‘You poor creature,’ she said to him one day, ‘you foolish moth, why flutter round the flame that must destroy you? I declare you are getting worse every day.’ ‘You are wrong,’ said Edgar; ‘I believe I am getting cured.’ What did Daphne dream about in those languid summer mornings, as her boat moved slowly down the stream in the cool shadow of the willows, with only a gentle dip of the sculls now and then to keep her straight? Her thoughts were all of the past, her fancies were all of the future. Her thoughts were of the nameless stranger who went across the Jura last year—one little year ago—almost at this season. Her dreams were of meeting him again. Yet the chances against such a meeting reduced it almost to an impossibility. ‘The world is so horribly large,’ she reflected sadly, ‘and I told him such atrocious stories. It will be a just punishment if I never see him any more. Yet how am I to live through my life without ever looking on his face again!’ It had gone so far as this: it seemed to her almost an absolute need of her soul that they two should meet, and know more of each other. The ardent sensive nature had been thus deeply impressed by the first bright and picturesque image presented to the girlish fancy. It was something more than love at first sight. It was the awakening of a fresh young mind to the passion of love. She had changed from a child to a woman, in the hour when she met the unknown in the forest. ‘Who is he, what is he? where shall I find him?’ she asked herself. ‘He is the only man I can ever love. He is the only man I will ever marry. All other men are low and commonplace beside him.’ The river was the confidant and companion of all her dreams—the sweet lonely river, flowing serenely between green pastures, where the cattle stood in tranquil idleness, pastern deep in purple clover. She had no other ear into which to whisper her secret. She had tried, ever so many times, to tell Madoline, and had failed. Lina was so sensible, and would be deeply shocked at such folly. How could she tell Lina—whose wooing had been conducted in the most conventionally correct manner, with everybody’s consent and approval—that she had flung her heart under the feet of a nameless stranger, of whom the only one fact she knew was that he was engaged to be married?