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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vixen, Volume II., by M. E. Braddon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Vixen, Volume II.
+
+Author: M. E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: August 9, 2008 [EBook #26237]
+[Last updated: June 14, 2013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIXEN, VOLUME II. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Daniel Fromont.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COLLECTION
+
+OF
+
+BRITISH AUTHORS
+
+
+TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
+
+
+VOL. 1810.
+
+
+
+VIXEN BY M. E. BRADDON
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+
+VIXEN
+
+
+A NOVEL
+
+
+BY
+
+M.  E. BRADDON,
+
+AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC. ETC.
+
+
+_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+LEIPZIG
+
+BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
+
+1879.
+
+
+_The Right of Translation is reserved_.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OF VOLUME II.
+
+
+CHAPTER I. "Shall I tell you the Secret?"
+
+CHAPTER II. Wedding Garments
+
+CHAPTER III. "I shall look like the wicked Fairy"
+
+CHAPTER IV. The Vow is vowed
+
+CHAPTER V. War to the Knife
+
+CHAPTER VI. At the Kennels
+
+CHAPTER VII. A bad Beginning
+
+CHAPTER VIII. On Half Rations
+
+CHAPTER IX. The Owner of Bullfinch
+
+CHAPTER X. Something like a Ride
+
+CHAPTER XI. Rorie objects to Duets
+
+CHAPTER XII. "Fading in Music"
+
+CHAPTER XIII. Crying for the Moon
+
+CHAPTER XIV. "Kurz ist der Schmerz und ewig ist die Freude"
+
+CHAPTER XV. A Midsummer Night's Dream
+
+CHAPTER XVI. "That must end at once"
+
+
+
+VIXEN.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"Shall I tell you the Secret?"
+
+For the rest of the way Violet walked with Mrs. Scobel, and at the
+garden-gate of the Vicarage Roderick Vawdrey wished them both
+good-night, and tramped off, with his basket on his back and his rod on
+his shoulder, for the long walk to Briarwood.
+
+Here the children separated, and ran off to their scattered homes,
+dropping grateful bob-curtsies to the last--"louting," as they called
+it in their Forest dialect.
+
+"You must come in and have some tea, Violet," said Mrs. Scobel. "You
+must be very tired."
+
+"I am rather tired; but I think it's too late for tea. I had better get
+home at once."
+
+"Ignatius shall see you home, my dear," cried Mrs. Scobel. At which the
+indefatigable Vicar, who had shouted himself hoarse in leading his
+choir, protested himself delighted to escort Miss Tempest.
+
+The church clock struck ten as they went along the narrow forest-path
+between Beechdale and the Abbey House.
+
+"Oh," cried Vixen, "I do hope mamma's people will have gone home."
+
+A carriage rolled past them as they came out into the road.
+
+"That's Mrs. Carteret's landau," said Vixen. "I breathe more freely.
+And there goes Mrs. Horwood's brougham; so I suppose everything is
+over. How nice it is when one's friends are so unanimous in their
+leave-taking."
+
+"I shall try to remember that the next time I dine at the Abbey House,"
+said Mr. Scobel laughing.
+
+"Oh, please don't!" cried Violet. "You and Mrs. Scobel are different. I
+don't mind you; but those dreadful stiff old ladies mamma cultivates,
+who think of nothing but their dress and their own importance--a little
+of them goes a very long way."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Tempest, the Carterets and the Horwoods are some of
+the best people in the neighbourhood."
+
+"Of course they are," answered Vixen. "If they were not they would
+hardly venture to be so stupid. They take the full license of their
+acres and their quarterings. People with a coat-of-arms found
+yesterday, and no land to speak of, are obliged to make themselves
+agreeable."
+
+"Like Captain Winstanley," suggested Mr. Scobel. "I don't suppose he
+has land enough to sod a lark. But he is excellent company."
+
+"Very," assented Vixen, "for the people who like him."
+
+They were at the gate by this time.
+
+"You shan't come any further unless you are coming in to see mamma,"
+protested Vixen.
+
+"Thanks, no; it's too late to think of that."
+
+"Then go home immediately, and have some supper," said Vixen
+imperatively. "You've had nothing but a cup of weak tea since two
+o'clock this afternoon. You must be worn out."
+
+"On such an occasion as to-day a man must not think of himself," said
+the Vicar.
+
+"I wonder when you ever do think of yourself," said Vixen.
+
+And indeed Mr. Scobel, like many another Anglican pastor of modern
+times, led a life which, save for its liberty to go where he listed,
+and to talk as much as he liked, was but little less severe in its
+exactions upon the flesh and the spirit than that of the monks of La
+Trappe.
+
+The Abbey House looked very quiet when Vixen went into the hall, whose
+doors stood open to the soft spring night. The servants were all at
+supper, treating themselves to some extra comforts on the strength of a
+dinner-party, and talking over the evening's entertainment and its
+bearings on their mistress's life. There was a feeling in the servants'
+hall that these little dinners, however seeming harmless, had a certain
+bent and tendency inimical to the household, and household peace.
+
+"He was more particular in his manner to-night than hever," said the
+butler, as he dismembered a duck which had been "hotted up" after
+removal from the dining-room. "He feels hisself master of the whole lot
+of us already. I could see it in his hi. 'Is that the cabinet 'ock,
+Forbes?' he says to me, when I was a-filling round after the bait.
+'No,' says I, 'it is not. We ain't got so much of our cabinet 'ocks
+that we can afford to trifle with 'em.' Of course I said it in a
+hundertone, confidential like; but I wanted him to know who was master
+of the cellar."
+
+"There'll be nobody master but him when once he gets his foot inside
+these doors," said Mrs. Trimmer, the housekeeper, with a mournful shake
+of her head. "No, Porline, I'll have a noo pertater. Them canister peas
+ain't got no flaviour with them."
+
+While they were enjoying themselves, with a certain chastening touch of
+prophetic melancholy, in the servants' hall, Violet was going slowly
+upstairs and along the corridor which led past her mother's rooms.
+
+"I must go in and wish mamma good-night," she thought; "though I am
+pretty sure of a lecture for my pains."
+
+Just at this moment a door opened, and a soft voice called "Violet,"
+pleadingly.
+
+"Dear mamma, I was just coming in to say good-night."
+
+"Were you, darling? I heard your footstep, and I was afraid you were
+going by. And I want very particularly to see you to-night, Violet."
+
+"Do you, mamma? I hope not to scold me for going with the
+school-children. They had such a happy afternoon; and ate! it was like
+a miracle. Not so little serving for so many, but so few devouring so
+much."
+
+Pamela Tempest put her arm round her daughter, and kissed her, with
+more warmth of affection than she had shown since the sad days after
+the Squire's death. Violet looked at her mother wonderingly. She could
+hardly see the widow's fair delicate face in the dimly-lighted room. It
+was one of the prettiest rooms in the house--half boudoir half
+dressing-room, crowded with elegant luxuries and modern inventions,
+gipsy tables, book-stands, toy-cabinets of egg-shell china, a toilet
+table _a la_ Pompadour, a writing-desk _a la_ Sevigne. Such small
+things had made the small joys of Mrs. Tempest's life. When she mourned
+her kind husband, she lamented him as the someone who had bought her
+everything she wanted.
+
+She had taken off her dinner-dress, and looked particularly fair and
+youthful in her soft muslin dressing-gown, trimmed with Mechlin lace
+which had cost as much as a small holding on the outskirts of the
+Forest. Even in that subdued light Violet could see that her mother's
+cheeks were pinker than usual, that her eyes were clouded with tears,
+and her manner anxiously agitated.
+
+"Mamma," cried the girl, "there is something wrong, I know. Something
+has happened."
+
+"There is nothing wrong, love. But something has happened. Something
+which I hope will not make you unhappy--for it has made me very happy."
+
+"You are talking in enigmas, mamma, and I am too tired to be good at
+guessing riddles, just now," said Violet, becoming suddenly cold as ice.
+
+A few moments ago she had been all gentleness and love, responding to
+the unwonted affection of her mother's caresses. Now she drew herself
+away and stood aloof, with her heart beating fast and furiously. She
+divined what was coming. She had guessed the riddle already.
+
+"Come and sit by the fire, Violet, and I will tell you--everything,"
+said Mrs. Tempest coaxingly, seating herself in the low semi-circular
+chair which was her especial delight.
+
+"I can hear what you have to tell just as well where I am," answered
+Violet curtly, walking to the latticed window, which was open to the
+night. The moon was shining over the rise and fall of the woods; the
+scent of the flowers came stealing up from the garden. Without, all was
+calm and sweetness, within, fever and smothered wrath. "I can't think
+how you can endure a fire on such a night. The room is positively
+stifling."
+
+"Ah Violet, you have not my sad susceptibility to cold."
+
+"No, mamma. I don't keep myself shut up like an unset diamond in a
+jeweller's strong-box."
+
+"I don't think I can tell you--the little secret I have to tell,
+Violet, unless you come over to me and sit by my side, and give me your
+hand, and let me feel as if you were really fond of me," pleaded Mrs.
+Tempest, with a little gush of piteousness. "You seem like an enemy,
+standing over there with your back to me, looking out at the sky."
+
+"Perhaps there is no need for you to tell me anything, mamma," answered
+Violet, in a tone which, to that tremulous listener in the low seat by
+the fire, sounded as severe as the voice of a judge pronouncing
+sentence. "Shall I tell you the secret?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Shall I, mamma?"
+
+"I don't think you can, my love."
+
+"Yes, I am afraid I can. The secret--which is no secret to me or to
+anyone else in the world, any more than the place where the ostrich has
+put his head is a secret when his body is sticking up out of the
+sand--the secret is that, after being for seventeen happy honourable
+years the wife of the best and truest of men--the kindest, most
+devoted, and most generous of husbands--you are going to take another
+husband, who comes to you with no better credentials than a smooth
+tongue and a carefully-drilled figure, and who will punish your want of
+faith and constancy to my dead father by making the rest of your life
+miserable--as you will deserve that it shall be. Yes, mother, I, your
+only child, say so. You will deserve to be wretched if you marry
+Captain Winstanley."
+
+The widow gave a faint scream, half indignation, half terror. For the
+moment she felt as if some prophetic curse had been hurled upon her.
+The tall straight figure in the white gown, standing in the full flood
+of moonlight, looked awful as Cassandra, prophesying death and doom in
+the wicked house at Argos.
+
+"It is too bad," sobbed Mrs. Tempest; "it is cruel, undutiful,
+disrespectful, positively wicked for a daughter to talk to a mother as
+you have talked to me to-night. How can Miss McCroke have brought you
+up, I wonder, that you are capable of using such language? Have you
+forgotten the Fifth Commandment?"
+
+"No. It tells me to honour my father and my mother. I honour my dead
+father, I honour you, when I try to save you from the perdition of a
+second marriage."
+
+"Perdition!" echoed Mrs. Tempest faintly, "what language!"
+
+"I knew when that adventurer came here, that he intended to make
+himself master of this house--to steal my dead father's place," cried
+Vixen passionately.
+
+"You have no right to call him an adventurer. He is an officer and a
+gentleman. You offer him a cruel, an unprovoked insult. You insult me
+still more deeply by your abuse of him. Am I so old, or so ugly, or so
+altogether horrid, that a man cannot love me for my own sake?"
+
+"Not such a man as Captain Winstanley. He does not know what love
+means. He would have made me marry him if he could, because I am to
+have the estate by-and-bye. Failing that, he has made you accept him
+for your husband. Yes, he has conquered you, as a cat conquers a bird,
+fascinating the poor wretch with its hateful green eyes. You are quite
+young enough and pretty enough to win a good man's regard, if you were
+a penniless unprotected widow, needing a husband to shelter you and
+provide for you. But you are the natural victim of such a man as
+Captain Winstanley."
+
+"You are altogether unjust and unreasonable," exclaimed Mrs. Tempest,
+weeping copiously. "Your poor dear father spoiled you. No one but a
+spoiled child would talk as you are talking. Who made you a judge of
+Captain Winstanley? It is not true that he ever wanted to marry you. I
+don't believe it for an instant."
+
+"Very well, mother. If you are wilfully blind----"
+
+"I am not blind. I have lived twice as long as you have. I am a better
+judge of human nature than you can be."
+
+"Not of your admirer's, your flatterer's nature," cried Vixen. "He has
+slavered you with pretty speeches and soft words, as the cobra slavers
+his victim, and he will devour you, as the cobra does. He will swallow
+up your peace of mind, your self-respect, your independence, your
+money--all good things you possess. He will make you contemptible in
+the eyes of all who know you. He will make you base in your own eyes."
+
+"It is not true. You are blinded by prejudice."
+
+"I want to save you from yourself, if I can."
+
+"You are too late to save me, as you call it. Captain Winstanley has
+touched my heart by his patient devotion, I have not been so easily won
+as you seem to imagine. I have refused him three times. He knows that I
+had made up my mind never to marry again. Nothing was farther from my
+thoughts than a second marriage. I liked him as a companion and friend.
+That he knew. But I never intended that he should be more to me than a
+friend. He knew that. His patience has conquered me. Such devotion as
+he has given me has not often been offered to a woman. I do not think
+any woman living could resist it. He is all that is good and noble, and
+I am assured, Violet, that as a second father----"
+
+Vixen interrupted her with a cry of horror.
+
+"For God's sake, mamma, do not utter the word 'father' in conjunction
+with his name. He may become your husband--I have no power to prevent
+that evil--but he shall never call himself my father."
+
+"What happiness can there be for any of us, Violet, when you start with
+such prejudices?" whimpered Mrs. Tempest.
+
+"I do not expect there will be much," said Vixen. "Good-night, mamma."
+
+"You are very unkind. You won't even stop to hear how it came
+about--how Conrad persuaded me to forego my determination."
+
+"No, mamma. I don't want to hear the details. The fact is enough for
+me. If it would be any use for me to go down upon my knees and entreat
+you to give up this man, I would gladly do it; but I fear it would be
+no use."
+
+"It would not. Violet," answered the widow, with modest resoluteness.
+"I have given Conrad my word. I cannot withdraw it."
+
+"Then I have nothing more to say," replied Vixen, with her hand upon
+the door, "except good-night."
+
+"You will not even kiss me?"
+
+"Excuse me, mamma; I am not in a kissing humour."
+
+And so Vixen left her.
+
+Mrs. Tempest sat by the fading fire, and cried herself into a gentle
+slumber. It was very hard. She had longed to pour the story of this
+second courtship--its thrilling, unexpected joys, its wondrous
+surprises--into a sympathetic ear. And Violet, the natural recipient of
+these gentle confidences, had treated her so cruelly.
