'I'm afraid Aunt Theresa won't be well enough to get up to-day; but, of course, I can go to church by myself.'
'In that case, you and Ludovic can walk across the cliffs. It will be a good opportunity for you to describe to him the delights of the Settlement, and perhaps to make him feel a little ashamed of having done so little to help us.'
They were now close to the open windows of the dining-room, and Cecily could see the stately figure of Lady Wantley bending over a small table, on which lay, open, a large Bible.
IV
An hour later an oddly-assorted couple set out for Beacon Abbas, bound for the monastery which had been so great an eyesore to the famous Evangelical peer.
Wantley's critical taste soon found secret fault with the blue-and-white check cotton gown, which, if it intensified the wearer's pure colouring, was surely unsuited to do battle with sea-wind; the sailor-hat, however, was more what the young man, to himself, called de circonstance; but he groaned inwardly over the clumsy shape of the brown laced shoes which encased what he divined to be the pretty, slender feet of his companion, and he thoroughly disapproved of a shabby little black bag fastened to her belt.
It must be admitted that Cecily did not compare, outwardly at least, very favourably with the three girls who had formed part of the house-party he had left the day before, though even in them, as regarded their minds, however, not their appearance, Wantley had found plenty to cavil at.
Perhaps Cecily's critic would have been surprised and rather nettled, had he known that he also was undergoing a keen scrutiny, and one not altogether favourable, from the candid eyes which he had soon decided were the best feature in the girl's serious face.
Wantley's loosely-knit figure, of only medium height, clad in what even she realized were somewhat unconventional clothes for church-going; the short pointed beard (Cecily felt sure that only old gentlemen were entitled to wear beards); the grey eyes twinkling under light eyebrows; the nondescript light-brown hair brushed sleekly across the lined forehead—these did not compose a whole according well with her ideal of young manhood. But, after all, Penelope had declared her cousin to be quite clever enough to be of use to the Settlement. There, as Cecily knew well, even the most unpromising educated human material could almost always be made useful: already, in imagination, she saw Lord Wantley teaching an evening class of youths to draw, for surely Mrs. Robinson had said he was a good artist.