She ate her strawberries in dreamy thoughtfulness, and fed Goldie to repletion, till he stretched himself luxuriously upon her gown, and dreamed of a chase he was too lazy to follow, had he been ever so free. Then she shut the empty basket, propped herself up against the rugged old trunk, and opened the ‘Idylls.’ It is a book to be read over and over again, for ever and ever, just one of those rare books of which the soul knows no weariness—like Shakespeare, or Goethe’s Faust, or Childe Harold—a book to be opened, haphazard, anywhere. But Daphne did not so open the volume. Elaine was her poem of poems, and it was Elaine she read to-day in that placid shade amidst green pastures and venerable trees, under a cloudless sky. Launcelot was her ideal man—faulty, but more lovable in his faultiness than even the perfect Arthur. Yet what woman would not wish—ay, even the guilty one grovelling at his feet—to be Arthur’s wife? She read slowly, pondering every word, for that fair young Saxon was to her a very real personage—a being whose sorrows gave her absolute pain as she read. Time had been when she could not read Elaine’s story without tears, but to-day her eyes were dry, even to the last, when her fancy saw the barge gliding silently down the stream, with the fair dead face looking up to the sky, and the waxen hands meekly folded above the heart that had broken for love of Launcelot. ‘I wonder how long his sorrow lasted,’ she thought, as she closed the book; and then she clasped her hands above the fair head resting against the rugged bark of the oak, and gave herself up to day-dreams, and let the afternoon wear on as it might, in placid enjoyment of the atmosphere and the landscape. Charlecote church clock had struck five when she plucked herself out of dreamland with an effort, unstrapped her dog from the tree, took up her empty basket, and started on the journey home. She had ample leisure for her walk. Dinner was not to be until half-past eight, and Sir Vernon and his daughter were hardly likely to be back till dinner-time. It was a stately feast to which they had been bidden—a feast in honour of somebody’s coming of age: a champagne breakfast for the quality, roasted oxen and strong ale for the commonalty, speechifying, military bands—an altogether ponderous entertainment. Sir Vernon had groaned over the inevitable weariness of the affair in advance, and had talked of himself as a martyr to neighbourly feeling.