‘Yes, Daphne. I don’t mind your knowing it—now it’s all over and done with,’ pursued Edgar, glad to pour his griefs into a friendly ear. ‘You’re my old playfellow—almost like a little sister—and I don’t think you’ll laugh at me, will you, dear?’ ‘Laugh at you!’ cried Daphne. ‘If I do may I never be able to smile again.’ ‘I asked your sister to marry me. I had gone on loving her for I don’t know how long, before I could pluck up courage to ask the question, I was so afraid of being refused. And I knew if she would only say “Yes,” that my mother would be the proudest woman in the county, for she positively adores Madoline. And I knew Lina liked Hawksyard; and that was encouraging. So one day, about four years ago, I got desperate, and asked the plain question in a plain way. Heaven knows how much of my happiness hung on the answer; but I couldn’t have screwed any poetry out of myself to save my life. I could only tell her the honest truth—that I loved her as well as man ever loved woman.’ ‘Well?’ asked Daphne. ‘It was no use. She said “No,” so kindly, so sweetly, so affectionately—for she really likes me, you know, in a sisterly way—that she made me cry like a child. Yes, Daphne, I made a miserable ass of myself. She must have despised such unmanly weakness. And then in a few minutes it was all over. All my hopes were extinguished like a candle blown out by the wind, and all my future life was dark. And I had to go back and tell the poor mother that the daughter she wanted was never to come to Hawksyard.’ ‘I am so sorry for you,’ faltered Daphne. ‘Thank you, dear. I knew you would be sympathetic. The blow was a crusher, I assure you. I went away for a few months deer-stalking in the Highlands; but lying on a mountain side in a gray mist for hours on end, not daring to move an eyelash, gives a fellow too much time for thought. I was always thinking of Madoline, and my thoughts were just two hundred and fifty miles due south of the stag when he came across, so I generally shot wild, and felt myself altogether a failure. Then I tried a month in Normandy and Brittany with a knapsack, thinking I might walk down my trouble. But I found that tramping from one badly-drained town to another badly-drained town—all infected with garlic—and looking at churches I didn’t particularly want to see, was a sham kind of consolation for a very real disappointment; so I made up my mind to come back to Hawksyard and live it down. And I have lived it down,’ concluded Edgar exultantly. ‘You don’t care for Madoline any longer?’