"But--but look here," he began desperately, "suppose--suppose I ask you"--he was on the point of adding, "to be my wife," when the words died on his lips as he saw that his mother had just entered the Audience Chamber. "Not now," he broke off heartily, "some other time." Queen Selina regarded Daphne with cold displeasure for a moment or two before speaking. "I was not aware, Miss Heritage," she said, "that your duties required you to be in this part of the Palace at _any_ time." "I had a summons, your Majesty," explained Daphne, "which I understood was from the Princess Royal, to come to her in the Hall of Audience, or I should not be here." "If her Royal Highness had required you at all, Miss Heritage, I think it more likely, on the whole, that she would have sent for you to my Bower, where she has been sitting with me all the afternoon. But I will find out if the message came from her." Daphne bit her lip. "It did not, your Majesty," she said; "I know now that it was given to me--by mistake." "A mistake, Miss Heritage, which I trust will not happen again. And, as it is the hour when you should be in attendance on Princess Ruby, I will ask you to go to her at once." "_She_ wasn't to blame, Mater," said Clarence, after Daphne had left the Hall. "It was all my fault. _I_ sent her that message." "It's very chivalrous of you, Clarence, to take the blame on yourself," replied his Mother; "but don't imagine you can deceive _me_. I know very well you are much too clever and wideawake to do anything so compromising. That girl is doing her best to entrap you into some rash promise. I've suspected it for some time." "No, I don't think so, really, Mater. Just before you came in she was asking me to promise not to speak to her again, except in public." "And didn't you see that was just her artful way of leading you on? But of course you did! As if you could fail to see through such an obvious trick as that." Now Clarence came to think of it, it _was_ pretty obvious. He shuddered to remember how very nearly he had been taken in by it. But the shrewdest man is liable to lose his head for the moment. Fortunately he had recovered his in time. "Well, Mater," he said, "I wasn't born yesterday, you know. I flatter myself I'm up to most moves on the board. And you may depend upon it if she's had any designs on me--mind you, I don't say she _has_--but _if_ she has, she sees now that they'll never come to anything. She's given me up as a hopeless proposition." This statement was inspired less by any personal conviction than by the dread that without such reassurance his anxious Mother might dismiss Daphne on the spot.