"Nonsense! she came out of nothing in the world but curiosity, and because she likes making people uncomfortable. She knew very well mother and I didn't want her!" But the more he tried to persuade her the more determined was Daphne to pay the promised visit, and that he should pay it with her. He gave way at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, when she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most unfriendly listener. Daphne heard it all quietly. Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown. When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted. "I suppose you kissed her?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the fire together. He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose, with his arm round her. But she persisted. "You did kiss her?" "Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?" "I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne, quickly. Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the scene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, from a wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique and unapproached. In that one hour the "muddy vesture" of common feeling and desire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pure flame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it for years, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrill returned--a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending the common hours and the common earth. The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him. Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. "Look here, Daphne! I wish you'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, old girl, since that day at Mount Vernon?" Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts--ugly thoughts--like "little mice stole in and out." The notion of Roger and that woman, in the past, engaged--always together, in each other's arms, tormented her unendurably. * * * * * She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. The morning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkward explanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of the reasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently with complete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle.