The notion was painful to him, and he was obliged to remind himself that there was very little likelihood of his ever seeing this girl again, so that the natural commonplaceness of her fate could make very little difference to him. ‘Better to be vulgarly prosperous and live to be a great-grandmother than to fulfil the prophecy written on her hand,’ he said to himself. ‘What does it matter? Let us enjoy to-day, and let the long line of to-morrows rest in the shadow that wraps the unknown future. To-morrow I shall be on my way to Geneva, panting and stifling in a padded railway-carriage, with oily Frenchmen, who will insist upon having the windows up through the heat and dust of the long summer day, and I shall look back with envy to this delicious afternoon.’ They sat under the limes for a couple of hours, talking a little now and then in a desultory way; Martha trying her hardest to impress the unknown with the grandeurs and splendours of Lebanon Lodge, Clapham Common; Daphne saying very little, content to sit in the shade and dream. Then having taken their fill of rest and shadow, they ventured out into the sun, and went to see the famous grapery, and then Martha looked at her watch and protested that they must go home to tea. Miss Toby would be expecting them. Nero went with them to the gates of the palace, and would fain have gone further, but Daphne begged him to leave them there. ‘You would only frighten our poor governess,’ she said. ‘She would think it quite a terrible thing for us to have made your acquaintance. Please go back to your hotel at once.’ ‘If you command me to do so, I must obey,’ said Nero politely. He shook hands with them for the first time, gravely lifted his hat, and walked across to his hotel. It was on the opposite side of the way, a big white house, with a garden in front of it, and a fountain playing. The two girls stood in the shadow watching him. ‘He is really very nice,’ said Martha. ‘I think mamma would like to have him at one of her dinner-parties. But he did not tell us anything about himself, did he?’ Daphne did not hear her. There was hardly room in that girlish brain for all the thoughts that were crowding into it. CHAPTER IV. ‘CURTEIS SHE WAS, DISCRETE, AND DEBONAIRE.’ The world was nine months older since Daphne picnicked in the park at Fontainebleau, and the scenery of her life was changed to a fair English landscape in one of the fairest of English shires. Here, in fertile Warwickshire, within three miles of Shakespeare’s birthplace, within a drive of Warwick and Leamington, and Kenilworth, and Stoneleigh Park, to say nothing of ribbon-weaving, watch-making Coventry, Daphne wandered in happy idleness through the low-lying water-meadows, which bounded the sloping lawns and shady gardens of South Hill.