+
+ She felt herself sorely ill-used; and then came soothing
+thoughts about her _trousseau_, her wedding-dress, the dress in which
+she should start for her wedding-tour. All things would of course be
+chastened and subdued. No woman can be a bride twice in her life; but
+Mrs. Tempest meant that the _trousseau_ should, in its way, be perfect.
+There should be no rush or excitement in the preparation; nothing
+should be scamped or hurried. Calmness, deliberation, and a faultless
+taste should pervade all things.
+
+"I will have no trimming but Valenciennes for my under-linen," she
+decided; "it is the only lace that never offends. And I will have old
+English monograms in satin-stitch upon everything. My _peignoirs_ will
+require a good deal of study; they admit of so much variety. I will
+have only a few dresses, but those shall be from Paris. Theodore must
+go over and get them from Worth. She knows what suits me better than I
+do myself. I am not going to be extravagant, but Conrad so appreciates
+elegance and taste; and of course he will wish me to be well dressed."
+
+And so, comforted by these reflections, Mrs. Tempest sank into a gentle
+slumber, from which she was awakened by Pauline, who had discussed her
+mistress's foolishness over a hearty supper, and now came to perform
+the duties of the evening toilet.
+
+"Oh Pauline," cried the widow, with a shiver, "I'm glad you awoke me.
+I've just had such an awful dream."
+
+"Lor', ma'am! What about?"
+
+"Oh, an awful dream. I thought Madame Theodore sent me home a
+_trousseau_ and that there was not a single thing that would fit. I
+looked an object in every one of the dresses."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Wedding Garments.
+
+After that night Vixen held her peace. There were no more bitter words
+between Mrs. Tempest and her daughter, but the mother knew that there
+was a wellspring of bitterness--a Marah whose waters were
+inexhaustible--in her daughter's heart; and that domestic happiness,
+under one roof, was henceforth impossible for these two.
+
+There were very few words of any kind between Violet and Mrs. Tempest
+at this time. The girl kept herself as much as possible apart from her
+mother. The widow lived her languid drawing-room life, dawdling away
+long slow days that left no more impression behind them than the drift
+of rose-leaves across the velvet lawn before her windows. A little
+point-lace, deftly worked by slim white fingers flashing with gems; a
+little Tennyson; a little Owen Meredith; a little Browning--only half
+understood at best; a little scandal; a great deal of orange pekoe,
+sipped out of old Worcester teacups of royal blue or flowered Swansea;
+an hour's letter-writing on the last fashionable note-paper;
+elegantly-worded inanity, delicately penned in a flowing Italian hand,
+with long loops to the Y's and G's, and a serpentine curve at the end
+of every word.
+
+No life could well have been more useless or vapid. Even Mrs. Tempest's
+charities--those doles of wine and soup, bread and clothing, which are
+looked for naturally from the mistress of a fine old mansion--were
+vicarious. Trimmer, the housekeeper, did everything. Indeed, in the
+eyes of the surrounding poor, Mrs. Trimmer was mistress of the Abbey
+House. It was to her they looked for relief; it was her reproof they
+feared; and to her they louted lowest. The faded beauty, reclining in
+her barouche, wrapped in white raiment of softest China crape, and
+whirling past them in a cloud of dust, was as remote as a goddess. They
+could hardly have realised that she was fashioned out of the same clay
+that made themselves.
+
+Upon so smooth and eventless an existence Captain Winstanley's presence
+came like a gust of north wind across the sultry languor of an August
+noontide. His energy, his prompt, resolute manner of thinking and
+acting upon all occasions, impressed Mrs. Tempest with an extraordinary
+sense of his strength of mind and manliness. It seemed to her that she
+must always be safe where he was. No danger, no difficulty could assail
+her while his strong arm was there to ward it off. She felt very much
+as Mary Stuart may have done about Bothwell; when, moved to scornful
+aversion by the silken boy-profligate Darnley, her heart acknowledged
+its master in the dark freebooter who had slain him. There had been no
+Darnley in Pamela Tempest's life; but this resolute, clear-brained
+soldier was her Bothwell. She had the Mary Stuart temperament, the love
+of compliments and fine dresses, dainty needlework and luxurious
+living, without the Stuart craft. In Conrad Winstanley she had found
+her master, and she was content to be so mastered; willing to lay down
+her little sum of power at his feet, and live henceforward like a tame
+falcon at the end of a string. Her position, as a widow, was an
+excellent one. The Squire's will had been dictated in fullest
+confidence in his wife's goodness and discretion; and doubtless also
+with the soothing idea common to most hale and healthy men, that it
+must be a long time before their testamentary arrangements can come
+into effect. It was a holograph will, and the Squire's own composition
+throughout. "He would have no lawyer's finger in that pie," he had
+said. The disposal of his estate had cost him many hours of painful
+thought before he rang the bell for his bailiff and his butler, and
+executed it in their presence.
+
+Mrs. Tempest was mistress of the Abbey House for her life; and at her
+death it was to become Violet's property. Violet was not to come of age
+until she was twenty-five, and in the meantime her mother was to be her
+sole guardian, and absolute mistress of everything. There was no
+question of an allowance for the maintenance of the heiress, no
+question as to the accumulation of income. Everything was to belong to
+Mrs. Tempest till Violet came of age. She had only to educate and
+maintain her daughter in whatever manner she might think fit. At
+Violet's majority the estate was to pass into her possession, charged
+with an income of fifteen hundred a year, to be paid to the widow for
+her lifetime. Until her twenty-fifth birthday, therefore, Violet was in
+the position of a child, entirely dependent on her mother's liberality,
+and bound to obey her mother as her natural and only guardian. There
+was no court of appeal nearer than the Court of Chancery. There was no
+one to whom the two women could make their complaints or refer their
+differences.
+
+Naturally, Captain Winstanley had long before this made himself
+acquainted with the particulars of the Squire's will. For six years he
+saw himself sole master of a very fine estate, and at the end of six
+years reduced to an income which seemed, comparatively, a pittance, and
+altogether inadequate for the maintenance of such a place as the Abbey
+House. Still, fifteen hundred a year and the Abbey House were a long
+way on the right side of nothing: and Captain Winstanley felt that he
+had fallen on his feet.
+
+That was a dreary June for Vixen. She hugged her sorrow, and lived in a
+mental solitude which was almost awful in so young a soul. She made a
+confidante of no one, not even of kind-hearted Mrs. Scobel, who was
+quite ready to pity her and condole with her, and who was secretly
+indignant at the widow's folly.
+
+The fact of Mrs. Tempest's intended marriage had become known to all
+her friends and neighbours, with the usual effect of such intelligence.
+Society said sweet things to her; and praised Captain Winstanley; and
+hoped the wedding would be soon; and opined that it would be quite a
+nice thing for Miss Tempest to have such an agreeable stepfather, with
+whom she could ride to hounds as she had done with the dear Squire. And
+the same society, driving away from the Abbey House in its landaus and
+pony-carriages, after half-an-hour's pleasant gossip and a cup of
+delicately flavoured tea, called Mrs. Tempest a fool, and her intended
+husband an adventurer.
+
+Vixen kept aloof from all the gossip and tea-drinking. She did not even
+go near her old friends the Scobels, in these days of smothered wrath
+and slow consuming indignation. She deserted the schools, her old
+pensioners, even the little village children, to whom she had loved to
+carry baskets of good things, and pocketfuls of halfpence, and whose
+queer country dialect had seemed as sweet to her as the carolling of
+finches and blackbirds in the woods. Everything in the way of charity
+was left to Mrs. Trimmer now. Vixen took her long solitary rides in the
+Forest, roaming wherever there was a footway for her horse under the
+darkening beeches, dangerously near the swampy ground where the wet
+grass shone in the sunlight, the green reedy patches that meant peril;
+into the calm unfathomable depths of Mark Ash, or Queen's Bower; up to
+the wild heathy crest of Boldrewood; wherever there was loneliness and
+beauty.
+
+Roderick had gone to London for the season, and was riding with Lady
+Mabel in the Row, or dancing attendance at garden-parties, exhibitions,
+and flower-shows.
+
+"I wonder how he likes the dusty days, and the crowded rooms, the
+classical music, and high-art exhibitions?" thought Vixen savagely. "I
+wonder how he likes being led about like a Pomeranian terrier? I don't
+think I could endure it if I were a man. But I suppose when one is in
+love----"
+
+And then Vixen thought of their last talk together, and how little of
+the lover's enthusiasm there was in Roderick's mention of his cousin.
+
+"In the bottom of my heart I know that he is going to marry her for the
+sake of her estate, or because his mother wished it and urged it, and
+he was too weak-minded to go on saying No. I would not say it for the
+world, or let anyone else say it in my hearing, but, in my heart of
+hearts, I know he does not love her."
+
+And then, after a thoughtful silence, she cried to the mute
+unresponsive woods:
+
+"Oh, it is wicked, abominable, mad, to marry without love!"
+
+The woods spoke to her of Roderick Vawdrey. How often she had ridden by
+his side beneath these spreading beech-boughs, dipping her childish
+head, just as she dipped it to-day, under the low branches, steering
+her pony carefully between the prickly holly-bushes, plunging deep into
+the hollows where the dry leaves crackled under his hoofs.
+
+"I fancied Rorie and I were to spend our lives together--somehow," she
+said to herself. "It seems very strange for us to be quite parted."
+
+She saw Mr. Vawdrey's name in the fashionable newspapers, in the lists
+of guests at dinners and drums. London life suited him very well, no
+doubt. She heard that he was a member of the Four-in-hand Club, and
+turned out in splendid style at Hyde Park Corner. There was no talk yet
+of his going into Parliament. That was an affair of the future.
+
+Since that evening on which Mrs. Tempest announced her intention of
+taking a second husband, Violet and Captain Winstanley had only met in
+the presence of other people. The Captain had tried to infuse a certain
+fatherly familiarity into his manner; but Vixen had met every attempt
+at friendliness with a sullen disdain, which kept even Captain
+Winstanley at arm's length.
+
+"We shall understand each other better by-and-by," he said to himself,
+galled by this coldness. "It would be a pity to disturb these halcyon
+days by anything in the way of a scene. I shall know how to manage Miss
+Tempest--afterwards."
+
+He spoke of her, and to her, always as Miss Tempest. He had never
+called her Violet since that night in the Pavilion garden.
+
+These days before her wedding were indeed a halcyon season for Mrs.
+Tempest. She existed in an atmosphere of millinery and pretty speeches.
+Her attention was called away from a ribbon by the sweet distraction of
+a compliment, and oscillated between tender whispers and honiton lace.
+Conrad Winstanley was a delightful lover. His enemies would have said
+that he had done the same kind of thing so often, that it would have
+been strange if he had not done it well. His was assuredly no 'prentice
+hand in the art. Poor Mrs. Tempest lived in a state of mild
+intoxication, as dreamily delicious as the effects of opium. She was
+enchanted with her lover, and still better pleased with herself. At
+nine-and-thirty it was very sweet to find herself exercising so potent
+an influence over the Captain's strong nature. She could not help
+comparing herself to Cleopatra, and her lover to Antony. If he had not
+thrown away a world for her sake, he was at least ready to abandon the
+busy career which a man loves, and to devote his future existence to
+rural domesticity. He confessed that he had been hardened by much
+contact with the world, that he did not love now for the first time;
+but he told his betrothed that her influence had awakened feelings
+which had never before been called into life, that this love which he
+felt for her was to all intents and purposes a first love, the first
+pure and perfect affection that had subjugated and elevated his soul.
+
+After that night in Mrs. Tempest's boudoir, it was only by tacit
+avoidance of her mother that Vixen showed the intensity of her
+disapproval. If she could have done any good by reproof or entreaty, by
+pleading or exhortation, she would assuredly have spoken; but she saw
+the Captain and her mother together every day, and she knew that,
+opposed to his influence, her words were like the idle wind which
+bloweth where it listeth. So she held her peace, and looked on with an
+aching angry heart, and hated the intruder who had come to steal her
+dead father's place. To take her father's place; that in Violet's mind
+was the unpardonable wrong. That any man should enter that house as
+master, and sit in the Squire's seat, and rule the Squire's servants,
+and ride the Squire's horses, was an outrage beyond endurance. She
+might have looked more leniently on her mother's folly, had the widow
+chosen a second husband with a house and home of his own, who would
+have carried off his wife to reign over his own belongings, and left
+the Abbey House desolate--a temple dedicated to the dead.
+
+Mrs. Tempest's manner towards her daughter during this period was at
+once conciliatory and reproachful. She felt it a hard thing that Violet
+should have taken up such an obnoxious position. This complaint she
+repeated piteously, with many variations, when she discussed Violet's
+unkindness with her lover. She had no secrets from the Captain, and she
+told him all the bitter things Violet had said about him.
+
+He heard her with firmly-set lips and an angry sparkle in his dark
+eyes, but his tone was full of paternal indulgence presently, when Mrs.
+Tempest had poured out all her woes.
+
+"Is it not hard upon me, Conrad?" she asked in conclusion.
+
+"My dear Pamela, I hope you are too strong-minded to distress yourself
+seriously about a wilful girl's foolishness. Your daughter has a noble
+nature, but she has been spoiled by too much indulgence. Even a
+race-horse--the noblest thing in creation--has to be broken in; not
+always without severe punishment. Miss Tempest and I will come to
+understand each other perfectly by-and-by."
+
+"I know you will be a second father to her," said Mrs. Tempest
+tearfully.
+
+"I will do my duty to her, dearest, be assured."
+
+Still Mrs. Tempest went on harping upon the cruelty of her daughter's
+conduct. The consciousness of Violet's displeasure weighed heavily upon
+her.
+
+"I dare not even show her my _trousseau_," she complained, "all
+confidence is at an end between us. I should like to have had her
+opinion about my dresses--though she is sadly deficient in taste, poor
+child! and has never even learnt to put on her gloves perfectly."
+
+"And your own taste is faultless, love," replied the Captain
+soothingly. "What can you want with advice from an inexperienced girl,
+whose mind is in the stable?"
+
+"It is not her advice I want, Conrad; but her sympathy. Fanny Scobel is
+coming this afternoon. I can show her my things. I really feel quite
+nervous about talking to Violet of her own dress. She must have a new
+dress for the wedding, you know; though she cannot be a bridesmaid. I
+think that is really unfair. Don't you, Conrad?"
+
+"What is unfair, dearest?" asked the Captain, whose mind had scarcely
+followed the harmless meanderings of his lady's speech.
+
+"That a widow is not allowed to have bridesmaids or orange-blossoms. It
+seems like taking the poetry out of a wedding, does it not?"
