'Yes,' said Penelope, 'yes, it was my mother. How clever of you to guess! Mamma used to go and see her regularly. And one day, finding how unhappy the poor woman seemed to be, she asked my father to allow her to ask her to come and stay at Monk's Eype. Very characteristically, as I think, he let mamma have her way in the matter; but during Mrs. Winfrith's visit he himself went away, otherwise people might have thought that he had condoned her behaviour.'
She paused for a moment.
'Something so strange happened during that first stay of Mrs. Winfrith's at Monk's Eype. Mamma found out, or rather Mrs. Winfrith confided to her, that she had fallen in love, rather late in the day, with Mr. Winfrith, and that she could not bear the gentle, cold, distant way in which he treated her. Then mamma did what I have always thought was a very brave thing. She went over to Shagisham, all by herself, and spoke to him, telling him that if he had really forgiven his wife he ought to treat her differently.'
'And then?' asked Cecily.
'And then'—Penelope very shortly ended the story—'she—mamma, I mean—persuaded him to go away for six months with Mrs. Winfrith. They spent the time in America, where her brother was living as attaché to the British Legation. After that they came home, and about five years before I made my appearance, David was born.'
'And Mrs. Mason?' asked Cecily.
'Mrs. Mason has lived on all these years in the house we passed just now. I have myself seen her several times peeping out of one of the windows. She has a thin, rather clever-looking face, and long grey curls. She was probably out just now, for she takes a drive every afternoon; but she never leaves her closed carriage, and, though she can walk quite well, they have to carry her out to it. She is intensely interested in weddings and funerals, and, on the very rare occasions when there is anything of the sort going on at Shagisham, her carriage is always drawn up close to the gate of the churchyard. She was there the day Mrs. Winfrith was buried. My father, who came down from London to be present, was very much shocked, and thought someone ought to have told the coachman to drive on; but of course no one liked to do it, and so Mrs. Mason saw the last of the woman who had been her rival.'