‘The dust, the heat, the glare between Paris and Dijon I can never describe,’ she protested as she sank into the most luxurious of the easy-chairs, which her eagle eye had detected at the first glance. ‘Please don’t try,’ said Gerald, ‘we went through it all ourselves.’ ‘It was something too dreadful,’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking so cool and ladylike in her pale-gray cashmere gown and flounced sicilienne petticoat, that it was difficult to believe she had ever been a victim to dust and heat. She was refreshed with tea and bread and butter, and looked round her with placid satisfaction. ‘It is really very sweet,’ she murmured. ‘This villa reminds me so much of the Fothergills’ place just above Teddington Lock—the lawn—the flower-beds—everything. But, do you know, Switzerland is not quite so Swiss as I expected to find it.’ ‘That was just what Daphne said,’ answered Madoline. ‘Did she really?’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking across at Daphne, who was sitting idly by the low tea-table. Mrs. Ferrers felt a little vexed with herself at being convicted of coinciding with Daphne. ‘I suppose it is inevitable,’ she said, with a lofty air, ‘that a place of which one has dreamed all one’s life, which one has pictured to oneself in all the brightest colours of one’s own mind and fancy, should be just a little disappointing. It was tiresome to be told at Geneva that Mont Blanc had not been seen for weeks, and it was provoking to find the cabman horribly indifferent about Rousseau—for, of course, I made a point of going to see his house.’ ‘And did you go to Ferney?’ asked Daphne eagerly. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’ ‘My dear Daphne, you forget that I am a clergyman’s wife,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, with dignity. ‘Do you suppose that I would worship at the shrine of a man who made a mock of religion?’ ‘Not of religion,’ muttered Gerald, ‘but of priestcraft.’ ‘But you were interested about Rousseau,’ said Daphne. ‘I thought they were both wicked men—that there was nothing to choose between them.’ ‘Voltaire’s infidelity was more notorious,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers; ‘I could never have told Marmaduke that I visited the house of an avowed——’ ‘Deist,’ interjected Gerald. Hard pressed, Mrs. Ferrers was constrained to admit that she had never read a line written by either Voltaire or Rousseau, and that she had only a kind of dictionary idea of the two men, so vague that their images might at any moment become confounded in her mind.