, 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.

Queen Selina did not dismiss Daphne, whose powers of keeping Ruby amused
and the ladies-in-waiting in good humour were too valuable to be
dispensed with unless it was absolutely necessary. But she was allowed
to see in many ways that she had fallen from favour. One of these was
she was no longer invited to take part in the daily drives, a
deprivation which would alone have consoled her for much worse
penalties.

And she was freed from any further importunities from the Crown Prince,
who kept his side of the compact by maintaining a cold and lofty
dignity. Clarence intended this to convey that his eyes were at last
open to her designs, and that it would be useless for her to seek to
beguile him any longer. But as Daphne was quite guiltless of any designs
at all, she was merely grateful to him for leaving her in peace.

Queen Selina generally left it to the Marshal to direct her excursions,
and he always rode beside the Royal coach. One afternoon he had
conducted her and her eldest daughter by a road across a fertile plain
dotted with pleasant villages and isolated farmhouses, towards the
outlying spurs of a range of mountains.