‘Can you suppose we would speak to anyone?’ exclaimed Daphne, as she tripped away to her little bedroom, next door to Miss Toby’s. It was the queerest little room, with a narrow, white-muslin-curtained bed in a recess, and a marvellous piece of furniture which was washstand, chest of drawers, and dressing-table all in one. A fly-spotted glass, inclining from the wall above this _multum in parvo_, was Daphne’s only mirror. Here she put on her muslin hat, with a bouquet of blue cornflowers perched coquettishly on the brim, making a patch of bright cool colour that refreshed the eye. Never had she looked prettier than this midsummer morning. Even the fly-spotted clouded old glass told her as much as that. ‘If—if he were to be doing the _château_ to-day,’ she thought, tremulous with excitement, ‘how strange it would be. But that’s not likely. He is not of the common class of tourists, who all follow the same beaten track. I daresay he will idle away the afternoon in the woods, just as he did yesterday.’ ‘Martha, shall we go to the forest to-day, and leave the _château_ to be done to-morrow with Toby?’ Daphne asked, when she and her companion were crossing the wide parade-ground, where the soldiers trotted by with a great noise and clatter early in the morning, with a fanfare of trumpets and an occasional roll of a drum. ‘It might seem kinder to poor dear Toby, don’t you know.’ ‘I think it would be very wrong, Daphne,’ answered the serious Martha. ‘We told Miss Toby we were going to the palace, and we are bound to go straight there and nowhere else. Besides, I want to see the pictures and statues and things, and I am sick to death of that forest.’ ‘After one day! Oh, Martha, what an unromantic soul you must have. I could live and die there, if I had pleasant company. I have always envied Rosalind and Celia.’ ‘They must have been very glad when they got home,’ said Martha. Out of the blinding whiteness of the open street they went in at a gate to a gravelled quadrangle, where the sun seemed to burn with yet more fiery heat. Even Daphne felt breathless, but it was a pleasant feeling, the delight of absolute summer, which comes so seldom in the changeful year. Then they went under an archway, and into the inner quadrangle, with the white palace on all sides of them. It wanted some minutes of eleven, and they were shown into a cool official-looking room, where they were to wait till the striking of the hour. The room was panelled, painted white, a room of Louis the Fourteenth’s time most likely; what little furniture there was being quaint and rococo, but not old. The blinds were down, the shutters half-closed, and the room was in deep shadow. ‘How nice!’ gasped Martha, who had been panting like a fish out of water all the way. ‘It is like coming into a grotto,’ said Daphne, sinking into a chair. ‘It is not half so nice as the forest,’ said a voice in the semi-darkness.