Here Daphne had established her boat, a light skiff with a felucca sail and a striped awning, to be used at pleasure; a boat which, seen flitting across the lake in the sunshine, looked like a swallow. There was a capital boat-house at a corner of the lawn, wooden and delightfully Swiss, with balconies fronting the lake, and an upper room in which one could take one’s pleasure, sketching, writing, reading, tea-drinking. The weather had been peerless since their arrival at Montreux; and Madoline and Daphne spent the greater part of their lives out of doors. They were always together, Daphne rarely leaving the shelter of her sister’s wing. She had become amazingly industrious, and had begun a tremendous piece of work in crewels, neither more nor less than a set of curtain-borderings for the drawing-room at Hawksyard. Vainly had Madoline entreated her to begin with an antimacassar or a fender-stool, some undertaking which would demand but a reasonable exercise of patience and perseverance. Daphne would hear of no work that was not gigantic. ‘Do you think Cheops would ever have been famous if he had begun to make pyramids on a small scale?’ she asked. ‘He would have exhausted his interest in the idea, frittered away his enthusiasm upon trifles. How much wiser it was in him to make a dash at something big while his fancy was at a white heat! If I don’t embroider a set of curtains I’ll do nothing.’ ‘Well, dearest, you must follow your own fancy,’ answered Lina gently; ‘but I’m afraid your life will be a history of great beginnings.’ Daphne began with extraordinary industry upon a bold pattern of sunflowers and acanthus leaves, huge sunflowers, huge foliage, on a Pompeian-red ground. Whenever she was not in her boat, skimming about the lake, she was toiling at a leaf or a sunflower, sitting on a cushion at Lina’s feet, the sunny head bent over her work, the slim white fingers moving busily, the dark brows knitted, in the intensity of her occupation. She was always intent upon finishing a leaf, or a stalk, or a petal, or on realising the grand effect of a completed flower. She would sit till the last available moment before dinner, rushing off to dress in a frantic hurry, and reappearing just as the subdued announcement of dinner was being breathed into Sir Vernon’s ear. Edgar was filled with delight to see her so occupied. It seemed to him a pledge of future domesticity. ‘It is so sweet to see you working for our home,’ he said one afternoon, seated on the grass at her feet, and placidly watching every stitch.