‘My dear, I was sent here to take care of you both, and I must do my duty,’ answered Miss Toby with a sickly smile. ‘Yesterday my temples throbbed so that I could hardly move, but I am a little better to-day, and I shall put on my bonnet and come with you.’ She rose, staggered a few paces towards the adjacent chamber, and reeled like a landsman at sea. Then she sank into the nearest chair, and breathed a weary sigh. ‘It’s no use, Toby darling,’ cried Daphne, bending over her with tenderest sympathy. To be tender, sweet, and sympathetic in little outward ways, tones of voice, smiles, and looks, was one of Daphne’s dangerous gifts. ‘My dearest Toby, why struggle against the inevitable?’ she urged. ‘It is simply one of your regular bilious attacks. All you have to do is to lie quietly in a dark room and sleep it off, just as you have so often done before. To-morrow you will be as well as I am.’ ‘Then why not wait till to-morrow for seeing the palace,’ said Miss Toby faintly, ‘and amuse yourselves at home, for once in a way? You really ought to study a little, Daphne. Madame will be horrified if she finds you have done no work all this time.’ ‘But I do work of an evening—sometimes, dearest,’ expostulated Daphne; ‘and I’m sure you would not like us to be half suffocated all day in this stifling little salon, poring over horrid books. We should be having the fever next, and then how would you account to Madame for your stewardship?’ ‘Don’t be irreverent, Daphne,’ said Miss Toby, who thought that any use of scriptural phrases out of church was a kind of blasphemy. ‘I think you would really be better indoors upon such a day as this; but I feel too languid to argue the point. What would you like best, Martha?’ Miss Dibb, who employed every odd scrap of spare time in the development of her _magnum opus_ in crochet-work, looked up with a glance of indifference, and was about to declare her willingness to stay indoors for ever, so that the crochet counterpane might flourish and wax wide, when a stealthy frown from Daphne checked her. ‘Daphne would rather see the palace to-day, I know,’ she replied meekly, ‘and I think,’ with a nervous glance at her schoolfellow, who was scowling savagely, ‘I think I would rather go too.’ ‘Well,’ sighed Miss Toby, ‘I have made an effort, but I feel that I could not endure the glare out of doors. You must go alone. Be sure you are both very quiet, if there are tourists about. Don’t giggle, or look round at people, or make fun of their gowns and bonnets, as you are too fond of doing. It is horribly unladylike. And if any stranger should try to get into conversation with you—of course only a low-bred person would do such a thing—pray remember that your own self-respect would counsel you to be dumb.’