‘I don’t know that. I fancy he was prejudiced against me when I was a little thing and could scarcely have offended him; unless it were by cutting my teeth disgustingly, or having nettlerash, or something of that kind. Lina, do you think he hated my mother?’ Madoline started, and flushed crimson. ‘Daphne! what a question! Why, my father’s second marriage was a love-match, like his first.’ ‘Yes, I suppose he was in love with her, or he would hardly have married a nobody,’ said Daphne, in a musing tone; ‘but he might have got to hate her afterwards.’ At this moment the door was opened, and a voice, full, round, manly in tone, said: ‘Madoline, I want you.’ Lina rose hastily, letting her work fall out of her lap, kissed Daphne, and hurried from the room at her father’s summons. CHAPTER V. ‘THOU LOVEST ME, THAT WOT I WEL CERTAIN.’ Many a time since her home-coming had Daphne been on the point of telling her sister all about that more or less anonymous traveller, whom she called the man in the wood; but her picnicking adventures, looked at retrospectively from the strictly-correct atmosphere of home, seemed much more terrible than they had appeared to her at Asnières; where a vague hankering after forbidden pleasures was an element in the girlish mind, and where there was a current idea that the most appalling impropriety was allowable, provided the whole business were meant as a joke. But Daphne, seated at Madoline’s feet, began to feel doubtful if there were any excuse for such joking; and, after that one skirmishing approach to the subject, she said no more about the gentleman who had called himself Nero. It was hateful to her to have a secret, were it the veriest trifle, from her sister; but the idea of Madoline’s disapproval was still more repugnant to her; and she was very certain that Madoline would disapprove of the whole transaction in which Mr. Nero had been concerned. ‘I could never tell her how thoroughly at home I felt with him,’ mused Daphne; ‘how easy and natural our acquaintance seemed—just as if we had been destined from the very beginning of time to meet at that hour and at that spot. And to part so soon!’ added Daphne with a sigh. ‘It seemed hardly worth while to meet.’ Yes; it was a mystery upon which Daphne brooded very often in the fair spring weather, as she wandered by her beloved river. Strange that two lives should meet and touch for a moment, like circles on yonder placid water—meet, and touch, and part, and never meet again! ‘The rings on the river break when they touch,’ thought Daphne. ‘They are fatal to each other. Our meeting had no significance: two summer days and it was all over and ended. I wonder whether Nero ever thought of Poppæa after he left Fontainebleau? Poppæa! What a silly name; and what a simpleton he must have thought me for assuming it.’