‘I should like it of all things,’ she sighed. ‘But I am such a bad walker, and the heat always affects my head. Besides, I think we ought to go over the palace to-morrow. There is so much instruction to be derived from a place so full of historical associations.’ ‘No doubt,’ answered the flippant Daphne, ‘though if you were to tell me that it had been built by Julius Cæsar or Alfred the Great, I should hardly be wise enough to contradict you.’ ‘My dear Daphne, after you have been so carefully grounded in history,’ remonstrated Miss Toby. ‘I know, dear; but then you see I have never built anything on the ground. It’s all very well to dig out foundations, but if one never gets any further than that! But we’ll see the palace to-morrow, and you shall teach me no end of history while we are looking at pictures and things.’ ‘If my poor head be well enough,’ sighed Miss Toby, and then she began to move languidly to and fro, arranging for the refreshment of her pupils, who wanted their supper. When the supper was ready, Daphne could eat nothing although five minutes before she had declared herself ravenous. She was too excited to eat. She talked of the forest, the view, the heat, the sky, everything except the stranger, and his name was trembling on her lips perpetually. Every now and then she pulled herself up abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and flashed a vivid glance at stolid Martha, her dark gray eyes shining like stars, full of mischievous light. She would have liked to tell Miss Toby everything, but to do so might be to surrender all future liberty. Headache or no headache, the honest little governess would never have allowed her pupils to wander about alone again, could she have beheld them, in her mind’s eye, picnicking with a nameless stranger. There was a little bit of garden at the back of the low, white house, hardly more than a green courtyard, with a square grass plot and a few shrubs, into which enclosure the windows all looked, save that one peep-hole towards the street. Above the white wall that shut in the bit of green rose the foliage of a much larger garden—acacias shedding their delicate perfume on the cool night, limes just breaking into flower, dark-leaved magnolias, tulip-trees, birch and aspen—a lovely variety of verdure. And over all this shone the broad disk of a ripening moon, flooding the world with light. When supper was over, Daphne bounded out into the moonlit garden, and began to play at battledore and shuttlecock. She was all life and fire and movement, and could not have sat still for the world. ‘Come,’ she cried to Martha; ‘bring your battledore. A match for a franc’s worth of nougat.’ Miss Dibb had settled herself to her everlasting crochet by the light of two tall candles. Miss Toby was reading a Tauchnitz novel. ‘I’m tired to death,’ grumbled Martha. ‘I’m sure we must have walked miles upon miles. How can you be so restless?’