The lean, powerful figure, habited in old-fashioned dress-clothes, looked older than he had imagined the famous man could be. The bushy, dark-brown moustache, streaked with strands of white hair, and the luminous grey eyes, penthoused under singularly straight eyebrows, gave a worn and melancholy cast to the whole countenance.
The younger man also noticed that Downing's hands and feet were exceptionally small, considering his great height. 'I wonder if he will like me,' he said to himself, and this, it must be admitted, was generally Wantley's first thought; but he no longer felt as he had done but a few moments before, listless and discontented with life—indeed, so keenly interested had he, in these few moments, become in Penelope's famous guest that he scarcely noticed the entrance into the room of the young girl of whom his cousin had spoken, and whom she had specially commended to his good offices.
Dressed in a plain white muslin frock, presenting her aunt's excuses in a low, even voice, Cecily Wake suggested to Lady Wantley, who had never seen her before, the comparison, when standing by Penelope, of a snowdrop with a rose. Perhaps this thought passed in some subtle way to Wantley's mind, for it was not till he happened to glance at the girl, across the round table which formed an oasis in the tapestry-hung dining-room, that he became aware that there was something attractive, and even unusual, in the round childish face and sincere, unquestioning eyes.
None of the party, save perhaps Wantley himself, possessed the art of small-talk. Penelope was strangely silent. 'Even she,' her cousin thought with a certain satisfaction, 'is impressed by this remarkable man, who has done her the honour of coming here.'
Then he asked himself, none too soon, what had brought Persian Downing to Monk's Eype? The obvious explanation, that Downing had been attracted by the personality of one who was universally admitted to have an almost uncannily compelling charm, when she cared to exercise it, he rejected as too evident to be true.
Wantley thought he knew his beautiful cousin through and through; yet in truth there were many chambers of her heart where any sympathetic stranger might have easy access, but the doors of which were tightly locked when Wantley passed that way. Like most men, he found it difficult to believe that a woman lacking all subtle attraction for himself could possibly attract those of his own sex whom he favoured with his particular regard. David Winfrith was the exception which always proves a rule, and Wantley admitted unwillingly that in that case there was some excuse; for here, at any rate, had been on Penelope's part a moment of response. But to-night, and for many days to come, he was strangely, and, as he often reminded himself in later life, foolishly, culpably blind.
Gradually the conversation turned on that still so secret and mysterious country with which Sir George Downing was now intimately connected. His slow voice, even, toneless, as is so often that of those who have lived long in the East, acted, Wantley soon found, as a complete screen, when he chose that it should be so, to his thoughts.
Suddenly, and, as it appeared, in no connection with what had just been said at the moment, Lady Wantley, turning to Downing, observed, 'I perceive that you have a number-led mind?'
Penelope looked up apprehensively, but her brow cleared as the man to whom had been addressed this singular remark replied simply and deferentially:
'If you mean that certain days are marked in my life, it is certainly so. Matters of moment are connected in my mind with the number seven.'