+
+"Not to my mind, Pamela. The poetry of wedlock does not lie in these
+details--a sugared cake, and satin favours; a string of carriages, and
+a Brussels veil. The true poetry of marriage is in the devotion and
+fidelity of the two hearts it binds together."
+
+Mrs Tempest sighed gently, and was almost resigned to be married
+without bridesmaids or orange-blossoms.
+
+It was now within a month of the wedding, which was to be solemnised on
+the last day of August--a convenient season for a honeymoon tour in
+Scotland. Mrs. Tempest liked to travel when other people travelled.
+Mountain and flood would have had scarcely any charm for her "out of
+the season." The time had come when Violet's dress must be talked
+about, as Mrs. Tempest told the Vicar's wife solemnly. She had confided
+the secret of her daughter's unkindness to Mrs. Scobel, in the friendly
+hour of afternoon tea.
+
+"It is very hard upon me," she repeated--"very hard that the only
+drawback to my happiness should come from my own child."
+
+"Violet was so fond of her father," said Mrs. Scobel excusingly.
+
+"But is that any reason she should treat me unkindly? Who could have
+been fonder of dear Edward than I was? I studied his happiness in
+everything. There never was an unkind word between us. I do not think
+anyone could expect me to go down to my grave a widow, in order to
+prove my affection for my dearest Edward. That was proved by every act
+of my married life. I have nothing to regret, nothing to atone for. I
+feel myself free to reward Captain Winstanley's devotion. He has
+followed me from place to place for the last two years; and has
+remained constant, in spite of every rebuff. He proposed to me three
+times before I accepted him."
+
+Mrs. Scobel had been favoured with the history of these three separate
+offers more than once.
+
+"I know, dear Mrs. Tempest," she said somewhat hurriedly, lest her
+friend should recapitulate the details. "He certainly seems very
+devoted. But, of course, from a worldly point of view, you are an
+excellent match for him."
+
+"Do you think I would marry him if I thought that consideration had any
+weight with him?" demanded Mrs. Tempest indignantly. And Mrs. Scobel
+could say no more.
+
+There are cases of physical blindness past the skill of surgery, but
+there is no blindness more incurable than that of a woman on the verge
+of forty who fancies herself beloved.
+
+"But Violet's dress for the wedding," said Mrs. Scobel, anxious to get
+the conversation upon safer ground. "Have you really said nothing to
+her about it?"
+
+"No. She is so headstrong and self-willed. I have been absolutely
+afraid to speak. But it must be settled immediately. Theodore is always
+so busy. It will be quite a favour to get the dress made at so short a
+notice, I daresay."
+
+"Why not speak to Violet this afternoon?"
+
+"While you are here? Yes, I might do that," replied Mrs. Tempest
+eagerly.
+
+She felt she could approach the subject more comfortably in Mrs.
+Scobel's presence. There would be a kind of protection in a third
+person. She rang the bell.
+
+"Has Miss Tempest come home from her ride?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. She has just come in."
+
+"Send her to me at once then. Ask her not to stop to change her dress."
+
+Mrs. Tempest and Mrs. Scobel were in the drawing-room, sitting at a
+gipsy table before an open window; the widow wrapped in a China-crape
+shawl, lest even the summer breeze should be too chill for her delicate
+frame, the Worcester cups and saucers, and antique silver tea pot and
+caddy and kettle set out before her, like a child's toys.
+
+Violet came running in, flushed after her ride, her habit muddy.
+
+"Bogged again!" cried Mrs. Tempest, with ineffable disgust. "That horse
+will be the death of you some day."
+
+"I think not, mamma. How do you do, Mrs. Scobel?"
+
+"Violet," said the Vicar's wife gravely, "why do you never come to our
+week-day services now?"
+
+"I--I--don't know. I have not felt in the humour for coming to church.
+It's no use to come and kneel in a holy place with rebellious thoughts
+in my heart. I come on Sundays for decency's sake; but I think it is
+better to keep away from the week-day services till I am in a better
+temper."
+
+"I don't think that's quite the way to recover your temper, dear."
+
+Violet was silent, and there was a rather awkward pause.
+
+"Will you have a cup of tea, dear?" asked Mrs. Tempest.
+
+"No, thanks, mamma. I think, unless you have something very particular
+to say to me, I had better take my muddy habit off your carpet. I feel
+rather warm and dusty. I shall be glad to change my dress."
+
+"But I have something very particular to say, Violet. I won't detain
+you long. You'd better have a cup of tea."
+
+"Just as you please, mamma."
+
+And forgetful of her clay-bespattered habit, Violet sank into one of
+the satin-covered chairs, and made a wreck of an antimacassar worked in
+crewels by Mrs. Tempest's own hands.
+
+"I am going to write to Madame Theodore by this evening's post,
+Violet," said her mother, handing her a cup of tea, and making believe
+not to see the destruction of that exquisite antimacassar; "and I
+should like to order your dress--for--the wedding. I have been thinking
+that cream-colour and pale blue would suit you to perfection. A
+cream-coloured hat--the Vandyck shape--with a long blue ostrich----"
+
+"Please don't take any trouble about it, mamma," said Vixen, whose
+cheek had paled at the word "wedding," and who now sat very erect in
+her chair, holding her cup and saucer firmly. "I am not going to be
+present at your wedding, so I shall not want a dress."
+
+"Violet!" cried Mrs. Tempest, beginning to tremble. "You cannot mean
+what you say. You have been very unkind, very undutiful. You have made
+me perfectly miserable for the last seven weeks; but I cannot believe
+that you would--grossly insult me--by refusing to be present at my
+wedding."
+
+"I do not wish to insult you, mamma. I am very sorry if I have pained
+you; but I cannot and will not be present at a marriage the very idea
+of which is hateful to me. If my presence could give any sanction to
+this madness of yours, that sanction shall not be given."
+
+"Violet, have you thought what you are doing? Have you considered what
+will be said--by the world?"
+
+"I think the world--our world--must have made up its mind about your
+second marriage already, mamma," Vixen answered quietly. "My absence
+from your wedding can make very little difference."
+
+"It will make a very great difference; and you know it!" cried Mrs.
+Tempest, roused to as much passion as she was capable of feeling.
+"People will say that my daughter sets her face against my marriage--my
+daughter, who ought to sympathise with me, and rejoice that I have
+found a true friend and protector."
+
+"I cannot either sympathise or rejoice, mamma. It is much better that I
+should stop away from your wedding. I should look miserable, and make
+other people uncomfortable."
+
+"Your absence will humiliate and lower me in the sight of my friends.
+It will be a disgrace. And yet you take this course on purpose to wound
+and injure me. You are a wicked undutiful daughter."
+
+"Oh, mamma!" cried Vixen, with grave voice and reproachful eyes--eyes
+before whose steady gaze the tearful widow drooped and trembled, "is
+duty so one-sided? Do I owe all to you, and you nothing to me? My
+father left us together, mother and daughter, to be all the world to
+each other. He left us mistresses of the dear old home we had shared
+with him. Do you think he meant a stranger to come and sit in his
+place--to be master over all he loved? Do you think it ever entered his
+mind that in three little years his place would be filled by the
+first-comer--his daughter asked to call another man father?"
+
+"The first-comer!" whimpered Mrs. Tempest. "Oh, this it too cruel!"
+
+"Violet!" exclaimed Mrs. Scobel reprovingly, "when you are calmer you
+will be sorry for having spoken so unkindly to your dear mamma."
+
+"I shall not be sorry for having spoken the truth," said Violet. "Mamma
+has heard the truth too seldom in her life. She will not hear it from
+Captain Winstanley--yet awhile."
+
+And after flinging this last poisoned dart, Vixen took up the muddy
+skirt of her habit and left the room.
+
+"It was rather a pity that Arion and I did not go to the bottom of that
+bog and stay there," she reflected. "I don't think anybody wants us
+above ground."
+
+"Did you ever know anything so humiliating, so shameful, so undutiful?"
+demanded Mrs. Tempest piteously, as the door closed on her rebellious
+daughter. "What will people say if Violet is not at my wedding?"
+
+"It would be awkward, certainly; unless there were some good reason for
+her absence."
+
+"People are so ill-natured. Nobody would believe in any excuse that was
+made. That cruel girl will disgrace me."
+
+"She seems strongly prejudiced against Captain Winstanley. It is a
+great pity. But I daresay she will relent in time. If I were you, dear
+Mrs. Tempest, I should order the dress."
+
+"Would you really, Fanny?"
+
+"Yes; I should order the dress, and trust in Providence for the result.
+You may be able to bring her round somehow between now and the wedding."
+
+"But I am not going to humiliate myself. I am not going to be trampled
+on by my daughter."
+
+"Of course not; but you must have her at your wedding."
+
+"If I were to tell Captain Winstanley what she has said this
+afternoon----"
+
+"He would be very angry, no doubt. But I would not tell him if I were
+you."
+
+"No, I shall not say anything about it."
+
+Yet, before night, Captain Winstanley had heard every syllable that
+Vixen had said; with some trifling and unconscious exaggerations,
+hardly to be avoided by a woman of Mrs. Tempest's character, in the
+narration of her own wrongs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+"I shall look like the wicked Fairy."
+
+Nothing in Captain Winstanley's manner during the sultry summer days
+which went before his marriage betrayed his knowledge of Violet
+Tempest's rebellious spirit. He would not see that he was obnoxious to
+her. He spoke to her and looked at her as sweetly as if there had been
+the friendliest understanding between them. In all his conduct, in any
+act of his which approached the assumption of authority, he went to
+work with supreme gentleness. Yet he had his grip upon everything
+already, and was extending his arms in every direction, like an
+octopus. There were alterations being made in the garden which Violet
+knew were his, although Mrs. Tempest was supposed to have originated
+them. He had, in some measure, assumed dominion over the stables. His
+two hunters were already quartered there. Vixen saw them when she went
+her morning round with a basket of bread. They were long-bodied,
+hungry-looking animals; and the grooms reported them ravenous and
+insatiable in their feeding.
+
+"When they've eat their corn they eats their 'ay, and when they've eat
+their 'ay they eats their bed, and then they takes and gnaws the wooden
+partitions. They'll eat up all the woodwork in the stable, before
+they've done. I never see such brutes," complained Bates, the
+head-groom.
+
+Vixen fancied these animals were in some wise typical of their owner.
+
+One morning when Vixen was leaning upon the half-door of Arion's
+loose-box, giving herself up to a quarter of an hour's petting of that
+much-beloved animal, Captain Winstanley came into the stable.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Tempest. Petting that pretty little bay of yours?
+I'm afraid you'll spoil him. You ought to hunt him next October."
+
+"I shall never hunt again."
+
+"Pshaw! At your age there's no such word as never. He's the neatest
+little hunter in the Forest. And on his by-days you might ride one of
+mine."
+
+"Thanks," said Vixen, with a supercilious glance at the most leggy of
+the two hunters, "I shouldn't care to be up there. I should feel myself
+out of everything."
+
+"Oh, by-the-way," said Captain Winstanley, opening the door of another
+loose-box, "what are we to do with this fellow?"
+
+"This fellow" was a grand-looking bay, with herculean quarters, short
+legs, and a head like a war-horse. He snorted indignantly as the
+Captain slapped his flank, and reared his splendid crest, and seemed as
+if he said "Ha, ha!"
+
+"I don't quite know of whom you are speaking when you say 'we,'" said
+Vixen, with an unsmiling countenance.
+
+"Naturally of your mother and myself. I should like to include you in
+all our family arrangements, present or future; but you seem to prefer
+being left outside."
+
+"Yes," replied Vixen, "I prefer to stand alone."
+
+"Very well then. I repeat my question--though, as you decline to have
+any voice in our arrangements, it's hardly worth while to trouble you
+about it--what are we to do with this fellow?"
+
+"Do with him? My father's horse!" exclaimed Vixen; "the horse he rode
+to his dying day! Why, keep him, of course!"
+
+"Don't you think that is rather foolish? Nobody rides or drives him. It
+takes all one man's time to groom him and exercise him. You might just
+as well keep a white elephant in the stables."
+
+"He was my father's favourite horse," said Vixen, with indignant tears
+clouding the bright hazel of her eyes; "I cannot imagine mamma capable
+of parting with him. Yet I ought not to say that, after my experience
+of the last few months," she added in an undertone.
+
+"Well, my dear Miss Tempest, family affection is a very charming
+sentiment, and I can quite understand that you and your mamma would be
+anxious to secure your father's horse a good home and a kind master;
+but I cannot comprehend your mamma being so foolish as to keep a horse
+which is of no use to any member of her family. If the brute were of a
+little lighter build, I wouldn't mind riding him myself, and selling
+one of mine. But he's too much of a weight-carrier for me."
+
+Vixen gave Arion a final hug, drying her angry tears upon his soft
+neck, and left the stable without another word. She went straight to
+her mother's morning-room, where the widow was sitting at a table
+covered with handkerchiefs-cases and glove-boxes, deeply absorbed in
+the study of their contents, assisted by the faithful Pauline,
+otherwise Polly, who had been wearing smarter gowns and caps ever since
+her mistress's engagement, and who was getting up a _trousseau_ on her
+own account, in order to enter upon her new phase of existence with due
+dignity.
+
+"We shall keep more company, I make no doubt, with such a gay young
+master as the Captain," she had observed in the confidences of Mrs.
+Trimmer's comfortable parlour.
+
+"I can never bring myself to think Swedish gloves pretty," said Mrs.
+Tempest, as Vixen burst into the room, "but they are the fashion, and
+one must wear them."
+
+"Mamma," cried Vixen, "Captain Winstanley wants you to sell Bullfinch.
+If you let him be sold, you will be the meanest of women."
+
+And with this startling address Vixen left the room as suddenly as she
+had entered it, banging the door behind her.
+
+
+Time, which brings all things, brought the eve of Mrs. Tempest's
+wedding. The small but perfect _trousseau_, subject of such anxious
+thoughts, so much study, was completed. The travelling-dresses were
+packed in two large oilskin-covered baskets, ready for the Scottish
+tour. The new travelling-bag, with monograms in pink coral on
+silver-gilt, a wedding present from Captain Winstanley, occupied the
+place of honour in Mrs. Tempest's dressing-room. The wedding-dress, of
+cream-coloured brocade and old point-lace, with a bonnet of lace and
+water-lilies, was spread upon the sofa. Everything in Mrs. Tempest's
+apartment bore witness to the impending change in the lady's life. Most
+of all, the swollen eyelids and pale cheeks of the lady, who, on this
+vigil of her wedding-day, had given herself up to weeping.
