‘I hope that you are better—quite well, in fact; that you have entirely recovered from your fatigue last night,’ he began tenderly. ‘I am quite well,’ she answered almost angrily, and blushing crimson with vexation. ‘Pray don’t make a fuss about it. Waltzing so long made me giddy. That was all.’ Her snappish tone was a cruel change after her sweetness last night. Edgar’s heart sank very low at this unexpected rebuff. ‘You are all alone,’ he said feebly. ‘Unless you count Fluff and the squirrel, yes. But they are very good company,’ answered Daphne, brightening a little, and smiling at him with that provoking kindness, that easy friendliness, which always chilled his soul. It was so hopelessly unlike the feeling he wished to awaken. ‘Madoline drove to the Abbey with Aunt Rhoda and Mr. Goring directly after luncheon. The new hot-houses are finished, I believe, at last. I have been horribly lazy. I only came down an hour ago.’ ‘I am glad you were able to sleep,’ said Edgar. ‘It was more than I could do.’ ‘I suppose nobody ever does sleep much after a ball,’ answered Daphne. ‘The music goes on repeating itself over and over again in one’s brain, and one goes spinning round in a perpetual imaginary waltz. I was thinking all last night of Don Ramiro and Donna Clara.’ ‘Friends of yours?’ inquired Edgar. Daphne’s eyes sparkled at the question, but she did not laugh. She only looked at him with a compassionate smile. ‘You have never read Heine?’ ‘Never. Is it interesting?’ ‘Heinrich Heine? He was a German poet, don’t you know. As great a poet, almost, as Byron.’ ‘Unhappily I don’t read German.’ ‘Oh, but some of his poetry has been translated. The translations are not much like the original, but still they are something.’ ‘And who is Don— Ra——what’s-his-name?’ inquired Edgar, still very much in the dark. ‘The hero of a ballad—an awful, ghastly, ghostly ballad, ever so much ghastlier than Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene, and the worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out, don’t you know. He is dead, and she has jilted him, and married somebody else; and he has promised her on the eve of her wedding that he will come to the wedding feast: and he comes and waltzes with her, and she doesn’t know that he is dead, and she reproaches him for wearing a black cloak at her bridal, and she asks him why his cheeks are snow-white and his hands ice-cold, and they go on whirling round all the time, the trumpets blowing and the drums beating, and to all she says he gives the same answer: “Said I not that I would come?” That awful ballad was in my mind all night, and when I did at last fall asleep, I dreamt I was at the ball again, and instead of Stratford Town Hall we were in an old Gothic palace at Toledo and—and—the person I was dancing with was Don Ramiro. His white dead face looked down at me, and all the people vanished, and we were dancing alone in the dark cold hall.’