‘And did you really miss me at such moments, Gerald? When you were looking at some especially lovely scene, had you really and truly a feeling that I ought to have been by your side?’ ‘Really and truly; the better half of myself was missing. Pleasure was only a one-sided affair, as that moon will appear next week—an uncomfortable-looking fragmentary kind of planet.’ ‘I love to hear of your travels, Gerald,’ said Lina softly. ‘Have you told me all about them, do you think?’ ‘All that’s worth telling, I fancy,’ he answered lightly, with an involuntary glance at Daphne to see if she were really asleep. There was no quiver of the dark lashes, no movement in the restful figure. Her face had that pale unearthly look which all faces have in the moonlight. A pain shot through his heart as he thought that it was thus she would look in death. It was one of those involuntary flashes of thought which sometimes flit across a mind unacquainted with actual sorrow—the phantom of a grief that might be. When they arrived at South Hill Daphne wished her sister and Mr. Goring a brief good-night, and went straight to her room. She had no motive for awaiting her father’s home-coming. He would have nothing to say to her. His only greeting would be a look which seemed to ask what business she had there. It was on the stroke of eleven. Madoline and Gerald walked up and down the gravel drive in front of the house, waiting for the carriage from Warwick; and during this interval Mr. Goring told his sweetheart how Edgar Turchill had been rejected by Daphne. Madoline was deeply distressed by this news. She had made up her mind that her sister’s life was to be made happy in this particular way. She had imagined a fair and peaceful future in which she would be living at the Abbey, and Daphne at Hawksyard—not a dozen miles apart. And now this wilful Daphne had rejected the moated grange and its owner, and that fair picture of the future had no more reality in it than a mirage city seen from the dreary sands of a desert. ‘I thought she was attached to him,’ said Madoline, when she had been told the whole story. ‘She has encouraged him to come here; she has always seemed happy in his company. Half her life, since she came from school, has been spent with him.’ ‘In sober earnest, darling, I’m afraid this fascinating little sister of yours is an arrant coquette. She has flirted with Edgar because there was no one else to flirt with.’ ‘Please don’t say that, Gerald, for I know you are mistaken,’ answered Madoline eagerly. ‘Daphne is no flirt. She looks upon Edgar as a kind of adopted brother. I have always known that, but I fancied that this friendly trustful feeling of hers would lead in time to a warmer attachment. As to coquetry, she does not know what it means. She is thoroughly childlike and innocent.’