+
+"Oh mum, your eyes will be so red to-morrow," remonstrated Pauline,
+coming into the room with another dainty little box, newly-arrived from
+the nearest railway-station, and surprising her mistress in tears. "Do
+have some red lavender. Or let me make you a cup of tea."
+
+Mrs. Tempest had been sustaining nature with cups of tea all through
+the agitating day. It was a kind of drama drinking, and she was as much
+a slave of the teapot as the forlorn drunken drab of St. Giles's is a
+slave of the gin-bottle.
+
+"Yes, you may get me another cup of tea, Pauline. I feel awfully low
+to-night."
+
+"You seem so, mum. I'm sure if I didn't want to marry him, I wouldn't,
+if I was you. It's never too late for a woman to change her mind, not
+even when she's inside the church. I've known it done. I wouldn't have
+him, mum, if you feel your mind turn against him at the last,"
+concluded the lady's-maid energetically.
+
+"Not marry him, Pauline, when he is so good and noble, so devoted, so
+unselfish!"
+
+Mrs. Tempest might have extended this list of virtues indefinitely, if
+her old servant had not pulled her up rather sharply.
+
+"Well, mum, if he's so good and you're so fond of him, why cry?"
+
+"You don't understand, Pauline. At such a time there are many painful
+feelings. I have been thinking, naturally, of my dear Edward, the best
+and most generous of husbands. Twenty years last June since we were
+married. What a child I was, Pauline, knowing nothing of the world. I
+had a lovely _trousseau;_ but I daresay if we could see the dresses now
+we should think them absolutely ridiculous. And one's ideas of
+under-linen in those days were very limited. Those lovely satin-stitch
+monograms only came in when the Princess of Wales was married. Dear
+Edward! He was one of the handsomest men I ever saw. How could Violet
+believe that I should sell his favourite horse?"
+
+"Well, mum, hearing Captain Winstanley talk about it, she naturally----"
+
+"Captain Winstanley would never wish me to do anything I did not like."
+
+The Captain had not said a word about Bullfinch since that morning in
+the stable. The noble brute still occupied his loose-box, and was fed
+and petted daily by Vixen, and was taken for gallops in the dry glades
+of the Forest, or among the gorse and heath of Boldrewood.
+
+Mrs. Tempest had dined--or rather had not dined--in her own room on
+this last day of her widowhood. Captain Winstanley had business in
+London, and was coming back to Hampshire by the last train. There had
+been no settlements. The Captain had nothing to settle, and Mrs.
+Tempest confided in her lover too completely to desire to fence herself
+round with legal protections and precautions. Having only a life
+interest in the estate, she had nothing to leave, except the
+multifarious ornaments, frivolities, and luxuries which the Squire had
+presented to her in the course of their wedded life.
+
+It had been altogether a trying day, Mrs. Tempest complained: in spite
+of the diversion to painful thought which was continually being offered
+by the arrival of some interesting item of the _trousseau_, elegant
+trifles, ordered ever so long ago, which kept dropping in at the last
+moment. Violet and her mother had not met during the day, and now night
+was hurrying on. The owls were hooting in the Forest. Their monotonous
+cry sounded every now and then through the evening silence like a
+prophesy of evil. In less than twelve hours the wedding was to take
+place; and as yet Vixen had shown no sign of relenting.
+
+The dress had come from Madame Theodore's. Pauline had thrown it over a
+chair, with an artistic carelessness which displayed the tasteful
+combination of cream colour and pale azure.
+
+Mrs. Tempest contemplated it with a pathetic countenance.
+
+"It is simply perfect!" she exclaimed. "Theodore has a most delicate
+mind. There is not an atom too much blue. And how exquisitely the
+drapery falls! It looks as if it had been blown together. The Vandyke
+hat too! Violet would look lovely in it. I do not think if I were a
+wicked mother I should take so much pains to select an elegant costume
+for her. But I have always studied her dress. Even when she was in
+pinafores I took care that she should be picturesque. And she rewards
+my care by refusing to be present at my wedding. It is very cruel."
+
+The clock struck twelve. The obscure bird clamoured a little louder in
+his woodland haunt. The patient Pauline, who had packed everything and
+arranged everything, and borne with her mistress's dolefulness all day
+long, began to yawn piteously.
+
+"If you'd let me brush your hair now, ma'am," she suggested at last, "I
+could get to bed. I should like to be fresh to-morrow morning."
+
+"Are you tired?" exclaimed Mrs. Tempest, wonderingly.
+
+"Well, mum, stooping over them dress-baskets is rather tiring, and it's
+past twelve."
+
+"You can go. I'll brush my hair myself."
+
+"No, mum, I wouldn't allow that anyhow. It would make your arms ache.
+You ought to get to bed as soon as ever you can, or you'll look tired
+and 'aggard to-morrow."
+
+That word haggard alarmed Mrs. Tempest. She would not have objected to
+look pale and interesting on her wedding-day, like one who had spent
+the previous night in tears; but haggardness suggested age; and she
+wanted to look her youngest when uniting herself to a husband who was
+her junior by some years.
+
+So Pauline was allowed to hurry on the evening toilet. The soft pretty
+hair, not so abundant as it used to be, was carefully brushed; the
+night-lamp was lighted; and Pauline left her mistress sitting by her
+dressing-table in her flowing white raiment, pale, graceful, subdued in
+colouring, like a classic figure in a faded fresco.
+
+She sat with fixed eyes, deep in thought, for some time after Pauline
+had left her, then looked uneasily at the little gem of a watch
+dangling on its ormolu and jasper stand. A quarter to one. Violet must
+have gone to bed hours ago; unless, indeed, Violet were like her
+mother, too unhappy to be able to sleep. Mrs. Tempest was seized with a
+sudden desire to see her daughter.
+
+"How unkind of her never to come near me to say good-night, on this
+night of all others!" she thought, "What has she been doing all day, I
+wonder? Riding about the Forest, I suppose, like a wild girl, making
+friends of dogs and horses, and gipsies, and fox-cubs, and
+charcoal-burners, and all kinds of savage creatures."
+
+And then, after a pause, she asked herself, fretfully:
+
+"What will people say if my own daughter is not at my wedding?"
+
+The idea of possible slander stung her sharply. She got up and walked
+up and down the room, inwardly complaining against Providence for using
+her so badly. To have such a rebellious daughter! It was sharper than a
+serpent's tooth.
+
+The time had not been allowed to go by without some endeavour being
+made to bring Violet to a better state of feeling. That was the tone
+taken about her by Mrs. Tempest and the Vicar's wife in their
+conferences. The headstrong misguided girl was to be brought to a
+better state of mind. Mrs. Scobel tackled her, bringing all her
+diplomacy to bear, but without avail. Vixen was rock. Then Mr. Scobel
+undertook the duty, and, with all the authority of his holy office,
+called upon Violet to put aside her unchristian prejudices, and behave
+as a meek and dutiful daughter.
+
+"Is it unchristian to hate the man who has usurped my father's place?"
+Violet asked curtly.
+
+"It is unchristian to hate anyone. And you have no right to call
+Captain Winstanley a usurper. You have no reason to take your mother's
+marriage so much to heart. There is nothing sinful, or even radically
+objectionable in a second marriage; though I admit that, to my mind, a
+woman is worthier in remaining faithful to her first love; like Anna
+the prophetess, who had been a widow fourscore-and-four years. Who
+shall say that her exceptional gift of prophecy may not have been a
+reward for the purity and fidelity of her life?"
+
+Mr. Scobel's arguments were of no more effect than his wife's
+persuasion. His heart was secretly on Violet's side. He had loved the
+Squire, and he thought this marriage of Mrs. Tempest's a foolish, if
+not a shameful thing. There was no heartiness in the feeling with which
+he supervised the decoration of his pretty tittle church for the
+wedding.
+
+"If she were only awake," thought Mrs. Tempest, "I would make a last
+appeal to her feelings, late as it is. Her heart cannot be stone."
+
+She took her candle, and went through the dark silent house to Violet's
+room, and knocked gently.
+
+"Come in," said the girl's clear voice with a wakeful sound.
+
+"Ah!" thought Mrs. Tempest triumphantly, "obstinate as she is, she
+knows she is doing wrong. Conscience won't let her sleep."
+
+Vixen was standing at her window, leaning with folded arms upon the
+broad wooden ledge, looking out at the dim garden, over which the pale
+stars were shining. There was a moon, but it was hidden by drifting
+clouds.
+
+"Not in bed, Violet?" said her mother sweetly.
+
+"No, mamma."
+
+"What have you been doing all these hours?"
+
+"I don't know--thinking,"
+
+"And you never came to wish me good-night."
+
+"I did not think you would want me. I thought you would be busy
+packing--for your honeymoon."
+
+"That was not kind, Violet. You must have known that I should have many
+painful thoughts to-night."
+
+"I did not know it. And if it is so I can only say it is a pity the
+painful thoughts did not come a little sooner."
+
+"Violet, you are as hard as iron, as cold as ice!" cried Mrs. Tempest,
+with passionate fretfulness.
+
+"No, I am not, mamma; I can love very warmly, where I love deeply. I
+have given this night to thoughts of my dead father, whose place is to
+be usurped in this house from to-morrow."
+
+"I never knew anyone so obstinately unkind. I could not have believe it
+possible in my own daughter. I thought you had a good heart, Violet;
+and yet you do not mind making me intensely wretched on my wedding-day."
+
+"Why should you be wretched, mamma, because I prefer not to be present
+at your wedding? If I were there, I should be like the bad fairy at the
+princess's christening. I should look at everything with a malevolent
+eye."
+
+Mrs. Tempest flung herself into a chair and burst into tears.
+
+The storm of grief which had been brooding over her troubled mind all
+day, broke suddenly in a tempest of weeping. She could have given no
+reason for her distress; but all at once, on the eve of that day which
+was to give a new colour to her life, panic seized her, and she
+trembled at the step she was about to take.
+
+"You are very cruel to me, Violet," she sobbed. "I am a most miserable
+woman."
+
+Violet knelt beside her and gently took her hand, moved to pity by
+wretchedness so abject.
+
+"Dear mamma, why miserable?" she asked. "This thing which you are doing
+is your own choice. Or, if it is not--if you have yielded weakly to
+over-persuasion--it is not too late to draw back. No, dear mother, even
+now it is not too late. Indeed, it is not. Let us run away as soon as
+it is light, you and I, and go off to Spain, or Italy, anywhere,
+leaving a letter for Captain Winstanley, to say you have changed your
+mind. He could not do anything to us. You have a right to draw back,
+even at the last."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, Violet," cried Mrs. Tempest peevishly. "Who said
+I had changed my mind? I am as devoted to Conrad as he is to me. I
+should be a heartless wretch if I could throw him over at the last
+moment. But this has been a most agitating day. Your unkindness is
+breaking my heart."
+
+"Indeed, mamma, I have no wish to be unkind--not to you. But my
+presence at your wedding would be a lie. It would seem to give my
+approval to an act I hate. I cannot bring myself to do that."
+
+"And you will disgrace me by your absence? You do not care what people
+may say of me."
+
+"Nobody will care about my absence. You will be the queen of the day."
+
+"Everybody will care--everybody will talk. I know how malicious people
+are, even one's most intimate friends. They will say my own daughter
+turned her back upon me on my wedding-day."
+
+"They can hardly say that, when I shall be here in your house!"
+
+Mrs. Tempest went on weeping. She had reduced herself to a condition in
+which it was much easier to cry than to leave off crying. The fountain
+of her tears seemed inexhaustible.
+
+"A pretty object I shall look to-morrow!" she murmured plaintively, and
+this was all she said for some time.
+
+Violet walked up and down the room, sorely distressed, sorely
+perplexed. To see her mother's grief, and to be able to give comfort,
+and to refuse. That must be undutiful, undaughterly, rebellious. But
+had not her mother forfeited all right to her obedience? Were not their
+hearts and lives completely sundered by this marriage of to-morrow? To
+Violet's stronger nature it seemed as if she were the mother--offended,
+outraged by a child's folly and weakness. There sat the child, weeping
+piteously, yearning to be forgiven. It was a complete reversal of their
+positions.
+
+Her heart was touched by the spectacle of her mother's weakness, by the
+mute appeal of those tears.
+
+"What does it matter to me, after all, whether I am absent or present?"
+she argued at last. "I cannot prevent this man coming to take
+possession of my father's house. I cannot hinder the outrage to my
+father's memory. Mamma has been very kind to me--and I have no one else
+in the world to love."
+
+She took a few more turns, and then stopped by her mother's chair.
+
+"Will it really make you happier, mamma, if I am at your wedding?"
+
+"It will make me quite happy."
+
+"Very well then; it shall be as you please. But, remember, I shall look
+like the wicked fairy. I can't help that."
+
+"You will look lovely. Theodore has sent you home the most exquisite
+dress. Come to my room and try it on," said Mrs. Tempest, drying her
+tears, and as quickly comforted as a child who has obtained its desire
+by means of copious weeping.
+
+"No, dear mamma; not to-night, I'm too tired," sighed Violet.
+
+"Never mind, dear. Theodore always fits you to perfection. Go to bed at
+once, love. The dress will be a pleasant surprise for you in the
+morning. Good-night, pet. You have made me so happy."
+
+"I am glad of that, mamma."
+
+"I wish you were going to Scotland with us." (Vixen shuddered.) "I'm
+afraid you'll be dreadfully dull here."
+
+"No, mamma; I shall have the dogs and horses. I shall get on very well."
+
+"You are such a curious girl. Well, good-night, darling. You are my own
+Violet again."
+
+And with this they parted; Mrs. Tempest going back to her room with
+restored peace of mind.
+
+She looked at the reflection of her tear-blotted face anxiously as she
+paused before the glass.
+
+"I'm afraid I shall look an object to-morrow," she said, "The morning
+sunshine is so searching."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Vow is vowed.
+
+Only a chosen few had been bidden to Mrs. Tempest's wedding. She had
+told all her friends that she meant everything to be done very quietly.
+
+"There is so much that is saddening in my position," she said
+pensively. But she was resolved that those guests who were asked to
+lend their countenance to her espousals should be the very best people.
+
+Lord and Lady Ellangowan had been asked, and had accepted, and their
+presence alone would lend dignity to the occasion. Colonel and Mrs.
+Carteret, from Copse Hall; the Chopnells, of Chopnell Park; and about
+half-a-dozen other representative landowners and commoners made up the
+list.
+
+"There is such a satisfaction in knowing they are all the best people,"
+Mrs. Tempest said to Captain Winstanley, when they went over the list
+together.
+
+His own friends were but two, Major Pontorson, his best man, and a
+clerical cousin, with a portly figure and a portwiney nose, who was to
+assist Mr. Scobel in the marriage service.
