Nor should this ideal life, though aimless, be empty of good works. Madoline should have _carte blanche_ for the gratification of her benevolent schemes, great or small, and he would be ready to help her with counsel and sympathy; provided always that he were not called upon to work, or to put himself _en rapport_ with professional philanthropists—a most useful class, no doubt, but obnoxious to him as a lover of ease and pleasure. He had looked forward with placid self-satisfaction to this life ever since his engagement—and indeed for some time before that solemn betrothal. From his boyhood he had loved Madoline, and had believed himself beloved by her. Betrothal followed almost as a matter of course. Lady Geraldine had spoken of the engagement as a settled thing, ever so long before the lovers had bound themselves each to each. She had told Lina that she was to be her daughter, the only girl she could love as her son’s wife; and when Gerald was away at Oxford, Lina had spent half her life at Goring with his mother, talking about him, worshipping him, as men are worshipped sometimes by women infinitely above them. From the time of his engagement—nay, from the time when first his boyish heart recognised a mistress—Gerald’s affection for Madoline had known no change or diminution. Never had his soul wavered. Nor did it waver in his regard and reverence for her now, as he sat on the sunlit deck of the _Kelpie_ in this fair autumn weather, his brush lying idle by his side, his thoughts perplexed and wandering. Yet there was a jar in the harmony of his life; a dissonant interval somewhere in the music. The thought of Daphne troubled him. He had a suspicion that she was not happy. Gay and sparkling as she was at times, she was prone to fits of silence and sullenness unaccountable in so young a creature: unless it were that she cherished some secret grief, and that the hidden fox so many of us carry had his tooth in her young breast. He was no coxcomb, not in the least degree inclined to suppose that women had a natural bent towards falling in love with him: yet in this case he was troubled by the suspicion that Daphne’s stand-offishness was not so much a token of indifference or dislike, as the sign of a deeper feeling. She had been so variable in her manner to him. Now all sweet, and anon all sour; now avoiding him, now showing but too plainly her intense delight in his presence—by subtlest signs; by sudden blushes; by loveliest looks; by faintly quivering lip of trembling hand; by the swift lighting up of her whole face at his coming; by the low veiled tones of her soft sweet voice. Yes; by too many a sign and token—fighting her hardest to hide her secret all the time—she had given him ground for suspecting that she loved him.