Yet, though Sir Vernon was wanting in affection for his younger daughter, Daphne was not unloved at South Hill. Her sister Madoline loved her dearly, had so loved her ever since those unforgotten summer days when the grave girl of nine and the toddling two-year-old baby wandered hand-in-hand in shrubberies and gardens, and seemed to have the whole domain of South Hill to themselves, Sir Vernon and Lady Lawford being somewhere on the Continent, and the maiden aunt being a lady very much in request in the best society in the neighbourhood, and very willing to take the utmost enjoyment out of life, and to delegate her duties to nurses and maids. The love that had grown up in those days between the sisters had been in no wise lessened by severance. They were as devoted to each other now as they had been in the dawn of life: Madoline loving Daphne with a proud protecting love; Daphne looking up to Madoline with intense respect, and believing in her as the most perfect of women. ‘I’m afraid I shall never be able to leave off talking,’ said Daphne upon this particular April morning, when she had come in from a long ramble by the Avon, with her apron full of daffodils; ‘I seem to have such a world of things to tell you.’ ‘Don’t put any check upon your eloquence, darling. You won’t tire me,’ said Madoline in her low gentle voice. She had a very soft voice, and a slow calm way of speaking, which seemed to most people to be the true patrician tone. She spoke like a person who had never been in a hurry, and had never been in a passion. The sisters were in Madoline’s morning-room, sometimes called the old drawing-room, as it had been the chief reception-room at South Hill before Sir Vernon built the west wing. It was a large airy room, painted white, with chintz draperies of the lightest and most delicate tints—apple-blossoms on a creamy ground; the furniture all of light woods; the china celadon or turquoise; but the chief beauty of the room, its hot-house flowers—tulips, gardenias, arums, hyacinths, pansies, grouped with exquisite taste on tables and in jardinières, on brackets and mantelpiece. The love of flowers was almost a passion with Madoline Lawford, and she was rich enough to indulge this inclination to her heart’s content. She had built a long line of hot-houses in one of the lower gardens, and kept a small regiment of gardeners and boys. She could afford to do this, and yet to be Lady Bountiful in all the district round about South Hill; so nobody ventured to blame her for the money she spent upon horticulture.