+
+It was a very pretty wedding, the neighbourhood declared unanimously;
+despite the absence of that most attractive feature in more youthful
+bridals--a string of girlish bridesmaids. The little church at
+Beechdale was a bower of summer flowers. The Abbey House conservatories
+had been emptied--the Ellangowans had sent a waggon-load of ferns and
+exotics. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of yellow roses and
+stephanotis.
+
+Violet stood among the guests, no gleam of colour on her cheeks except
+the wavering hues reflected from the painted windows in the low Gothic
+chancel--the ruddy gold of her hair shining under the Vandyke hat with
+its sweeping azure feather. She was the loveliest thing in that crowded
+church, whither people had come from ten miles off to see Squire
+Tempest's widow married; but she had a spectral look in the faint light
+of the chancel, and seemed as strange an image at this wedding as the
+ghost of Don Ramiro at Donna Clara's bridal dance, in Heine's ghastly
+ballad.
+
+Violet did not look like the malevolent fairy in the old story, but she
+had a look and air which told everyone that this marriage was
+distasteful to her.
+
+When all was over, and the register had been signed in the vestry,
+Captain Winstanley came up to her, with both hands extended, before all
+the company.
+
+"My dear Violet, I am your father now," he said. "You shall not find me
+wanting in my duty."
+
+She drew back involuntarily; and then, seeing herself the focus of so
+many eyes, suffered him to touch the tips of her fingers.
+
+"You are very kind," she said. "A daughter can have but one father, and
+mine is dead. I hope you will be a good husband to my mother. That is
+all I can desire of you."
+
+All the best people heard this speech, which was spoken deliberately,
+in a low clear voice, and they decided inwardly that whatever kind of
+wife Captain Winstanley might have won for himself, he had found his
+match in his stepdaughter.
+
+Now came the ride to the Abbey House, which had put on a festive air,
+and where smartly-dressed servants were lending their smiles to a day
+which they all felt to be the end of a peaceful and comfortable era,
+and the beginning of an age of uncertainty. It was like that day at
+Versailles when the Third Estate adjourned to the Tennis Court, and the
+French Revolution began. People smiled, and were pleased at the new
+movement and expectancy in their lives, knowing not what was coming.
+
+"We are bound to be livelier, anyhow, with a military master," said
+Pauline.
+
+"A little more company in the house wouldn't come amiss, certainly,"
+said Mrs. Trimmer.
+
+"I should like to see our champagne cellar better stocked," remarked
+Forbes the butler. "We're behind the times in our sparkling wines."
+
+Captain Winstanley entered the old oak-panelled hall with his wife on
+his arm, and felt himself master of such a house as a man might dream
+of all his life and never attain. Money could not have bought it. Taste
+could not have created it. The mellowing hand of time, the birth and
+death of many generations, had made it beautiful.
+
+The wedding breakfast was as other wedding feasts. People ate and drank
+and made believe to be intensely glad, and drank more sparkling wine
+than was good for them at that abnormal hour, and began to feel sleepy
+before the speeches, brief as they were, had come to an end. The August
+sun shone in upon the banquet, the creams and jellies languished and
+collapsed in the sultry air. The wedding-cake was felt to be a
+nuisance. The cracker-cake exploded faintly in the languid hands of the
+younger guests, and those ridiculous mottoes, which could hardly amuse
+anyone out of Earlswood Asylum, were looked at a shade more
+contemptuously than usual. The weather was too warm for enthusiasm. And
+Violet's pale set face was almost as disheartening as the skeleton at
+an Egyptian banquet. When Mrs. Tempest retired to put on her
+travelling-dress Violet went with her, a filial attention the mother
+had in no wise expected.
+
+"Dear girl," she said, squeezing her daughter's hand, "to-day is not to
+make the slightest difference."
+
+"I hope not, mamma," answered Violet gravely; "but one can never tell
+what is in the future. God grant you may be happy!"
+
+"I'm sure it will be my own fault if I am not happy with Conrad," said
+the wife of an hour, "and oh, Violet! my constant prayer will be to see
+you more attached to him."
+
+Violet made no reply, and here happily Pauline brought the
+fawn-coloured travelling-dress, embroidered with poppies and
+cornflowers in their natural colours, after the style of South
+Kensington, a dress so distractingly lovely that it instantly put an
+end to serious conversation. The whole costume had been carefully
+thought out, a fawn-coloured parasol, edged with ostrich feathers, a
+fawn-coloured bonnet, fawn-coloured Hessian boots, fawn-coloured
+Swedish gloves with ten buttons--all prepared for the edification of
+railway guards and porters, and Scotch innkeepers and their
+_valetaille_.
+
+Verily there are some games which seem hardly worth the candle that
+lights the players. And there was once upon a time an eccentric
+nobleman who was accounted maddest in that he made his wife dress
+herself from head to foot in one colour. Other times, other manners.
+
+Violet stayed with her mother to the last, receiving the last
+embrace--a fond and tearful one--and watched the carriage drive away
+from the porch amidst a shower of rice. And then all was over. The best
+people were bidding her a kindly good-bye. Carriages drove up quickly,
+and in a quarter of an hour everyone was gone except the Vicar and his
+wife. Vixen found herself standing between Mr. and Mrs. Scobel, looking
+blankly at the hearth, where an artistic group of ferns and scarlet
+geraniums replaced the friendly winter fire.
+
+"Come and spend the evening with us, dear," said Mrs. Scobel kindly;
+"it will be so lonely for you here."
+
+But Violet pleaded a headache, a plea which was confirmed by her pale
+cheeks and the dark rings round her eyes.
+
+"I shall be better at home," she said. "I'll come and see you in a day
+or two, if I may."
+
+"Come whenever you like, dear. I wish you would come and stay with us
+altogether. Ignatius and I have been so pleased with your conduct
+to-day; and we have felt for you deeply, knowing what a conquest you
+have made over yourself."
+
+The Reverend Ignatius murmured his acquiescence.
+
+"Poor mamma!" sighed Violet, "I am afraid I have been very unkind."
+
+And then she looked absently round the old familiar hall, and her eye
+lighted on the Squire's favourite chair, which still stood in its place
+by the hearth. Her eyes filled with sudden tears. She fancied she could
+see a shadowy figure sitting there. The Squire in his red coat, his
+long hunting whip across his knee, his honest loving face smiling at
+her.
+
+She squeezed Mrs. Scobel's friendly hand, bade her and the Vicar a
+hurried good-bye, and ran out of the room, leaving them looking after
+her pityingly.
+
+"Poor girl," said the Vicar's wife, "how keenly she feels it!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed the Vicar, "I have never been in favour of second
+marriages. I can but think with St. Paul that the widow is happy if she
+so abide."
+
+Vixen called Argus and went up to her room, followed by that faithful
+companion. When she had shut and locked the door, she flung herself on
+the ground, regardless of Madame Theodore's masterpiece, and clasped
+her arms round the dog's thick neck, and buried her face in his soft
+hide.
+
+"Oh, Argus, I have not a friend in the world but you!" she sobbed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+War to the Knife.
+
+A strange stillness came upon the Abbey House after Mrs. Tempest's
+wedding. Violet received a few invitations and morning calls from
+friends who pitied her solitude; but the best people were for the most
+part away from home in August and Septernber; some no farther than
+Bournemouth or Weymouth; others roaming the mountainous districts of
+Europe in search of the picturesque or the fashionable.
+
+Violet did not want society. She made excuses for refusing all
+invitations. The solitude of her life did not afflict her. If it could
+have continued for ever, if Captain Winstanley and her mother could
+have wandered about the earth, and left her in peaceful possession of
+the Abbey House, with the old servants, old horses, old dogs, all
+things undisturbed as in her father's time, she would have been happy.
+It was the idea of change, a new and upstart master in her father's
+place, which tortured her. Any delay which kept off that evil hour was
+a blessed relief; but alas! the evil hour was close at hand,
+inevitable. That autumn proved exceptionally fine. Scotland cast aside
+her mantle of mist and cloud, and dressed herself in sunshine. The
+Trosachs blossomed as the rose. Gloomy gray glens and mountains put on
+an apparel of light. Mrs. Tempest wrote her daughter rapturous letters
+about the tour.
+
+
+"We move about very slowly," she said, "so as not to fatigue me.
+Conrad's attention is more than words can describe. I can see that even
+the waiters are touched by it. He telegraphs beforehand to all the
+hotels, so that we have always the best rooms. He thinks nothing too
+good for me. It is quite saddening to see a herd of travellers sent
+away, houseless, every evening. The fine weather is bringing crowds to
+the Highlands. We could not have travelled at a more favourable time.
+We have had only a few showers, but in one, on Loch Katrine, my poor
+fawn-coloured dress suffered. The scarlet of the poppies ran into the
+blue of the cornflowers. Is it not a pity? I was quite unconscious of
+what was going on at the time; and afterwards, when I discovered it, I
+could have shed tears.
+
+"I hope when you marry, darling, you will come to Scotland for your
+honeymoon. The mountains seem to appeal to one's highest feelings.
+There are ponies, too, for the ascent; which is a great comfort if one
+is wearing pretty boots. And you know, Violet, my idea that a woman
+should be essentially feminine in every detail. I never could bring
+myself to wear the horrid clump-soles which some women delight in. They
+seem to me to indicate that strong-minded and masculine character which
+I detest. Such women would want the suffrage, and to have the learned
+professions thrown open to them. I meet ladies or, at least, persons
+calling themselves such--in horrid waterproof costumes and with coarse
+cloth hats. Hideousness could go no farther. And though I regret the
+wreck of my fawn-colour, I can but remember with satisfaction what
+Theodore always says to me when she shows me one of her
+_chef-d'oeuvres:_ 'Mrs. Tempest, it is a dress fit for a _lady_.' There
+are ill-natured people who declare that Theodore began life as
+kitchen-maid in an Irish inn, but I, for one, will never believe it.
+Such taste as hers indicates a refined progeniture."
+
+
+With such letters as these did Mrs. Winstanley comfort her absent
+daughter. Vixen replied as best she might, with scraps of news about
+the neighbours, rich and poor, the dogs, horses, and gardens. It was
+hateful to her to have to direct her letters to Mrs. Winstanley.
+
+The days went on. Vixen rode from early morning till noon, and rambled
+in the Forest for the best part of the afternoon. She used to take her
+books there, and sit for hours reading on a mossy bank under one of the
+boughy beeches, with Argus at her feet. The dog was company enough for
+her. She wanted no one better. At home the old servants were more or
+less--their faces always pleasant to see. Some of them had lived with
+her grandfather; most of them had served her father from the time he
+had inherited his estate. The Squire had been the most conservative and
+indulgent of masters; always liking to see the old faces. The butler
+was old, and even on his underling's bullet-head the gray hairs were
+beginning to show. Mrs. Trimmer was at least sixty, and had been
+getting annually bulkier for the last twenty years. The kitchen-maid
+was a comfortable-looking person of forty. There was an atmosphere of
+domestic peace in the offices of the Abbey House which made everybody
+fat. It was only by watchfulness and tight-lacing that Pauline
+preserved to herself that grace of outline which she spoke of in a
+general way as "figure."
+
+"And what a mite of a waist I had when I first went out to service,"
+she would say pathetically.
+
+But Pauline was now in Scotland, harassed by unceasing cares about
+travelling-bags, bonnet-boxes, and extra wraps, and under-valuing Ben
+Nevis as not worth half the trouble that was taken to go and look at
+him.
+
+The gardeners were gray-headed, and remembered potting the first
+fuchsia-slips that ever came to the Forest. They had no gusto for
+new-fangled ideas about cordon fruit-trees or root-pruning. They liked
+to go their own way, as their fathers and grandfathers had done before
+them; and, with unlimited supplies of manure, they were able to produce
+excellent cucumbers by the first of May, or a fair dish of asparagus by
+about the same time. If their produce was late it was because nature
+went against them. They could not command the winds, or tell the sun
+that he must shine. The gardens at the Abbey House were beautiful, but
+nature had done more for them than the Squire's old gardeners. The same
+rose-trees budded and bloomed year after year; the same rhododendrons
+and azaleas opened their big bunches of bloom. Eden could have hardly
+owed less to culture. The noble old cedars, the mediaeval yews, needed
+no gardener's hand. There was a good deal of weeding, and mowing, and
+rolling done from week's end to week's end; and the borders were
+beautified by banks of geranium and golden calceolaria, and a few other
+old-fashioned flowers; but scientific horticulture there was none. Some
+alterations had been begun under Captain Winstanley's directions; but
+the work languished in his absence.
+
+It was the twentieth of September, and the travellers were expected to
+return within a few days--the exact date of their arrival not being
+announced. The weather was glorious, warmer than it had been all
+through the summer; and Vixen spent her life out of doors. Sad thoughts
+haunted her less cruelly in the great wood. There was a brightness and
+life in the Forest which cheered her. It was pleasant to see Argus's
+enjoyment of the fair weather; his wild rushes in among the underwood;
+his pursuit of invisible vermin under the thick holly-bushes, the
+brambles, and bracken; his rapturous rolling in the dewy grass, where
+he flung himself at full length, and rolled over and over, and leaped
+as if he had been revelling in a bath of freshest water; pleasant to
+see him race up to a serious-minded hog, and scrutinise that stolid
+animal closely, and then leave him to his sordid researches after
+edible roots, with open contempt, as who should say: "Can the same
+scheme of creation include me and that vulgar brute?"
+
+All things had been set in order for the return of the newly-married
+couple. Mrs. Trimmer had her dinner arranged and ready to be put in
+hand at a moment's notice. Violet felt that the end of her peaceful
+life was very near. How would she bear the change? How would she be
+able to behave herself decently? Well, she would try her best, Heaven
+giving her strength. That was her last resolve. She would not make the
+poor frivolous mother unhappy.
+
+"Forgive me, beloved father, if I am civil to the usurper." she said.
+"It will be for my mother's sake. You were always tender and indulgent
+to her; you would not like to see her unhappy."
+
+These were Vixen's thoughts this bright September morning, as she sat
+at her lonely little breakfast-table in the sunny window of her den,
+with Argus by her side, intensely watchful of every morsel of
+bread-and-butter she ate, though he had already been accommodated with
+half the loaf.
+
+She was more amiably disposed than usual this morning. She had made up
+her mind to make the best of a painful position.
+
+"I shall always hate him," she told herself, meaning Captain
+Winstanley; "but I will begin a career of Christianlike hypocrisy, and
+try to make other people believe that I like him. No, Argus," as the
+big paw tugged her arm pleadingly, "no; now really this is sheer
+greediness. You can't be hungry."
