no, my dear. Fortunately he's not good-looking enough to make me
very uneasy about that. I should be much more afraid that he might fall
in love with you."

"Oh, I hope he won't do _that_, poor fellow," said Daphne with a sudden
and uneasy recollection of how he had followed her in secret. "But I'm
going home so soon that I mayn't even see him again."

"You may have to stay here some time longer," said the Fairy, "so it's
quite possible that he will try to see more of you. However, it will be
easy for you to tell him plainly that you don't want to have anything to
do with him."

"But I don't mind his speaking to me," said Daphne. "I told him he
might. I should hate hurting him like that. And, after all, Court
Godmother, if he _should_ show any signs of--of what you're afraid of,
he will soon see that it's no use, and be sensible about it."

"I dare say you're right, my dear, I dare say you're right," agreed the
Court Godmother. "And anyhow, it will be time enough to trouble about
that when it happens--which very likely it never will."

But in her heart she was more convinced than ever that Mirliflor had
made a very good beginning.

CHAPTER XVI

"A CLOUD THAT'S DRAGONISH"

At the first opportunity Mirliflor had returned to the pavilion groves,
where he need no longer worship from a distance. Daphne had received him
graciously enough, but somehow he went away with a feeling that he had
lost ground. He saw her every day after that, occasionally in the
daytime, whenever he could evade the Head Gardener's eye, and always in
the evening. She would talk to him from her window, or sometimes she
would consent to come out and stroll with him in the golden dusk along
grass-grown paths bordered with high and ragged walls of yew. And yet he
parted from her with a sorer heart every evening. She had been as
enchanting as ever, but quite as indifferent. It was useless to tell her
how he loved her; whenever he had tried she had made him understand
that, if he said any more, he would spoil the friendship between them.
So he said no more.

Sometimes she had made him angry. Unfortunately he could never quite
forget his rank, and he resented the airy way in which she treated him
as a person of no particular importance. She would even laugh at his
efforts to assert his dignity--and he was unused to being laughed at,
especially as he often did not even understand why she laughed. For
Fairy Princes have never been noted for