‘It mayn’t be botanically true,’ he said, ‘but it’s a pretty idea all the same;’ and then he trolled out in a fine baritone: ‘No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close; As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets, The same look which she turned when he rose.’ ‘What’s the use of singing that when you know it isn’t true?’ cried Daphne contemptuously. ‘Do you suppose a stiff-necked thing like that, with a stalk a quarter of an inch in diameter, could turn and twist from east to west every day, without wringing its head off? The idea is obviously absurd. What lovely old walnut-trees!’ she exclaimed, looking across the lawn. ‘Centuries upon centuries old, are they not?’ ‘I believe they were planted soon after George the Third came to the throne.’ ‘Is that all? They look as old as the Wrekin.’ They strolled across the wide lawn, and in among the shadows of the old trees. The cows were moving stealthily about in the meadow on the other side of the fence, as if sleep were the last thing they ever thought of. ‘And you really like Hawksyard?’ demanded Edgar earnestly. ‘Like it! I think it is quite the most delicious place I ever saw. Those high dadoes; these deep-set stone-mullioned windows; those eccentric little bedrooms; that secret staircase, so sweetly suggestive of murder and treason. The whole place is so thoroughly original.’ ‘It is one of the few moated granges left in England,’ said Edgar with an air of conscious merit. ‘It is quite too lovely.’ ‘Daphne, do you really mean what you say?’ he asked with sudden intensity. ‘Are you only talking like this to please me—out of kindness?’ ‘If I have a fault it is a habit of blurting out what I think, without reference to other people’s feelings. I am thoroughly in earnest about Hawksyard.’ ‘Then be its mistress,’ exclaimed Edgar, taking her hand, and trying to draw her towards him; ‘be queen of my house, darling, as you have long been sovereign of my heart. Make me the happiest man that ever yonder old roof sheltered—the proudest, the most entirely blest. Daphne, I am not poetical, or clever. I can’t find many words, but—I love you—I love you.’ She laughed in his face, a clear and silvery peal—laughed him to absolute scorn; yet without a touch of ill-nature. ‘My dear Edgar, this is too much,’ she cried. ‘A few months ago you were fondly, devotedly, irrevocably in love with Lina. Don’t you remember how we sympathised that afternoon in the meadows? This is the sunflower over again: first to the sun and then to the moon. No, dear Edgar, never talk to me of love. I have a real honest regard for you. I respect you. I trust you as my very brother. It would spoil all if you were to persist in talking nonsense of this kind.’ She left him, planted there—mute as a statue—frozen with mortification, humiliation, despair.