Chapter XV: “Our Lord Himself cannot make the wheel swing backward.”

RUDYARD KIPLING.

Daphne felt wildly for the child’s heart, she would have called Arthur back, but her voice failed her, and a great anger against the man who had unwittingly caused the child’s terror took possession of her. She felt that she would never call him back again even if it left her in the world alone.

“I say, what’s up?” sounded a friendly voice beside her. “I thought I heard some kind of a row. Has the child fainted?”

“Oh! Reggie, I am so glad to see you!” cried Daphne. “It is the heat! I should not have brought her out! I am quite sure it is the heat!”

“Yes,” said Reggie, who was of the opinion that the important point was not so much what _had_ happened, as what could be done to remedy it. “Shall I take her to the stream?” He picked the child up and carried her through the trees to the water’s edge, where, in a few moments, she opened her eyes.

“I fink,” she whispered, “this is the prince—Daphne? And oh, look, Daphne, all the rest is true?” Daphne and Reggie looked up the stream, to where the child was pointing. At the head of a little glade some hundred yards away was a waterfall.

“It’s awfully pretty here, isn’t it?” said Reggie. “I’m awfully glad I found you.” Daphne had recovered herself by now.

“Where are the others?” she asked. Reggie’s face fell. It mattered exceedingly little to him where the others were, provided that they remained there.

“The twins are down the stream with Miss Linton and Bert Russell,” he explained, “and I think David is with my mother. You’d better stay here, hadn’t you, and I’ll bring you some lunch, then you can drive back.”

“Bring Miss Linton as well as the lunch,” said Daphne.

“It seems to me I like London better than the country,” Reggie ventured.

“I hope you will do as I ask,” said Daphne gravely.

“I think you know I will, Daphne,” he replied, with an earnestness not altogether as boyish as she would have liked to believe. Then he remembered David, and bit his lips to keep the words back. He knew that there was a mistake somewhere, but he could not set it right. David was his friend, and Daphne was very much more than his friend, so for a moment he was silent. “Wasn’t there someone in the wood with you?” he asked finally. “I thought I heard a man’s voice before this young lady distinguished herself.”

“How did I distinguish myself?” Dora asked with interest.

“The way people usually do,” said Reggie with a chuckle, “by making a row!” Daphne looked up at him, and for a moment she hesitated, but there was something in the absolute friendly honesty of his eyes that made it impossible for her to lie to him.

“Mr. Field was with me,” she said, “for a few minutes. I was looking for Dora afterwards, when she cried and fainted.”

“What was I like when I fainted?” asked Dora with shining eyes. “There was an old lady who fainted in church once, and her bonnet fell over into our pew,” she went on, “but mother wouldn’t let me pick it up.”

“You were very much like you are now,” said Reggie, “only quieter. I didn’t know you knew that surgeon chap,” he said to Daphne, throwing a pebble into the stream with obvious irritability. “I don’t think much of him.”

“Oh! I suppose he can’t fish,” said Daphne. “Are we going to get any lunch?” Reggie accepted his rebuke, and went on his errand.

“He hasn’t got golden hair,” said Dora in some disappointment, “and he doesn’t say sensible things, but he has a prince’s eyes I fink, don’t you?”

“Yes, I think he has,” said Daphne.

“What happened to that dreadful other man?” Dora asked looking round her fearfully.

“Oh, he was only a pretend man,” said Daphne soothingly. “He has quite gone away, we only _thought_ we saw him.”

“I am so glad he isn’t real,” said Dora happily. “But it was a _horrid_ thought.”

Daphne took Dora’s hands in hers and kissed them passionately. “We will never have any more horrid thoughts,” she said.