‘Can I be angry with him for that?’ asked Madoline, smiling tenderly at the thought of her father’s love. ‘I am proud to think that I am necessary to his happiness.’ ‘But there is your happiness—and Mr. Goring’s—to be considered. It has been such a long engagement, and you have been kept so much apart. It must have been a dreary time for you. If ever I am engaged I hope my young man will always be dancing attendance upon me.’ ‘My father thought it best that we should not be too much together, for fear we should get tired of each other,’ said Madoline, with an incredulous smile; ‘and as Gerald is very fond of travelling, and wanted change after the shock of his mother’s death, papa proposed that he should spend the greater part of his life abroad until my twenty-fifth birthday. The separation would be a test for us both, my father thought.’ ‘A most cruel, unjustifiable test,’ cried Daphne indignantly. ‘Your twenty-fifth birthday, forsooth! Why, you will be an old woman before you are married. In all the novels I ever read, the heroine married before she was twenty, and even then she seemed sometimes quite an old thing. Eighteen is the proper age for orange-blossoms and a Brussels veil.’ ‘That is all a matter of opinion, pet. I don’t think young lady novelists of seventeen and eighteen have always the wisest views of life. You must not say a word against your father, Daphne. He always acts for the best.’ ‘I never heard of a domestic tyrant yet of whom that could not be said,’ retorted Daphne. ‘However, darling, if you are satisfied, I am content; and I shall look forward impatiently to the autumn, and to the pleasure of making my new brother’s acquaintance. I hope he will like me.’ ‘No fear of that, Daphne.’ ‘I am not at all sure of winning his regard. Look at my father! I would give a great deal to be loved by him, yet he detests me.’ ‘Daphne! How can you say such a thing?’ ‘It is the truth. Why should I not say it? Do you suppose I don’t know the signs or aversion as well as the signs of love? I know that you love me. You have no need to tell me so. I do not even want the evidence of your kind acts. I am assured of your love. I can see it in your face; I can hear it in every tone of your voice. And I know just as well that my father dislikes me. He kept me at a distance as long as ever he could, and now that duty—or his regard for other people’s opinion—obliges him to have me at home, he avoids me as if I were a roaring lion, or something equally unpleasant.’ ‘Only be patient, dear. You will win his heart in time,’ said Madoline soothingly. She had put aside the water-lily, and had drawn her sister’s fair head upon her shoulder with caressing fondness. ‘He cannot fail to love my sweet Daphne when he knows her better,’ she said.