"And when I am away you find time to go out." "Exactly," said Daisy. "There, isn't this delicious? You were away on a holiday yourself, and I believe you are actually annoyed because during your highness's absence I managed to enjoy myself." "No, no, Daisy; you mustn't accuse me of that," said Paul; "I am not so selfish as all that! However, never mind. Tell me now all you have been doing." "No; do you first tell me how you have been enjoying yourself. Were 'your people,' as you call them, very glad to see you; and did they make much of you, as in duty bound?" There was, whether intentionally or not, a slight inflection of sarcasm in her tone which jarred upon Paul's nerves. "They were very glad to see me, and made much of me in the only way parents can do," said he quietly. "I often think how foolishly, worse than foolishly, we behave while we have them with us, and only recognise our proper duty to them when it is too late." "Ye-es," said Daisy, struggling to repress a yawn. She was thinking of something else very different from filial duty, and was beginning to be bored. "You do not seem to enter into those sentiments," said Paul; "but that is because you have no parents." "Perhaps so," said the girl; "but even if I had, I scarcely think I should be tempted to gush; gushing is very much out of my line." Paul looked at her strangely. He had never heard her so hard, so cold, so sardonic before. "No," he said, after a moment's pause; "you generally manage to have a wonderful control of your feelings; it only needed one to look through your recent letters to prove that." "What was the matter with my letters?" said Daisy, looking up at him so bewitchingly at that moment that all Paul's anger vanished. "The matter with them! Nothing, my darling, except that I thought they were a little cold; but perhaps that was my fault." "How do you mean your fault?" "Perhaps I ought not to have gone away, to have left you for so long." "My dear Paul, what are you thinking of? What possible claim have I on you, that you should deprive yourself of a holiday and give up visiting your friends on my account?" "What claim have you! The claim of being dearer to me than any person in the world; the claim of being the one creature for whom I care beyond all others. Can there be a greater claim than this?" She looked at him quietly and almost pityingly as she said: "I thought you would have given up all this romantic nonsense, Paul; I thought you would have come back infinitely more rational and practical than you were when you left." "I suppose that is what you pride yourself on having become," said Paul, with a dash of bitterness in his tone; "'rational' and 'practical,' and 'romantic nonsense!' You didn't call it by that name when we used to walk in this place but a very few weeks ago." "It was different then," said Daisy, looking round with a shudder. "It was, indeed," said Paul. "There is something gone besides leaves from the trees."