‘Mrs. Ferrers is an excellent manager, and does everything very nicely; but as you don’t much care what you eat that would hardly make you so elated. I am rather surprised that you care about meeting Madoline and Mr. Goring so often,’ added Mrs. Turchill, who had not quite forgiven Lina for having refused to marry her son. That is the worst of making a confidante of a mother. She has an inconveniently long memory. ‘I have nothing but kindly feelings for either of them,’ answered Edgar. ‘Don’t you know the old song, mother—“Shall I, wasting in despair, die because a woman’s fair?” I don’t look much like wasting in despair, do I, old lady?’ ‘I should be very sorry to see you unhappy, Edgar; but I shall never love any wife of yours as well as I could have loved Madoline.’ ‘Don’t say that, mother. That’s too hard on the future Mrs. Turchill.’ This was a curious speech from a youth who six months ago had protested that he should never marry. But perhaps this was only Edgar’s fun. Mrs. Turchill shared the common delusion of mothers, and thought her son a particularly humorous young man. What a sweetly Arcadian retreat Arden Rectory looked on this fair summer evening, and how savoury was the odour of a _sole au gratin_ which blended with the flowery perfumes of the low-panelled hall! The guests had wandered out through the window of the small drawing-room to the verandah and lawn in front of it. That long French window was a blot upon the architectural beauty of the half-timbered Tudor cottage, but it was very useful for circulation between drawing-room and garden. Mrs. Ferrers and Madoline were sitting under the verandah; Daphne was standing a little way off on the lawn talking to the Rector and Gerald Goring. She was speaking with intense animation, her face full of brightness. Edgar darted off to join the group, directly he had shaken hands with the two ladies, leaving his mother to subside into one of those new-fangled bamboo chairs which she felt assured would leave its basket-work impression on her velvet gown. ‘Edgar,’ cried Daphne as he came towards her, ‘did you ever hear of such a heathen—a man born on the soil—a very pagan?’ ‘Who is the culprit?’ asked Edgar; ‘and what has he done?’ ‘Mr. Goring has never seen Ann Hathaway’s cottage.’ ‘I don’t believe he knew who Ann Hathaway was till we told him,’ said the Rector, with his fat laugh. ‘And he has ridden and driven through Shottery hundreds of times, and he never stopped to look at the cottage where Shakespeare—the most wonderful man in the whole world—wooed and won his wife.’ ‘I have heard it dimly suggested that she wooed and won him,’ remarked Gerald placidly; ‘she was old enough.’ ‘You are too horrid,’ cried Daphne. ‘Would you be surprised to hear that Americans cross the Atlantic—three thousand miles of winds and waves and sea-sickness—on purpose to see Stratford-on-Avon, and Shottery, and Wilmcote, and Snitterfield?’