The morning before Mrs. Ferrers’s family dinner was devoted to the architect, who came down from London to Goring Abbey, expressly to advise and be instructed. He was entertained at luncheon at the Abbey; and Lina drove over under her aunt’s wing to meet him, while Gerald’s thoroughbred hack—a horse of such perfect manners that it mattered very little whether his rider had hands or no hands—ambled along the turfy borders of the pleasant country road beside the phaeton. Daphne had her day all to herself, since, knowing her to be alone at South Hill, Edgar had no excuse for going there; and, as Mr. Turchill argued with himself, a man must give some portion of his life to the dearest old mother and the most picturesque old house in the county. So, Edgar, with his fancies flying off and circling about South Hill, contrived to spend a moony day at home, mending his fishing-rods, reviewing his guns, writing a few letters, and going in and out of his mother’s homely old-fashioned morning-room twenty times between breakfast and luncheon. Mrs. Turchill had been invited to the family dinner at Arden Rectory, and had accepted the invitation, though she was not given to dissipation of any kind, and she and her son found a good deal to say about the coming feast during Edgar’s desultory droppings-in. ‘I hope you’ll like her, mother,’ said Edgar, stopping, with a gun in one hand and an oily rag in the other, to look dreamily across the moat to the quiet meadows beyond, where the dark red Devon cows contrasted deliciously with the fresh green turf sprinkled with golden buttercups and silvery marguerites. ‘Like her!’ echoed Mrs. Turchill, lifting her soft blue eyes in mild astonishment from her matronly task of darning one of the best damask table-cloths. ‘Why she is the sweetest girl I know. I would have given ten years of my life for you to have married her.’ This was awkward for Edgar, who had spoken of Daphne, while Mrs. Turchill thought of Madoline. ‘Not with my consent, mother,’ he said, laughing, and reddening as he laughed. ‘I couldn’t have spared a single year. But I wasn’t speaking of Madoline just then. I know of old how fond you are of her. I was talking of poor little Daphne, whom you haven’t seen since she came from her French school.’ ‘French school!’ exclaimed Mrs. Turchill contemptuously. ‘I hate the idea of those foreign schools, regular Jesuitical places, where they take girls to operas and theatres and give them fine notions,’ pursued the Saxon matron, whose ideas on the subject were slightly mixed. ‘Why couldn’t Sir Vernon send her to the Misses Tompion, at Leamington? That’s a respectable school if you like. Good evangelical principles, separate bedrooms, and plain English diet. I hope the French school hasn’t spoilt Daphne. She was a pretty little girl with bright hair, I remember, but she had rather wild ways. Something too much of a tomboy for my taste.’ ‘She was so young, mother, when you saw her last, not fifteen.’