'I wonder who she has got here now,' he said to himself as he noticed a man's hat, roomy travelling-coat, and stick laid across the top of the Italian marriage-chest, the brilliancy of whose armorial ornaments and bright gilding had been dimmed by a hundred years of the salt wind and soft mists of the Dorset coast.
Mrs. Robinson was fond of entertaining those of her fellow-painters whose work attracted her fancy or excited her admiration, and Wantley's fastidious taste sometimes revolted from the associations into which she thrust him.
The young man's relations to his beautiful cousin were at once singular and natural—best, perhaps, explained by a word said in the frankness of grief during the hours which had immediately followed his predecessor's death. 'You know, Penelope,' the heir had said in all good faith, if a little awkwardly—for at that time nothing was definitely known of the famous philanthropist's will, and none doubted that the new peer would find himself to have been treated fairly, if not generously, by the great Lord Wantley—'you know that now you must consider me as your brother; your father himself told me he hoped it would be so.'
The wilful girl had looked at him in silence for a moment, and then, very deliberately, had answered: 'What nonsense! Did my father ever treat you as a son? No, Ludovic, we will go on as we have always done. But if you like'—and she had smiled satirically—'I will look upon you as a kind and well-meaning stepbrother!' And it was with the eyes of a critical, but not unfriendly stepbrother that Wantley came in due course to regard her.
Concerning his cousin's—to his apprehension—extraordinary marriage, he had not been in any way consulted. Indeed, at the time the engagement and marriage took place he had been far away from England; but after Melancthon Robinson's tragic death Penelope for a moment had clung to him as if he had indeed been her brother, showing such real feeling, such acute pain, such bitter distress, that he had come to the conclusion that the tie between the oddly-assorted couple had been at any rate one worthy of respect.
When, somewhat later, Mrs. Robinson had begged Wantley to help her with the complicated business details connected with the Melancthon Settlement, he had drawn back, or rather he had advised her, not unkindly, to hand the work over to one of the great social philanthropic organizations already provided with suitable machinery.
As he had learnt to expect, his cousin entirely disregarded his advice; instead, she found another to give her the help the head of her family refused her, and this other, as the young man sometimes remembered with an uneasy conscience, was one whom they should both have spared, partly because he was engaged in public affairs which took up what should have been the whole of his working time, partly because he had been the hero of Penelope's first romance, and had once been her accepted lover.
Wantley had watched the renewal of the link between the grave young statesman and his old love with a certain cynical interest.
Penelope had not cared to hide her annoyance and disappointment at her cousin's somewhat pusillanimous refusal of responsibility, and so he had not been asked to take any part in the conferences which were held between David Winfrith and the widow of the philanthropic millionaire; but weeks, months, and even the first years, of Penelope's widowhood wore themselves away, and to Wantley's astonishment the relations between Mrs. Robinson and her adviser and helper remained unchanged.
The Melancthon Settlement went on its way, nominally under the management of its founder's widow, in reality owing everything in it that was practical and worthy of respect to the mind and to the tireless industry of the man who had come to regard this work of supererogation as the principal relaxation of a somewhat austere existence. But Winfrith was not able to conceal from himself the fact that the necessary interviews with his old love were the salt of what was otherwise a laborious and often thankless task.