But Daphne had no intention that the stranger should learn exactly where she lived. Reckless as she was, mirthful and mischievous as Puck or Robin Goodfellow, she had still a dim idea that her conduct was not exactly correct, or would not be correct in England. On the Continent, of course, there must be a certain license. English travellers dined at public tables, and gamed in public rooms—were altogether more sociable and open to approach than on their native soil. It was only a chosen few—the peculiarly gifted in stiffness—who retained their glacial crust through every change of scene and climate, and who would perish rather than cross the street ungloved, or discourse familiarly with an unaccredited stranger. But, even with due allowance for Continental laxity, Daphne felt that she had gone a little too far. So she pulled up suddenly at the corner of a side street, and demanded her basket. ‘What does that mean?’ asked the painter, with a look of lazy surprise. ‘Only that this is our way home, and that we won’t trouble you to carry the basket any further, thanks intensely.’ ‘But I am going to carry it to your door.’ ‘It’s awfully good of you to propose it, but our governess would be angry with us for imposing on the kindness of a stranger, and I am afraid we should get into trouble.’ ‘Then I haven’t a word to say,’ answered the painter, smiling at her blushing eloquent face. Verily a speaking face—beautiful just as a sunlit meadow is beautiful, because of the lights and shadows that flit and play perpetually across it. ‘Do you live in this street?’ he asked. ‘No; our house is in the second turning to the right, seven doors from the corner,’ said Daphne, who had obtained possession of the basket. ‘Good-bye.’ She ran off with light swift foot, followed lumpishly and breathlessly by the scandalised Martha. ‘Daphne, how could you tell him such an outrageous story?’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you think I was going to tell him the truth?’ asked Daphne, still fluttering on, light as a lapwing. ‘We should have had him calling on Miss Toby to-morrow morning to ask if we were fatigued by our walk, or perhaps singing the serenade from Don Giovanni under our windows to-night. Now, Martha dearest, don’t say one word; I know I have behaved shamefully, but it has been awful fun, hasn’t it?’ ‘I’m sure I felt ready to sink through the ground all the time,’ panted Martha. ‘Darling, the ground and you are both too solid for there to be any fear of that.’ They had turned a corner by this time, and doubling and winding, always at a run, they came very speedily to the quiet spot near the palace, where their governess had lodged them in a low blind-looking white house, with only one window that commanded a view of the street.