CHAPTER XI

GLAMOUR


Full summer had come, and with it Miss Grey. She was not staying at the
Manor, as Annie had taken a violent dislike to the idea of visitors, and
Ishmael dreaded possible unpleasantness, so that he had been thankful
when Blanche of her own accord suggested going into lodgings. She wanted
to bring a friend with her, she said, a girl who was peaky after too
long nursing of a sick mother in London. Therefore Vassie interviewed
Mrs. Penticost, a cheery soul who rejoiced in a little old Queen Anne
house called "Paradise," a mile along the cliff-path, where it gave on
the outskirts of the village. Blanche was in raptures over the names
Penticost and Paradise, and would have been in raptures over her
landlady too if that worthy woman had not chosen to be rather
unresponsive towards her, though frankly adoring the little friend
Judith Parminter.

Judy was only nineteen, a slim, awkward girl with high cheekbones and
deep-sunk hazel eyes that gave her a look not unlike that of a beautiful
monkey--so Killigrew, when he came down to take up his quarters at the
inn, for a summer's painting, declared. He swore that Judy would be a
great beauty, but that she would always be like a monkey with those
deep, sad eyes and the bistre stains below them that were the only tinge
of colour upon her dark skin. She was a shy, wild creature, given to
solitary roaming and much scribbling of astonishingly good poems in a
little note-book. Blanche said she had genius, and, though Blanche would
have said it just then if it had been true or not, there was something