The homeward walk in the quiet afternoon light was delicious. Goldie, released from his strap directly they left Charlecote, ran and leapt like a creature possessed. Oh, how he enjoyed himself with the first herd they came to, scampering after innocent milch-cows, and endangering his life by flying at the foreheads of horned oxen! Daphne let him do as he liked. She wandered out of her way a little to follow the windings of her beloved river. It was between seven and eight when she despatched Goldie to his stable-yard, and went into the cool shady hall, where two old orange-trees in great green crockery tubs scented the air. The butler met her on her way to the morning-room. ‘Oh, if you please, Miss Daphne, Mr. Goring has arrived, and would like to see you before you dress for dinner. He was so disappointed at finding Miss Lawford away from home, and he would like to have a talk with you.’ Daphne looked at the tumbled white gown—it was the same she had worn last year at Fontainebleau—and thought of her towzled hair. ‘I am so shamefully untidy,’ she said; ‘I think I had better dress first, Brooks.’ ‘Oh, don’t, Miss Daphne. You look nice enough, I’m sure. And I daresay Mr. Goring is impatient to hear all about Miss Lawford, or he wouldn’t have asked so particular to see you.’ ‘Of course not. No; perhaps he won’t notice my untidiness. I’ll risk it. Yet first impressions——I don’t want him to think me an underbred school-girl,’ muttered Daphne as she opened the drawing-room door. The room was large, and full of flowers and objects that broke the view; and all the glow and glory of a summer sunset was shining in at the wide west window. For a moment or so Daphne could see no one; the room seemed empty of humanity. There was the American squirrel revolving in his big airy cage; there lay Fluff, the Maltese terrier, curled into a silky ball in a corner of the sofa; and that seemed all. But as Daphne went timidly towards the window, a figure rose from a low chair, a face turned to meet her. She lifted her clasped hands to her breast with a startled cry. ‘Nero!’ ‘Poppæa!’ CHAPTER IX. ‘OF COLOUR PALE AND DEAD WAS SHE.’ ‘And so you are Daphne?’ said Mr. Goring, taking both her hands, and looking at her with an amused smile, not without tender admiration of the fair pale face and widely-opened blue eyes. Months afterwards he remembered the scared look in those lovely eyes, the death-like pallor of the complexion; but just now he ascribed Daphne’s evident agitation to a school-girl’s natural discomfiture at being found out in a risky escapade. ‘And so you are Daphne?’ he repeated. ‘Why, you told me your father was a grocer in Oxford Street. Was not that what school-boys call a crumper?’ ‘No,’ said Daphne, recovering herself, and a sparkle of mischief lighting up her eyes; ‘it was strictly true—of Martha Dibb’s father.’