‘Don’t,’ cried Daphne. ‘Didn’t I tell you ages ago that I detest you when you flatter me?’ Madoline looked up with momentary wonder at that expression ‘ages ago;’ but Daphne was so given to wild exaggerations and a school-girl latitude of phrase, that ‘ages ago’ might naturally mean yesterday. ‘Daphne dearest, what has put you out of temper?’ she asked gently. ‘I’m afraid you’re getting tired.’ ‘If she give in before we get to Goring Lane I shall claim a dozen pairs of gloves.’ ‘I am not the least little bit tired; I could row you to Naseby, if you liked,’ replied Daphne haughtily; whereupon the lovers began to talk of their own affairs, somewhat lazily, as suited the summer morning and the quiet landscape, where a light haze that yet lingered over the fields seemed the cool and misty forecast of a blazing afternoon. Goring Lane was an accommodation road, leading down from the home farm to the meadows on the river bank, and here they found a light open carriage and a pair of strong country-made gray horses waiting for them. Gerald had sent his valet over before breakfast to make all arrangements for their reception. The man was waiting beside the carriage, and to Daphne’s horror she beheld in him the grave gentleman in gray who had helped to convey provisions for the Fontainebleau picnic: but not a muscle of the valet’s face betrayed the fact that he had ever seen this young lady before. At the end of the lane they came into a shady park-like avenue, and then to a gray stone gateway, pillared, mediæval, grandiose; on the summit of each granite pillar a griffin of the most correct heraldic make grasped a shield, and on the shield were quarterings that hinted at a palmer’s pilgrimage in the Holy Land, and a ragged staff that suggested kindred with the historic race of Dudley. The lodge-keeper’s wife and her three children were standing by the open gate, ready to duck profusely in significance of delight in their lord’s return. The male bird as usual was absent from the nest. Nobody ever saw a man at an entrance lodge. The avenue of limes was of but thirty years’ growth, but there was plenty of good old timber on the broad expanse of meadow-land which Mr. Goring had converted into a park. There was a broad blue lake in the distance, created by the late Mr. Goring, an island in the middle of it, also of his creation; while a fleet of rare and costly foreign aquatic birds of Mr. Goring’s importation were sailing calmly on the calm water. And yonder, in the green valley, with a wooded amphitheatre behind it, stood the Abbey, built strictly after the fashion of the fifteenth century, but every block of stone and every lattice obviously of yesterday. ‘It wouldn’t be half a bad place if it would only mellow down to a sober grayness, instead of being so uncomfortably white and dazzling,’ said Gerald as they drew near the house. ‘It is positively lovely,’ answered Madoline.