+
+A piteous whine, as of a dog on the brink of starvation, seemed to
+gainsay her. Just then the door opened, and the middle-aged footman
+entered.
+
+"Oh, if you please, miss, Bates says would you like to see Bullfinch?"
+
+"To see Bullfinch," echoed Vixen. "What's the matter? Is he ill? Is he
+hurt?"
+
+"No, miss; but Bates thought as how maybe you'd like to see 'un before
+he goes away. He's sold."
+
+Vixen turned very pale. She started up, and stood for a few moments
+silent, with her strong young hands clenched, just as she gripped them
+on the reins sometimes when Arion was running away with her and there
+were bogs in front.
+
+"I'll come," she said in a half-suffocated voice.
+
+"He has sold my father's horse, after all," she said to herself, as she
+went towards the stables. "Then I shall hate him openly all my life.
+Yes, everybody shall know that I hate him."
+
+She found the stables in some commotion. There were two strangers,
+groomy-looking men, standing in front of Bullfinch's loose-box, and all
+the stablemen had come out of their various holes, and were standing
+about.
+
+Bates looked grave and indignant.
+
+"There isn't a finer horse in the county," he muttered; "it's a shame
+to send him out of it."
+
+Vixen walked straight up to the strange men, who touched their caps,
+and looked at her admiringly; her dark blue cloth dress fitted her like
+a riding-habit, her long white throat was bare, her linen collar tied
+loosely with a black ribbon, her chestnut hair wound into a crown of
+plaits at the top of her head. The severe simplicity of her dress set
+off her fresh young beauty.
+
+"She's the prettiest chestnut filly I've seen for a long time." one of
+the grooms said of her afterwards. "Thoroughbred to the tips of her
+ears."
+
+"Who has bought this horse?" she asked authoritatively.
+
+"My master, Lord Mallow, miss," answered the superior of the men. "You
+needn't be anxious about him; he'll have a rare good home."
+
+"Will you let me see the order for taking him away?"
+
+"Your groom has got it, miss."
+
+Bates showed her a sheet of paper on which Captain Winstanley had
+written:
+
+
+"Trosachs Hotel, September 12.
+
+"The bay horse, Bullfinch, is to be delivered, with clothing, &c., to
+Lord Mallow's groom.
+
+"C. WINSTANLEY."
+
+
+Vixen perused this paper with a countenance full of suppressed rage.
+
+"Does your master give much money for this horse?" she asked, turning
+to the strange groom.
+
+"I haven't heard how much, miss." Of course the man knew the sum to a
+penny. "But I believe it's a tidyish lot."
+
+"I don't suppose I have as much money in the world," said Vixen, "or
+I'd buy my father's horse of Captain Winstanley, since he is so badly
+in want of money, and keep him at a farm."
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss," said the groom, "but the hoss is sold. My
+master has paid his money. He is a friend of Captain Winstanley's. They
+met somewhere in Scotland the other day and my lord bought the hoss on
+hearsay; and I must say I don't think he'll be disappointed in him."
+
+"Where are you going to take him?"
+
+"Well, it's rather an awkward journey across country. We're going to
+Melton. My lord is going to hunt the hoss in October, if he turns out
+to my lord's satisfaction."
+
+"You are going to take him by rail?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"He has never been by rail in his life. It will kill him!" cried Vixen,
+alarmed.
+
+"Oh no it won't, miss. Don't be frightened about him. We shall have a
+padded box, and everything tip-top. He'll be as snug and as tight as a
+sardine in its case. We'll get him to Leicestershire as fresh as paint."
+
+Vixen went into the loose-box, where Bullfinch, all regardless of his
+doom, was idly munching a mouthful of upland meadow hay. She pulled
+down his noble head, and laid her cheek against his broad forehead, and
+let her tears rain on him unheeded. There was no one to see her in that
+dusky loose-box. The grooms were clustered at the stable-door, talking
+together. She was free to linger over her parting with the horse that
+her father had loved. She wound her arms about his arched neck, and
+kissed his velvet nose.
+
+"Oh, Bullfinch, have you a memory? Will you be sorry to find yourself
+in a strange stable?" she asked, looking into the animal's full soft
+eyes with a pathetic earnestness in her own.
+
+She dried her tears presently; she was not going to make herself a
+spectacle for the scornful pity of stablemen. She came out of the
+loose-box with a serene countenance, and went up to Lord Mallow's
+groom. "Please be kind to him," she said, dropping a sovereign into the
+man's ready hand.
+
+"No fear of that, miss," he said; "there are very few Christians that
+have as good a time of it as our hosses."
+
+That sovereign, taken in conjunction with the donor's beauty, quite
+vanquished Lord Mallow's stud-groom, and very nearly bought Violet
+Tempest a coronet.
+
+Bullfinch was led out presently, looking like a king; but Violet did
+not stop to see him go away. She could hardly have borne that. She ran
+back to the house, put on her hat and jacket, called Argus, and set out
+for along ramble, to walk down, if possible, the angry devil within her.
+
+No; this she would never forgive--this sale of her father's favourite
+horse. It was as if some creature of her own flesh and blood had been
+sold into slavery. Her mother was rich, would squander hundreds on fine
+dresses, and would allow her dead husband's horse to be sold.
+
+"Is Captain Winstanley such a tyrant that mamma can not prevent this
+shameful thing?" she asked herself. "She talks about his attention, his
+devotion, as if he were at her feet; and yet she suffers him to
+disgrace her by this unparalleled meanness!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+At the Kennels.
+
+It was a fresh sunny morning, a soft west wind blowing up all the
+sweetness of the woods and leas. The cattle were grouped in lazy
+stillness on the dewy grass; the year's pigs, grown to the hobbledehoy
+stage of existence, were grubbing about contentedly among the
+furze-bushes; by the roadside, a matronly sow lay stretched flat upon
+her side in the sunshine, just where carriage-wheels must pass over her
+were carriages frequent in those parts.
+
+Even the brightness of the morning had no charm for Vixen. There was no
+delight for her in the green solemnity of the forest glades, where the
+beechen pillars led the eye away into innumerable vistas, each grandly
+mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through
+dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear
+as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest stream,
+rippling over its pebbly bed, made a tender music that was wont to seem
+passing sweet to Violet Tempest's ear. To-day she heard nothing, saw
+nothing. Her brain was clouded with angry thoughts.
+
+She left the Forest by-and-by, following one of the familiar
+cart-tracks, and came out into the peaceful little colony of Beechdale,
+where it was a chance if the noonday traveller saw anything alive
+except a youthful family of pigs enjoying an oasis of mud in a dry
+land, or an intrusive dog rushing out of a cottage to salute the
+wayfarer with an inquiring bark. The children were still in school. The
+hum of their voices was wafted from the open windows. The church door
+stood open. The village graves upon the sunward-fronting slope were
+bright with common flowers; the dead lying with their feet to the west,
+ready to stand up and see their Lord at the resurrection morning.
+
+Vixen hurried through the little village, not wanting to see Mrs.
+Scobel, or anyone she knew, this morning. There was a long rustic lane
+opposite the church, that led straight to the kennels.
+
+"I will go and see the foxhounds," said Vixen. "They are true and
+faithful. But perhaps all those I love best have been sold, or are dead
+by this time."
+
+It seemed to her ages since she had been to the kennels with her
+father. It had been his favourite walk, out of the hunting season, and
+he had rarely suffered a week to pass without making his visit of
+inspection. Since her return Violet had carefully avoided the
+well-known spot; but to-day, out of the very bitterness of her heart,
+came a desire to renew past associations. Bullfinch was gone for ever,
+but the hounds at least remained; and her father had loved them almost
+as well as he had loved Bullfinch.
+
+Nothing was changed at the kennels. The same feeder in corduroy and
+fustian came out of the cooking-house when Vixen opened the five-barred
+gate. The same groom was lounging in front of the stables, where the
+horses were kept for the huntsman and his underlings. The whole place
+had the same slumberous out-of-season look she remembered so well of
+old in the days when hunting was over.
+
+The men touched their caps to Miss Tempest as she passed them. She went
+straight to the kennels. There were the three wooden doors, opening
+into three square stone-paved yards, each door provided with a small
+round eye-hole, through which the authorities might scrutinise the
+assembly within. A loud yelping arose as Vixen's footsteps drew near.
+Then there were frantic snuffings under the doors, and a general
+agitation. She looked through the little eye-hole into the middle yard.
+Yes; there they were, fourteen or fifteen couple, tumultuously excited,
+as if they knew she was there: white and black and tan, pointed noses,
+beautiful intelligent eyes, bright tan spots upon marked brows, some
+with a streak of white running down the long sharp noses, some heavy in
+the jowl, some with muzzles sharp as a greyhound's, thirty tails erect
+and agitated.
+
+The feeder remembered Miss Tempest perfectly, though it was more than
+three years since her last visit.
+
+"Would you like to go in and see 'em, miss?" he said.
+
+"Yes, if you please, Dawson. You have Gauntlet still, I see. That is
+Gauntlet, isn't it? And Dart, and Juno, and Ringlet, and Artful?"
+
+"Yes, miss. There ain't many gone since you was here. But there's a lot
+o' poppies. You'd like to see the poppies, wouldn't you, miss? They be
+in the next kennel, if you'll just wait five minutes."
+
+Cleanliness was the order of the day at the kennels, but to do the late
+master's daughter more honour, Dawson the feeder called a
+bright-looking lad, his subordinate, and divers pails of water were
+fetched, and the three little yards washed out vigorously before Miss
+Tempest was invited to enter. When she did go in, the yard was empty
+and clean as a new pin. The hounds had been sent into their house,
+where they were all grouped picturesquely on a bench littered with
+straw, looking as grave as a human parliament, and much wiser. Nothing
+could be more beautiful than their attitudes, or more intelligent than
+their countenances.
+
+Vixen looked in at them through the barred window.
+
+"Dear things," she exclaimed; "they are as lovely as ever. How fond
+papa was of them."
+
+And then the kennel-huntsman, who had appeared on the scene by this
+time, opened the door and smacked his whip; and the fifteen couple came
+leaping helter-skelter out into the little yard, and made a rush at
+Vixen, and surrounded her, and fawned upon her, and caressed her as if
+their recognition of her after long years was perfect, and as if they
+had been breaking their hearts for her in the interval. Perhaps they
+would have been just as affectionate to the next comer, having a large
+surplus stock of love always on hand ready to be lavished on the human
+race; but Vixen took these demonstrations as expressive of a peculiar
+attachment, and was moved to tears by the warmth of this canine
+greeting.
+
+"Thank God! there are some living things that love me," she exclaimed.
+
+"Something that loves you!" cried a voice from the door of the yard.
+"Does not everything noble or worthy love you, as it loves all that is
+beautiful?"
+
+Turning quickly, with a scared look, Violet saw Roderick Vawdrey
+standing in the doorway.
+
+He stood quietly watching her, his dark eyes softened with a look of
+tender admiration. There could hardly have been a prettier picture than
+the tall girlish figure and bright chestnut head, the fair face bending
+over the upturned noses of the hounds as they clustered round her, some
+standing up with their strong white paws upon her shoulder, some
+nestling at her knees. Her hat had fallen off, and was being trampled
+under a multitude of restless feet.
+
+Rorie came into the little yard. The huntsman cracked his whip, and the
+hounds went tumbling one over the other into their house, where they
+leaped upon their straw bed, and grouped themselves as if they had been
+sitting for their portraits to Sir Edwin Landseer. Two inquisitive
+fellows stood up with their paws upon the ledge of the barred window,
+and looked out at Violet and the new master.
+
+"I did not know you were at Briarwood," she said, as they shook hands.
+
+"I only came home last night. My first visit was naturally here. I
+wanted to see if everything was in good order."
+
+"When do you begin to hunt?"
+
+"On the first of October. You are going to be amongst us this year, of
+course."
+
+"No. I have never followed the hounds since papa's death. I don't
+suppose I ever shall again."
+
+"What, not with your stepfather?"
+
+"Certainly not with Captain Winstanley."
+
+"Then you must marry a hunting-man," said Rorie gaily. "We can't afford
+to lose the straightest rider in the Forest."
+
+"I am not particularly in love with hunting--for a woman. There seems
+something bloodthirsty in it. And Bates says that if ladies only knew
+how their horses' backs get wrung in the hunting season, they would
+hardly have the heart to hunt. It was very nice to ride by papa's side
+when I was a little girl. I would have gone anywhere with him--through
+an Indian jungle after tigers--but I don't care about it now."
+
+"Well, perhaps you are right; though I should hardly have expected such
+mature wisdom from my old playfellow, whose flowing locks used once to
+be the cynosure of the hunting-field. And now, Violet--I may call you
+Violet, may I not, as I did in the old days?--at least, when I did not
+call you Vixen."
+
+"That was papa's name," she said quickly. "Nobody ever calls me that
+now."
+
+"I understand; I am to call you Violet. And we are to be good friends
+always, are we not, with a true and loyal friendship?"
+
+"I have not so many friends that I can afford to give up one who is
+stanch and true," answered Violet sadly.
+
+"And I mean to be stanch and true, believe me; and I hope, by-and-by,
+when you come to know Mabel, you and she will be fast friends. You may
+not cotton to her very easily at first, because, you see, she reads
+Greek, and goes in for natural science, and has a good many queer ways.
+But she is all that is pure-minded and noble. She has been brought up
+in an atmosphere of adulation, and that has made her a little
+self-opinionated. It is the only fault she has."
+
+"I shall be very glad if she will let me like her," Violet said meekly.
+
+They had strolled away from the kennels into the surrounding forest,
+where the free horses of the soil were roaming from pasture to pasture,
+and a few vagabond pigs were stealing a march on their brethren, for
+whom the joys of pannage-time had not yet begun. They walked along
+idly, following a cart-track that led into the woody deeps where the
+earliest autumn leaves were dropping gently in the soft west wind.
+By-and-by they came to a fallen oak, lying by the side of the track,
+ready for barking, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to
+sit down side by side on this rustic seat, and talk of days gone by,
+lazily watching the flickering shadows and darting sunrays in the
+opposite thicket, or along the slanting stretch of open turf--that
+smooth emerald grass, so inviting to the eye, so perilous to the foot
+of man or beast.
+
+"And now, Violet, tell me all about yourself, and about this second
+marriage of your mother's," Roderick began earnestly; "I hope you have
+quite reconciled yourself to the idea of it by this time."
