‘Know it!’ cried Edgar, who had lingered to gaze at that particular casement under every condition of sky and temperature. ‘Know it? Did Romeo know Juliet’s balcony?’ ‘Well, then, at ten minutes past eleven look up at my window. If the answer be No, the shutters will be shut, and all dark; if the answer be Yes, the lamp shall be in the window.’ ‘Oh, blessed light. I know the lamp will be there.’ ‘And now no more of this nonsense,’ said Daphne imperatively. ‘I am going to give you some tea.’ ‘Put a dose of poison in it, and finish me off straight, if the lamp is not going to shine in your window.’ ‘Absurd man! Do you suppose I know any more than you what the answer is to be? We are the sport of Fate.’ The door was opened gently, as if it had been the entrance to a sick man’s chamber, and the well-drilled footman brought in a little folding table, and then a tea-tray, an intensely new-fashioned old-fashioned oval oaken tray, with a silver railing, and oriental cups and saucers _à la Belinda_—everything strictly of the hoop-and-patch period. These frivolities of tray and tea-things were one of Mr. Goring’s latest gifts to his mistress. Not another tender word would Daphne allow from her lover. She talked of the people at the ball, asked for details about everybody—the girl in the pink frock; the matron with hardly any frock at all; the hunting men and squires of high degree. She kept Edgar so fully employed answering her questions that he had no time to edge in an amorous speech, though his whole being was breathing love. Madoline and Gerald Goring came in and found them _tête-à-tête_ by the fire. They had made a _détour_ on their way home, and had deposited Mrs. Ferrers at the Rectory. It was the first time Gerald had seen Daphne since the ball. ‘Better?’ he inquired, with a friendly nod. ‘Quite well, thanks. I have not been ill,’ she answered curtly. Mr. Goring seated himself in a shadowy corner, remote from the little group by the tea-table. ‘Shall I ring for more tea, or have you had some at the Abbey?’ asked Daphne, with a businesslike air. ‘We had tea in Lady Geraldine’s room,’ answered Madoline. ‘I wish you had been with us, Daphne. It is such a lovely room in the firelight. The houses are all finished, and Cormack has filled three of them already. Such lovely flowers! I can’t imagine where he has found them.’ ‘Easy to do that kind of thing when one has a floating balance of fifty thousand or so at one’s bankers,’ answered Edgar cheerily. ‘My wife will have to put up with a few old orange-trees that have been at Hawksyard for a century.’ The tone in which he uttered those two words ‘my wife,’ startled Gerald out of his reverie. There was a world of suppressed delight and triumph in the utterance. ‘He has been asking her to marry him, and she has relented, and accepted him,’ he thought, hardly knowing whether to be glad or angry.