‘My dear girl, I have been pining to come home for the last six months, but, as you and your father and I had chalked out a certain portion of Europe which I was to travel over, I thought I ought to go through with it; but if you knew how heartily sick I am of going from pillar to post, of craning my neck to look at the roofs of churches, and dancing attendance upon grubby old sacristans, and riding up narrow pathways on mules, and having myself and my luggage registered through from the bustling commercial city I am sick of to loathing after twenty-four hours’ experience, to the sleepy mediæval town which I inevitably tire of in ten, you would be able to understand my delight in coming back to you and placid Warwickshire. By-the-by, why didn’t you take Daphne to see the Abbey? She tells me she has never been over to Goring.’ ‘I should have had no pleasure in showing her your house’—‘Our house,’ interjected Gerald—‘while you were away.’ ‘Well, dearest, it was a loving fancy, so I won’t scold you for it. We’ll have a——’ He paused for an instant, looking at Daphne with a mischievous smile. ‘We’ll have a picnic there to-morrow.’ ‘Why a picnic?’ grumbled Sir Vernon. ‘I can understand people eating out of doors when they have no house to shelter them, but nobody but an idiot would squat on the grass to dine if he could get at chairs and tables. Look at your gipsies and hawkers now—you seldom catch them picnicking. If their tent or their caravan is ever so small and stuffy they generally feed inside it.’ ‘Never mind the hawkers,’ exclaimed Gerald contemptuously. ‘A fig for commonsense. Of course, everybody in his senses knows that such a dinner as this is much more comfortable than the most perfect picnic that ever was organised. But, for all that, I adore picnics; and we’ll have one to-morrow, won’t we, Daphne?’ He looked across the table at her in the subdued lamplight, smiling, and expecting to see a responsive smile in her eyes; but she was preternaturally grave. ‘Just as you like,’ she said. ‘Just as I like! What a chilling repulse! Why, unless Madoline and you approve of the idea, I don’t care a straw for it. I’ll punish you for your indifference, Miss Daphne. You shall have a formal luncheon in the refectory, at a table large enough for thirty, and groaning under my father’s family plate—Garrard’s, of the reign of Victoria, strictly ponderous and utilitarian. What a lovely light there is in the western sky!’ said Gerald, as Madoline and her sister rose from the table. ‘Shall we all walk down to the river, before we join Sir Vernon in the billiard-room? You’d like to try your hand against me, sir, I suppose, now that I come fresh from benighted lands where the tables have no pockets.’ ‘Yes; I’ll play a game with you presently.’