She ran out of the room by the glass door leading into the conservatory, leaving Mr. Goring to meet his betrothed at the opposite door. She ran through the conservatory to the garden. The sun was sinking in a sea of many-coloured clouds, yonder on the edge of the hills, and the river at the bottom of the valley ran between the rushes like liquid gold. Daphne stood on the sloping lawn staring at the light like a bewildered creature. She stood thus for some minutes motionless, with clasped hands, gazing at the sunset. Then she turned and walked slowly back to the house. There was no one to watch her, no one to think of her at this moment. Gerald and Lina were together in the drawing-room, steeped in the rapture of reunion. ‘Let me be rational, let me be reasonable, if I can,’ Daphne said to herself. She re-entered the house by an obscure door at the east end, and went up to her own room. There, in the soft evening light, she cast herself upon her knees by the bed, and prayed: prayed with all the fervour of her untried soul, prayed that she might be kept from temptation and led to do the thing that was right. Prayer so earnest in a nature so light and reckless was a new experience. She rose from her knees like a new creature, and fancied she had plucked the evil weed of a fatal fancy out of her heart. She moved about her room calmly and quietly, dressed herself carefully, and went back to the drawing-room, two minutes before the half-hour, radiant and smiling. Madoline was still in the gown she had worn at the _déjeuner_. She had taken off her hat, and that was all, too happy in her lover’s company to spare five minutes for the revision of her toilet. Gerald had done nothing to improve his travelling attire. Even the dust of the long railroad journey from Hull was still upon his clothes. ‘Gerald tells me that you and he have made friends already, Daphne,’ said Lina in a happy voice. She was standing by her lover’s side in front of the open window, while Sir Vernon sat in an easy-chair devouring his _Times_, and trying to make up for the lost hours since the post came in. ‘Yes; Daphne and I have sworn eternal friendship,’ exclaimed Gerald gaily. ‘We mean to be a most devoted brother and sister. It was quite wonderful how quickly we broke the ice, and how thoroughly at home we became in a quarter of an hour.’ ‘Daphne is not a very terrible personage,’ said Madoline, smiling at her sister’s bright young face. ‘Well, darling, had you a happy day all by yourself? I was almost glad you were not with us. The coming of age was a very tiresome business. I had ten times rather have been in our own gardens with you.’ ‘The whole entertainment was ineffably dull,’ said Sir Vernon, without looking from his paper.