‘I think you know how honestly I like Edgar,’ said Madoline, believing in her guilelessness that Daphne had resented her praise of Mr. Turchill because she fancied it hollow and insincere. ‘I daresay if I had not cared for Gerald long before Edgar proposed to me, I might have given Mr. Turchill a different answer. I cannot tell how that might have been. My life has had only one love. I loved Gerald from the days when he first came to South Hill, a school-boy, when he used to tell me all his troubles and his triumphs, when any success of his made me prouder than if it had been my own. My heart was given away ages before Edgar ever spoke to me of love.’ ‘I know, dear; I can understand it all; only, don’t you know, when everybody conspires to praise the young man to whom one is engaged, and when all one’s relations are everlastingly congratulating one upon one’s good fortune—the implication being that it is quite undeserved—there is a kind of weariness that creeps over one’s soul at the sound of those familiar phrases.’ ‘I will never praise him again, dear,’ answered Lina, smiling at her. ‘I shall be perfectly contented to know that you value him as he deserves to be valued, and that your future happiness is assured by his devoted love.’ Daphne gave a fretful little sigh, but made no further protest. She was thinking that she had seen a Newfoundland dog every whit as devoted as Edgar. Yet the affection of that Newfoundland would have hardly been deemed all-sufficient for the happiness of a lifetime. She went back to the table, and did execution upon the rolls and honey with a healthy girlish appetite, despite that feverish unrest which disturbed the equal balance of her mind. Daphne ordered Edgar to attend her on an exploration of the city next morning, directly after breakfast. ‘Madoline and my father know the place by heart,’ she said; ‘and, of course, Mr. Goring is tired of it. How could a man who is weary of all creation care for Geneva?’ ‘Who told you I was weary of creation?’ asked Gerald languidly. ‘Your ways and your manners,’ replied Daphne. ‘I knew as much the first time I saw you.’ The weather was clear and bright, the town looking its best, as Daphne and her lover left the hotel on their excursion. They were to be back before noon, at which hour they were to start with Gerald and Madoline for Ferney. ‘If it were not for the lake this place would be beneath contempt,’ said Daphne decisively, as they crossed the low level bridge, and lingered to look at the sapphire Rhone, and to speculate upon that deepened azure hue which the waters assume when they flow from the lake into the river. ‘It is no more like the Geneva of my dreams than it is like Jerusalem the Golden.’ ‘Is it not really?’