+
+"I have not reconciled myself; I never shall," answered Violet, with
+restrained anger. "I know that mamma has heaped up sorrow for herself
+in the days to come, and I pity her too much to be angry with her. Yes;
+I, who ought to look up to and respect my mother, can only look down
+upon her and pity her. That is a hard thing, is it not, Rorie? She has
+married a bad man--mean, and false--and tyrannical. Shall I tell you
+what he has done within these last few days?"
+
+"Do. I hope it is not anything very bad."
+
+Violet told how Bullfinch had been sold.
+
+"It looks mean, certainly," said Mr. Vawdrey; "but I daresay to Captain
+Winstanley, as a man of the world, it might seem a foolish thing to
+keep a horse nobody rode; especially such a valuable horse as
+Bullfinch. Your father gave two hundred and fifty for him at Andover, I
+remember. And you really have too many horses at the Abbey House."
+
+"Arion will be the next to be sold, I daresay."
+
+"Oh, no, no. He could not be such an insolent scoundrel as to sell your
+horse. That would be too much. Besides, you will be of age in a year or
+two, and your own mistress."
+
+"I shall not be of age for the next seven years. I am not to come of
+age till I am five-and-twenty."
+
+"Phew!" whistled Rorie, "That's a long shot off. How is that?"
+
+"Papa left it so in his will. It was his care of me, no doubt. He never
+would have believed that mamma would marry again."
+
+"And for the next seven years you are to be in a state of tutelage,
+dependent on your mother for everything?"
+
+"For everything. And that will really mean dependent upon Captain
+Winstanley; because I am very sure that as long as he lets mamma wear
+pretty dresses and drink orange pekoe out of old china, she will be
+quite contented to let him be master of everything else."
+
+"But if you were to marry----"
+
+"I suppose that would entangle or disentangle matters somehow. But I am
+not likely to marry."
+
+"I don't see that," said Rorie. "I should think nothing was more
+likely."
+
+"Allow me to be the best judge of my own business," exclaimed Vixen,
+looking desperately angry. "I will go so far as to say that I never
+shall marry."
+
+"Oh, very well, if you insist upon it, let it be understood so. And
+now, Vix----Violet, don't you think if you could bring yourself to
+conciliate Captain Winstanley--to resign yourself, in fact, to the
+inevitable, and take things pleasantly, it would make your life happier
+for the next seven years? I really would try to do it, if I were you."
+
+"I had made up my mind to an existence of hypocrisy before he sold
+Bullfinch," replied Vixen, "but now I shall hate him frankly."
+
+"But, Violet, don't you see that unless you can bring yourself to live
+pleasantly with that man your life will be made miserable? Fate
+condemns you to live under the same roof with him."
+
+"I am not sure about that. I could go out as a governess. I am not at
+all clever, but I think I could teach as much as would be good value
+for twenty pounds a year; or at the worst I might give my services in
+exchange for a comfortable home, as the advertisements say. How I wish
+I could read Greek and play Chopin, like Lady Mabel Ashbourne. I'll
+write to dear old McCroke, and ask her to get me a place."
+
+"My dear Violet, how can you talk so absurdly. You, the future mistress
+of the Abbey House--you, with your youth and beauty and high spirit--to
+go meandering about the world teaching buttermen's or tea-dealers'
+children to spell B a, ba, and A b, ab?"
+
+"It might be better than sitting at meat with a man I detest," said
+Vixen. "Am I to value the flesh-pots of Egypt more than my liberty and
+independence of mind?"
+
+"You have your mother to think of," urged Roderick. "You owe duty and
+obedience to her, even if she has offended you by this foolish
+marriage. If you have so bad an opinion of Captain Winstanley, you are
+all the more bound to stand by your mother."
+
+"That is an argument worth listening to," said Vixen. "It might be
+cruel to leave poor mamma quite at his mercy. I don't suppose he would
+actually ill-treat her. He knows his own interest too well for that. He
+would not lock her up in a cellar, or beat, or starve her. He will be
+content with making himself her master. She will have no more will of
+her own than if she were a prettily dressed doll placed at the head of
+the table for show. She will be lulled into a state of childish bliss,
+and go smiling through life, believing she has not a wish ungratified.
+Everybody will think her the happiest of women, and Captain Winstanley
+the best of husbands."
+
+Vixen said all this with prophetic earnestness, looking straight
+forward into the green glade before her, where the beech-nuts and
+acorns were dropping in a gentle rain of plenty.
+
+"I hope things won't be quite so bad as you anticipate. I hope you will
+be able to make yourself happy, in spite of Captain Winstanley. And we
+shall see each other pretty often, I hope, Violet, as we used in old
+times. The Dovedales are at Wiesbaden; the Duke only holds existence on
+the condition of deluging himself with German waters once a year; but
+they are to be back early in November. I shall make the Duchess call on
+Mrs. Winstanley directly she returns."
+
+"Thanks; mamma will be very pleased. I wonder you are not with them."
+
+"Oh, I had to begin my duties as M. F. H. I wouldn't have been away for
+the world."
+
+Violet looked at her watch. It was a good deal later than she had
+supposed. Time goes quickly when one is talking over a new grievance
+with an old friend. She was a long way from the Abbey House.
+
+"I must go home," she said; "mamma and Captain Winstanley may arrive at
+any moment. There is no time named in mamma's last telegram; she said
+only that they are moving gently homewards."
+
+"Let us go then," said Rorie, rising from his rugged seat.
+
+"But I am not going to take you out of your way. Every step of my
+journey home takes you further from Briarwood."
+
+"Never mind if it does. I mean to walk to the Abbey House with you. I
+daresay, if I were very tired, Bates would lend me a mount home."
+
+"You can have Arion, if you like."
+
+"No, thanks. Arion shall not have my thirteen stone; I want a little
+more timber under me."
+
+"You ought to have had Bullfinch," said Vixen regretfully.
+
+"I would have had him, if I had known he was in the market. The writing
+of a figure or so more or less on a cheque should not have hindered me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A Bad Beginning.
+
+That walk through the Forest was very pleasant to Violet. It was a day
+on which mere existence was a privilege; and now that her spirits had
+been soothed by her confidential talk with Rorie, Vixen could enjoy
+those sights and sounds and sweet wild scents of the woodland that had
+ever been a rapture to her.
+
+This Forest-born girl loved her native woods as Wordsworth loved his
+lakes and mountains, as Byron loved the bleak bare landscape round the
+city of Aberdeen. Their poetry and beauty filled her heart with a deep
+contentment. To walk or ride alone through pathless forest glades, or
+in the scented darkness of fir plantations, was enough for happiness.
+But it was comforting to-day--on this day when her heart had been so
+cruelly wounded--to have Roderick Vawdrey by her side. It was like a
+leaf out of the closed volume of the past.
+
+They talked freely and happily during that long homewards walk, and
+their conversation was chiefly of bygone days. Almost every speech
+began with "Do you remember?" Vixen was gayer than she had been for a
+long time, save once or twice, when a pang shot through her heart at
+the idea that Bullfinch was being shaken about in a railway-box,
+oscillating helplessly with every vibration of the train, and
+panic-stricken in every tunnel.
+
+The sun had declined from his meridian; he had put on his sober
+afternoon glory, and was sending shafts of mellower gold along the
+green forest aisles, when Miss Tempest and her companion drew near the
+Abbey House. They went in at the gate by the keeper's cottage, the gate
+which Titmouse had jumped so often in the days when he carried his
+childish mistress. They went through the wood of rhododendrons, and
+past the old archway leading to the stables, and round by the shrubbery
+to the porch. The door stood open as usual, and the Squire's old
+pointer was lying on the threshold; but within all was commotion.
+Dress-baskets, hat-cases, bonnet-boxes, gun-cases, travelling-bags,
+carriage-rugs, were lying about in every direction. Mrs. Winstanley was
+leaning back in the large chair by the fireplace, fanning herself with
+her big black fan; Pauline was standing by in attendance; and the
+silver tray, with the Swansee tea-set, was being brought in by Forbes
+the butler, whose honest old face wore a troubled aspect.
+
+Captain Winstanley was standing with his back to the hearth, his
+countenance and whole figure wearing the unmistakable air of the master
+of a house who has returned to his domicile in an execrable temper.
+
+Violet ran to Mrs. Winstanley, every other thought forgotten in the
+pleasure of seeing her mother again. These three weeks were the longest
+parting mother and daughter had ever known; and after all, blood is
+thicker than water; and there is a natural leaning in a child's mind
+even to the weakest of parents.
+
+Mr. Vawdrey stood in the background, waiting till those affectionate
+greetings natural to such an occasion should be over.
+
+But to his surprise there were no such greetings. Mrs. Winstanley went
+on fanning herself vehemently, with a vexed expression of countenance,
+while Violet bent over and kissed her. Captain Winstanley swayed
+himself slowly backwards and forwards upon the heels of his boots, and
+whistled to himself sotto voce, with his eyes fixed upon some lofty
+region of empty air. He vouchsafed not the faintest notice of his
+stepdaughter or Mr. Vawdrey.
+
+"It's really too bad of you, Violet," the mother exclaimed at last.
+
+"Dear mamma," cried Vixen, in blank amazement, "what have I done?"
+
+"To go roaming about the country," pursued Mrs. Winstanley plaintively,
+"for hours at a stretch, nobody knowing where to find you or what had
+become of you. And my telegram lying there unattended to."
+
+"Did you telegraph, mamma?"
+
+"Did I telegraph? Should I come home without telegraphing? Should I be
+so mad as to expose myself knowingly to the outrage which has been
+offered to me to-day?"
+
+"Dearest mamma, you alarm me. What has happened?"
+
+"One of the deepest humiliations I ever had to endure. But you were
+roaming about the Forest. You were following the instincts of your wild
+nature. What do you care for my mortification? If I had telegraphed to
+my housekeeper, it would not have happened. But I trusted in my
+daughter."
+
+"Dear mamma," pleaded Vixen, looking anxious and bewildered, "if you
+would only explain. You make me miserable. What has happened?"
+
+"Violet, your stepfather and I had to drive home from the station in a
+fly!"
+
+"Oh, mamma!" cried Vixen, with a gasp. "Is that all?"
+
+"Is that all? Do you think that is not enough? Do you understand,
+child?--a fly--a common innkeeper's fly--that anybody may have for
+half-a-guinea; a fly with a mouldy lining, smelling of--other people!
+And on such an occasion, when every eye was upon us! No; I was never so
+degraded. And we had to wait--yes, a quarter of an hour, at least, and
+it seemed ages, while Pycroft's fly was got ready for us; yes, while a
+rough forest pony was dragged out of his wretched stable, and a man,
+whose face had not been washed for a week, shuffled himself into an old
+coachman's coat. And there were all the porters staring at me, and
+laughing inwardly, I know. And, as a last drop in the cup, Colonel
+Carteret drove up in his phaeton to catch the up-train just as we were
+getting into that disgraceful looking vehicle, and would stop to shake
+hands with us both, and insisted upon handing me into the horrid thing."
+
+"Dear mamma, I am more sorry than I can say," said Vixen gently; "but I
+was afraid it was something much worse."
+
+"Nothing could be worse, Vixen."
+
+"Then the telegram was to order the carriage to meet you, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course. We telegraphed from the Grosvenor at nine o'clock this
+morning. Who would imagine that you would be out of doors at such an
+hour?"
+
+"I am not often out so early. But something happened this morning to
+put me out of temper, and I went for a ramble."
+
+"A ramble lasting from ten in the morning till half-past four in the
+afternoon," remarked Captain Winstanley, with his gaze still fixed upon
+empty space. "Rather a long walk for a solitary young lady."
+
+Vixen appeared unconscious that anyone had spoken. Roderick Vawdrey
+felt a burning desire to kick the new master of the Abbey House.
+
+"Shall I pour out your tea, mamma?" asked Vixen meekly.
+
+"If you like. I am utterly prostrate. To have no carriage to meet me on
+such an occasion! I daresay everybody in the Forest knows all about it
+by this time. When I came home from my honeymoon with your poor papa,
+the joy-bells rang all the afternoon, and the road was lined with
+people waiting to get a glimpse of us, and there were floral arches----"
+
+"Ah, mamma, those things cannot happen twice in a lifetime," said
+Vixen, with irrepressible bitterness. "One happy marriage is as much as
+any woman can expect."
+
+"A woman has the right to expect her own carriage," said Captain
+Winstanley.
+
+"I am afraid I have paid my visit at rather at unfortunate moment,"
+said Roderick, coming forward and addressing himself solely to Mrs.
+Winstanley; "but I could not go without saying How do you do? I hope
+you had a pleasant journey from Scotland--bar the fly."
+
+"How do you do, Roderick? Yes; it was all pleasant except that last
+contretemps. Imagine the Duchess of Dovedale's feelings if she arrived
+at the station adjoining her own estate, and found no carriage to meet
+her!"
+
+"My aunt would tuck up her petticoats and trudge home," answered
+Roderick, smiling. "She's a plucky little woman."
+
+"Yes, perhaps on an ordinary occasion. But to-day it was so different.
+Everybody will talk about our return."
+
+"Most people are still away," suggested Rorie, with a view to comfort.
+
+"Oh, but their servants will hear it, and they will tell their masters
+and mistresses. All gossip begins that way. Besides, Colonel Carteret
+saw us, and what he knows everybody knows."
+
+After this, Roderick felt that all attempts at consolation were
+hopeless. He would have liked to put Mrs. Winstanley into a better
+temper, for Violet's sake. It was not a pleasant home atmosphere in
+which he was obliged to leave his old playfellow on this the first day
+of her new life. Captain Winstanley maintained a forbidding silence;
+Mrs. Winstanley did not even ask anyone to have a cup of tea; Violet
+sat on the opposite side of the hearth, pale and quiet, with Argus at
+her knee, and one arm wound caressingly round his honest head.
+
+"I've been inspecting the kennels this morning," said Roderick, looking
+at the new master of the Abbey House with a cheerful assumption that
+everything was going on pleasantly. "We shall begin business on the
+first. You'll hunt, of course?"
+
+"Well, yes; I suppose I shall give myself a day occasionally."
+
+"I shall not have a happy moment while you are out," said Mrs.
+Winstanley. "I used to be miserable about poor dear Edward."
+
+Vixen winced. These careless references to the dead hurt her more than
+the silence of complete oblivion. To remember, and to be able to speak
+so lightly. That seemed horrible.
+
+"I doubt if I shall hunt much this season," pursued Captain Winstanley,
+as much as to say that he was not going to be grateful to the new
+master of the foxhounds as a public benefactor, however many hundreds
+that gentleman might disburse in order to make up the shortcomings of a
+scanty subscription. "I shall have a great deal to occupy me. This
+place has been much neglected--naturally--within the last few years.
