Then she rose suddenly, and stood on the rock, a slim girlish figure, with flattering drapery, poised as lightly as Mercury, gazing round her, admiring the tall slim stems of the beeches growing in groups like clustered columns, the long vista of rocks, the dark wall of fir-trees, mounting up and up to the edge of a saffron-tinted sky—for these loiterers had lost count of time since steady-going Martha looked at her reliable watch, and the last of the finches had sung his lullaby to his wife and family, and the golden ship called Sol had gone down to Night’s dark sea. ‘Come down, you absurd creature!’ exclaimed Nero, with a peremptory voice, winding one arm about the light figure, and lifting the girl off the rock as easily as if she had been a feather-weight. ‘You are very horrid!’ protested Daphne indignantly. ‘You are ever so much ruder than Petruchio. Why shouldn’t I stand on that rock? I was only admiring the landscape!’ ‘No doubt, and two minutes hence you would be calling upon us to admire a fine example of a sprained ankle.’ ‘I’m sure if your namesake was ever as unkind to my namesake, it’s no wonder she died young,’ said Daphne, pouting. ‘I believe he was occasionally a little rough upon her,’ answered the artist with his imperturbable air. ‘But of course you have read your Tacitus and your Suetonius in the original. Young ladies know everything nowadays.’ ‘The Roman history we read is by a clergyman, written expressly for ladies’ schools,’ said Miss Dibb demurely. ‘How intensely graphic and interesting that chronicle must be!’ retorted the stranger. They had come to the end of the winding path among the rocks by this time, and were in a long, straight road, cut through the heart of the forest, between tall trees that seemed to have outgrown their strength—weedy-looking trees, planted too thickly, and only able to push their feeble growth up towards the sun, with no room for spreading boughs or interlacing roots. The evening light was growing grave and gray. Bats were skimming across the path, uncomfortably near Daphne’s flowing hair. Miss Dibb began to grumble. ‘How dreadfully we have loitered!’ she cried, looking at her watch. ‘It is nearly eight, and we have so far to go. What will Miss Toby say?’ ‘Well, she will moan a little, no doubt,’ answered Daphne lightly, ‘and will tell us that her heart has been in her mouth for the last hour, which need not distress us much, as we know it’s a physical impossibility; and that anyone might knock her down with a feather—another obvious impossibility, seeing that poor Toby weighs eleven stone—and then I shall kiss her and make much of her, and give her the packet of nougat I mean to buy on the way home, and all will be sunshine. She takes a sticky delight in nougat And now please talk and amuse us,’ said Daphne, turning to the artist with an authoritative air. ‘Tell us about some of your travels, or tell us where you live when you’re at home.’