the sea, the row of high narrow windows on either side of the shallow stone steps giving access to the central hall, seemed strictly symmetrical. But there was nothing uniform behind the stately façade. Instead of a suite of reception-rooms opening the one out of the other on either side of the frescoed hall, the whole left side of the villa—excepting the wing, which stretched, as did its fellow, landward, and in which were the servants' quarters—was occupied by one vast apartment.

In this great room the creator of Monk's Eype had gathered together most of his treasures, including the paintings which he had acquired during a long sojourn in Italy; and his Victorian successor had added many beautiful works of art to the collection.

In the Picture Room, as it was called, Penelope's mother always sat when at Monk's Eype, sometimes working at delicate embroidery, oftener writing busily at an inlaid ivory table close to one of the windows opening on to the terrace.

On the other side of the circular hall the Italian architect had had his way. Here there was a suite of lofty, well-proportioned rooms opening the one out of the other.

Of these rooms, the first was the dining-room, of which the painted ceiling harmonized with the panels of old Flemish tapestry added to the treasures of Monk's Eype by Penelope's parents. Then came another spacious room, of much the same proportions, which had now been for many years regarded as specially set apart for the use of young Lord Wantley, Mrs. Robinson's cousin and frequent guest. In this pleasant room Wantley read, painted, and smoked, and there also he would entertain those of Penelope's visitors whose sex made him perforce their host. Still, even his occupancy of what some of Mrs. Robinson's friends considered the most agreeable room in the villa was poisoned by a bitter memory. Not long after the death of the man whom he had been taught to call uncle, he had heard his plea for a billiard-table set aside by the new mistress of Monk's Eype with angry decision, and he had been made to feel that he had unwittingly offered an insult to her father's memory.

Beyond Lord Wantley's special quarters there was a third room, more narrow, less well lighted than the others. There were those, nevertheless, who would have regarded it as the most interesting apartment at Monk's Eype, for there the greatest of Victorian philanthropists had worked, spending long hours of his holiday at the large plain knee-table so placed as both to block and to command the one window. Here also hung a portrait which many would have come far to see. If vile as a work of art, it was almost startlingly like the late owner of the room, and this resemblance was the more striking because of the familiar attitude, the left hand supporting the chin, which had had for most of the sitter's fellow-countrymen the ridiculous associations of caricature.

Mrs. Robinson disliked both the room and the portrait. But mingled feelings of respect, of affection, and of fear, had caused her to leave the room as it had been during her father's occupancy, and it was only used by her on the rare occasions when she was compelled to have a personal interview with one of her tenants from neighbouring Wyke Regis.

II

On the evening of the day, a Saturday, when Miss Wake's and her niece's arrival had taken place, Lord Wantley had returned somewhat unexpectedly from a visit paid in the neighbourhood, which had been cut short by the sudden illness of the hostess.

After the cheerful, if commonplace, house and party he had just left, Monk's Eype struck him as strangely quiet and depressing, though, as always, the beauty of the villa impressed him anew as he passed through into the circular hall, now flooded with the light of the setting sun.