‘How horrid!’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘but that was a very poor flash. I’ll wait for a better one.’ She waited for half-a-dozen, in spite of Edgar’s urgent efforts to lure her indoors, but the summer flashes showed her nothing but their own vivid light. ‘If the electric light prove no better than that for all practical uses, I don’t envy the inventor,’ she exclaimed with infinite disgust. Dinner was served in the adjoining room, but Madoline and her sister begged to be excused from dining. They would take tea together in the drawing-room while the three gentlemen dined. Sir Vernon declared that he had no appetite, but he was willing to sit down, for the public good as it were. After which protest he did ample justice to a _sole à la Normande_, and a _poulet à la Marengo_, to say nothing of such pretty tiny kickshaws as _gâteau St. Honoré_ and ice-pudding. For Madeline and Daphne a round table was spread with a snowy cloth, a pile of delicious rolls, unquestionable butter, and a glass dish of pale golden honey, excellent tea, and cream—a thoroughly Arcadian meal. ‘Dearest, how brightly your eyes are sparkling,’ said Lina, with an admiring look at the young face opposite. ‘I can see you are enjoying yourself.’ ‘Yes, there is always a pleasure in novelty. Why cannot one pass all one’s life in new places? The world is wide enough. It is only our own foolishness that keeps us tied, like a poor tethered animal, to one dull spot.’ ‘Why, Daphne, I thought you were so fond of home, that the banks of the Warwickshire Avon made up your idea of earthly paradise!’ ‘Sometimes, yes. But lately I have grown terribly tired of Warwickshire.’ ‘That’s a bad hearing; and next year, when you are settled at Hawksyard——’ ‘Please don’t speak of that. Thank Heaven we are three days’ journey from Hawksyard. Let me forget it if I can.’ ‘Daphne, how can you talk like that of a dear old place which is to be your home—a place where one of the best men living was born?’ ‘If you think him such a wonder of goodness, why did you not have him when he asked you?’ cried Daphne, in a sudden fit of irritation. Those nerves of hers, always too highly strung, were to-night at their sharpest tension. ‘I am sick to death of hearing him praised by people who don’t care a straw about him.’ ‘Daphne!’ exclaimed Lina, more grieved than offended at this outburst. Daphne was on her knees beside her sister in the next moment. ‘Forgive me, darling, I am hideously cross and disagreeable. I suppose it is that tiresome lightning and the annoyance of not seeing Mont Blanc. All that long, dusty, fusty journey, and nothing but an hotel and a lamp-lit town at the end of it. I wanted to find myself in the very heart of mountains, and glaciers, and avalanches.’