‘Yes; I suppose that upon the whole I am a very fortunate young person, although I am a pauper,’ said Daphne sententiously. ‘I have youth, and the use of all my faculties, and a ridiculously good constitution. I know I can walk knee-deep in wet grass and never catch cold, and drink quarts of iced water when I am in a fever of heat, and do all manner of things that people consider tantamount to suicide, and be none the worse for my folly. And then I have a fine house to live in; though I have the sense that I am nobody in it; and I have a very aristocratic father—to look at. Yes, Madoline, I have all these things, and they are of no account to me; but I have your love, and that is worth them all a hundred times over.’ The sisters sat with clasped hands, Madoline touched by the wayward girl’s affection. The moon was shining above the deodaras; the last of the nightingales was singing amidst the darkness of the shrubbery. ‘Why do you want to go back to school, Daphne?’ asked Lina again, coaxingly. ‘I don’t want to go.’ ‘But this morning you were begging papa to send you back.’ ‘Yes; I had an idea that I ought to improve myself—this morning. But as papa refused to grant my request in a very decisive manner, I have put the notion out of my head. I thought that another year with Madame Tolmache might have improved my French, and reconciled me to the necessity for a subjunctive mood, which I never could see while I was at Asnières; or that a twelvemonth in Germany might have enabled me to distinguish the verbs that require the dative case after them, from the verbs that are satisfied with the accusative, which at present is a thing utterly beyond me. But papa says no, and, as I am much fonder of boating and tennis and billiards than of study, I am not going to find fault with papa’s decision.’ This was all said so lightly, with so much of the natural recklessness of a high-spirited girl who has never had a secret in her life, that Madoline had not a moment’s doubt of her sister’s candour. Yet there was a hardness in Daphne’s tone to-night that grieved her. ‘Who is fond of billiards?’ asked Gerald’s lazy tones, a little way above them, and, looking up, they saw him leaning with folded arms upon the broad marble balustrade. ‘Are you coming up to the drawing-room to give us some music, or are we coming down to the billiard-room to play a match with you?’ he inquired. ‘Whichever my father likes,’ answered Madoline. ‘Sir Vernon will not play this evening. He has gone to his room to read the evening papers. I think he has not forgiven Turchill for the series of flukes by which he won that game last night. Edgar and I will have a clear stage and no favour this evening, and we mean to give you two young ladies a tremendous licking.’ ‘You will have an easy victim in me,’ said Madoline. ‘I have not played half-a-dozen times since you left home.’