She shook her head. "You will please me so much better by keeping it," she said gently—"in memory of Märchenland."
It was true that it had once belonged to her father—the father she had never known—but then it had also belonged to Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, and Daphne was conscious now of an invincible unwillingness to accept any gift from that lady.
"I—I'd do anything to please you," said Clarence, taking the pendant from his mother and slipping it into the pocket of his dinner-jacket.
Ruby, in the white silk frock she had last worn at "Inglegarth," was clinging to Daphne. "I don't want to go back!" she wailed, "I want to stay here with you. Won't you send for me some day? Say you will; do say you will!"
Daphne stooped to caress and comfort her, and also to hide her own emotion. "I wish I could, darling," she said tenderly, "but I'm afraid, I'm afraid I mustn't make any promises that I'm not sure of being able to keep."
"Then say you will—perhaps!" entreated Ruby, but her mother promptly interposed.
"Ruby, my dear," she said, "you're forgetting how far her Majesty is now our superior. A Palace is no longer a fit place for any of us to visit, and I consider it best we should remain in future strictly in our respective spheres."
"Then I will go to mine at once," said Daphne, smiling. "Good-bye, Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson. Good-bye, Edna." She held out her hand to both of them, but they curtsied formally without offering to take it. "Good-bye, dearest little Ruby—I hope your next governess will love you nearly as much as I do—she can't quite! Good-bye, Mr. Stimpson—I think you will be rather glad to be back in the City again, won't you?"
"I shall, indeed, your Majesty," he said. "To tell you the honest truth, I don't think I was ever cut out for a monarch."
It was Clarence's turn next, and when he saw her offering him her hand with the old frank friendliness, he had a renewed sense of his own unworthiness.