+There is no end of work to be done."
+
+"Are you going to pull down the Abbey House and build an Italian villa
+on its site?" asked Vixen, her upper lip curling angrily. "That would
+be rather a pity. Some people think it a fine old place, and it has
+been in my father's family since the reign of Henry the Eighth."
+
+To the Captain's ear this speech had a covert insolence. The Abbey
+House was to belong to Violet in the future. Neither he nor his wife
+had a right to touch a stone of it. Indeed, it was by no means clear to
+him that there might not be ground for a Chancery suit in his cutting
+down a tree.
+
+"I hope I shall do nothing injudicious," he said politely.
+
+"My aunt will be back in a week or two, Mrs. Winstanley," said
+Roderick. "I shall bring her over to see you directly she settles down
+at Ashbourne. And now I think I'd better be off; I've a long walk home,
+and you must be too tired to care about talking or being talked to."
+
+"I am very tired," answered Mrs. Winstanley languidly; "but I should
+have liked to hear all your news."
+
+"I'm afraid that's not much. I only came home last night; I have been
+shooting grouse in Renfrew."
+
+"Plenty of birds this year?" inquired the Captain, with a languid
+interest.
+
+"Pretty fair. The rainy spring killed a good many of the young birds."
+
+"Do you remember any year in which that complaint was not made?"
+retorted Captain Winstanley.
+
+Rorie took his departure after this, and contrived to give Violet's
+hand an encouraging squeeze at parting, accompanied with a straight
+steady look, which said as plainly as words: "You have one friend who
+will be stanch and true, come what may."
+
+Vixen understood him, and sudden tears welled up to her eyes--the first
+that had clouded them since her parting with Bullfinch. She brushed
+them away hurriedly, but not so quickly as to escape Captain
+Winstanley's observation.
+
+"If you'll excuse me, mamma. I'll run and dress for dinner," she said,
+"unless there is anything I can do for you. Your rooms are quite ready."
+
+"I'm glad of that," replied Mrs. Winstanley fretfully; "for really
+after our reception at the railway-station, I expected to find
+everything at sixes and sevens."
+
+"Dear mamma, you must know that was quite an accident."
+
+"An accident very likely to occur when a young lady indulges in
+tete-a-tete forest rambles with an old friend, instead of waiting at
+home for her mother's letters and telegrams," remarked Captain
+Winstanley, caressing his neat whisker with his irreproachable hand.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Vixen, turning sharply upon him. "I went out
+alone this morning. Mr. Vawdrey and I met at the kennels by accident."
+
+"A chapter of accidents," sneered the Captain. "I have no objection to
+make, Miss Tempest, if your mamma has none. But I am rather sorry for
+the young lady Mr. Vawdrey is going to marry."
+
+"Mr. Vawdrey was my father's friend, and will never cease to be mine,"
+said Vixen, with flashing eyes. "There can be nothing offensive to Lady
+Mabel Ashbourne in our friendship."
+
+She was gone before her stepfather could reply, or her mother reprove
+her want of respect for that new relative.
+
+"I suppose I had better go and dress too," said Mrs. Winstanley, "and
+in the evening we can talk about our first dinner-party. I daresay we
+shall have a great many people calling to-morrow afternoon. It will be
+rather trying. There is such a painful feeling in being a bride and not
+a bride, as it were. People's congratulations hardly sound hearty."
+
+"I daresay they have rather a vapid flavour, like a warmed-up dinner,"
+said the Captain. "That is the result of living in a neighbourhood
+where your first husband was known and popular. If we went among
+strangers, their congratulations would be a great deal heartier. But I
+hope you don't begin to repent already, my dear Pamela."
+
+"Conrad! How can you imagine such a thing?--after your delicate
+attentions, your devoted care of me during our tour. What dress shall I
+wear this evening? Do you like me best in blue or amber?"
+
+"To my eye all colours suit you. But I think a woman"--he was going to
+say "of your age," but checked himself and substituted--"in the
+maturity of her beauty looks best in velvet, or some rich and heavy
+material that falls in massive folds, like the drapery in a portrait by
+Velasquez. A border of fur, too, is an artistic introduction in a
+woman's dress--you see it often in Velasquez. Heavy old laces are, of
+course, always admirable. And for colour I like the warmer hues
+best--wine-dark purples or deep glowing reds; rich ruddy browns, with a
+knot of amber now and then for relief."
+
+"How beautifully you talk," cried Mrs. Winstanley, delighted. "I only
+wish Theodore could hear you. It would give her new ideas; for, after
+all, the best dressmakers are _bornees_. It is too early in the year
+for velvet. I shall put on my dark green brocade with the old Flanders
+lace. I am so glad you like lace. It is my chief weakness. Even dear
+Edward, who was so generous, thought me a little extravagant in the
+matter of lace. But when one once begins to collect, the study is so
+interesting. One is led on."
+
+"Good Heavens! is my wife a collector?" thought Captain Winstanley,
+horrified. "That must be put a stop to, or she will ruin me."
+
+And then he wont off to his dressing-room rather wearily, to put on
+full-dress for a home dinner, a sacrifice to his new state of existence
+which he found very irksome. He would have liked to dine in a
+shooting-jacket, and smoke all the evening. But his smoking now,
+instead of pervading the whole house, as it had done in his snug
+bachelor quarters, was an indulgence to be taken out of doors, or in a
+room appointed for the purpose. He was not even to smoke in the fine
+old hall, for it was one of the family sitting-rooms, and Mrs.
+Winstanley could not endure smoke.
+
+"I am not at all fanciful or capricious," she told her husband early in
+the honeymoon, "but smoking is one of my horrors. I hope, dear Conrad,
+it is not too much to ask you never to smoke in any room I use."
+
+Captain Winstanley pledged himself to respect this and every other wish
+of his wife's. It was his policy to be subservient in small matters, in
+order to be master in essentials. But that daily dressing for dinner
+was something of a bore; and the dinners themselves--_tete-a-tete_
+dinners, in which he had to take as much trouble to be amusing as at a
+dinner-party, had been apt to hang heavily upon him. He had even
+proposed dining at the _table-d'hote_, while they were on their Scotch
+travels, but this idea Mrs. Winstanley rejected with horror.
+
+"I have never dined at a _table-d'hote_ in my life, Conrad," she
+exclaimed, "and I certainly should not begin during my wedding tour."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+On Half Rations.
+
+Captain Winstanley entered upon his new position with a fixed
+determination to make the best of it, and with a very clear view of its
+advantages and disadvantages. For seven years he was to be master of
+everything--or his wife was to be mistress, which, in his mind, was
+exactly the same. No one could question his use of the entire income
+arising from Squire Tempest's estates during that period. When Violet
+came of age--on her twenty-fifth birthday--the estates were to be
+passed over to her _in toto;_ but there was not a word in the Squire's
+will as to the income arising during her minority. Nor had the Squire
+made any provision in the event of his daughter's marriage. If Violet
+were to marry to-morrow, she would go to her husband penniless. He
+would not touch a sixpence of her fortune until she was twenty-five. If
+she were to die during her minority the estate would revert to her
+mother.
+
+It was a very nice estate, taken as a sample of a country squire's
+possessions. Besides the New Forest property, there were farms in
+Wiltshire and Dorsetshire; the whole yielding an income of between five
+and six thousand a year. With such a revenue, and the Abbey House and
+all its belongings rent free, Captain Winstanley felt himself in a land
+of Canaan. But then there was the edict that seven years hence he was
+to go forth from this land of milk and honey; or, at any rate, was to
+find himself living at the Abbey House on a sorely restricted income.
+Fifteen hundred a year in such a house would mean genteel beggary, he
+told himself despondently. And even this genteel beggary would be
+contingent on his wife's life. Her death would rob him of everything.
+
+ He had a mind given to calculation, and he entered upon the
+closest calculations as to his future. He meant to enjoy life, of
+course. He had always done that to the best of his ability. But he saw
+that the chief duty he owed to himself was to save money; and to lay by
+against the evil inevitable day when Violet Tempest would despoil him
+of power and wealth. The only way to do this was by the cutting down of
+present expenses, and an immediate narrowing of the lines on which the
+Abbey House was being conducted; for the Captain had discovered that
+his wife, who was the most careless and incompetent of women as regards
+money matters, had been spending the whole of her income since her
+husband's death. If she had not spent her money on society, she had
+spent it on travelling, on lace, on old china, on dress, on hothouse
+flowers, on a stable which was three times larger than she could
+possibly require, on a household in which there were a good many more
+cats than were wanted to catch mice, on bounties and charities that
+were given upon no principle, not even from inclination, but only
+because Squire Tempest's widow had never been able to say No.
+
+Captain Winstanley's first retrenchment had been the sale of Bullfinch,
+for which noble animal Lord Mallow, a young Irish viscount, had given a
+cheque for three hundred guineas. This money the Captain put on deposit
+at his banker's, by way of a nest-egg. He meant his deposit account to
+grow into something worth investing before those seven fat years were
+half gone.
+
+He told his wife his views on the financial question one morning when
+they were breakfasting _tete-a-tete_ in the library, where the Squire
+and his family had always dined when there was no company. Captain and
+Mrs. Winstanley generally had the privilege of breakfasting alone, as
+Violet was up and away before her mother appeared. The Captain also was
+an early riser, and had done half his day's work before he sat down to
+the luxurious nine-o'clock breakfast with his wife.
+
+"I have been thinking of your ponies, pet," he said, in a pleasant
+voice, half careless, half caressing, as he helped himself to a salmon
+cutlet. "Don't you think it would be a very wise thing to get rid of
+them?"
+
+"Oh, Conrad!" cried his wife, letting the water from the urn overflow
+the teapot in her astonishment; "you can't mean that! Part with my
+ponies?"
+
+"My dear love, how often do you drive them in a twelvemonth?"
+
+"Not very often, perhaps. I have felt rather nervous driving
+lately--carts and great waggon-loads of hay come out upon one so
+suddenly from cross-roads. I don't think the waggoners would care a bit
+if one were killed. But I am very fond of my gray ponies. They are so
+pretty. They have quite Arabian heads. Colonel Carteret says so, and he
+has been in Arabia."
+
+"But, my dear Pamela, do you think it worth while keeping a pair of
+ponies because they are pretty, and because Colonel Carteret, who knows
+about as much of a horse as I do of a megalosaurus says they have
+Arabian heads? Have you ever calculated what those ponies cost you?"
+
+"No, Conrad; I should hate myself if I were always calculating the cost
+of things."
+
+"Yes, that's all very well in the abstract. But if you are inclined to
+waste money, it's just as well to know how much you are wasting. Those
+ponies are costing you at the least one hundred and fifty pounds a
+year, for you could manage with a man less in the stables if you hadn't
+got them."
+
+"That's a good deal of money certainly," said Mrs. Winstanley, who
+hated driving, and had only driven her ponies because other people in
+her position drove ponies, and she felt it was a right thing to do.
+
+Still the idea of parting with anything that appertained to her state
+wounded her deeply.
+
+"I can't see why we should worry ourselves about the cost of the
+stables," she said; "they have gone on in the same way ever since I was
+married. Why should things be different now?"
+
+"Don't you see that you have the future to consider, Pamela. This
+handsome income which you are spending so lavishly----"
+
+"Edward never accused me of extravagance," interjected Mrs. Winstanley
+tearfully, "except in lace. He did hint that I was a little extravagant
+in lace."
+
+"This fine income is to be reduced seven years hence to fifteen hundred
+a year, an income upon which--with mine added to it--you could not
+expect to be able to carry on life decently in such a house as this. So
+you see, Pamela, unless we contrive between us to put by a considerable
+sum of money before your daughter's majority, we shall be obliged to
+leave the Abbey House, and live in a much smaller way than we are
+living now."
+
+"Leave the Abbey House!" cried Mrs. Winstanley with a horrified look.
+"Conrad, I have lived in this house ever since I was married."
+
+"Am I not aware of that, my dear love? But, all the same, you would
+have to let this place, and live in a much smaller house, if you had
+only fifteen hundred a year to live upon."
+
+"It would be too humiliating! At the end of one's life. I should never
+survive such a degradation."
+
+"It may be prevented if we exercise reasonable economy during the next
+seven years."
+
+"Sell my ponies, then, Conrad; sell them immediately. Why should we
+allow them to eat us out of house and home. Frisky shies abominably if
+she is in the least bit fresh, and Peter has gone so far as to lie down
+in the road when he has had one of his lazy fits."
+
+"But if they are really a source of pleasure to you, my dear Pamela, I
+should hate myself for selling them," said the Captain, seeing he had
+gained his point.
+
+"They are not a source of pleasure. They have given me some awful
+frights."
+
+"Then we'll send them up to Tattersall's immediately, with the
+carriage."
+
+"Violet uses the carriage with Titmouse." objected Mrs. Winstanley. "We
+could hardly spare the carriage."
+
+"My love, if I part with your ponies from motives of economy, do you
+suppose I would keep a pony for your daughter?" said the Captain with a
+grand air. "No; Titmouse must go, of course. That will dispose of a man
+and a boy in the stables. Violet spends so much of her life on
+horseback, that she cannot possibly want a pony to drive."
+
+"She is very fond of Titmouse," pleaded the mother.
+
+"She has a tendency to lavish her affection on quadrupeds--a weakness
+which hardly needs fostering. I shall write to Tattersall about the
+three ponies this morning; and I shall send up that great raking brown
+horse Bates rides at the same time. Bates can ride one of my hunters.
+That will bring down the stable to five horses--my two hunters, Arion,
+and your pair of carriage-horses."
+
+"Five horses," sighed Mrs. Winstanley pensively; "I shall hardly know
+those great stables with only five horses in them. The dear old place
+used to look so pretty and so full of life when I was first married,
+and when the Squire used to coax me to go with him on his morning
+rounds. The horses used to move on one side, and turn their heads so
+prettily at the sound of his voice--such lovely, sleek, shining
+creatures, with big intelligent eyes."
+
+"You would be a richer woman if it had not been for those lovely,
+sleek, shining creatures," said Captain Winstanley. "And now, love, let
+us go round the gardens, and you will see the difference that young
+able-bodied gardeners are making in the appearance of the place."
+
+Mrs. Winstanley gave a plaintive little sigh as she rose and rang the
+bell for Pauline. The good old gray-haired gardeners--the men who had
+seemed to her as much a part of the gardens as the trees that grew in
+them--these hoary and faithful servants had been cashiered, to make
+room for two brawny young Scotchmen, whose dialect was as Greek to the
+mistress of the Abbey House. It wounded her not a little to see these
+strangers at work in her grounds. It gave an aspect of strangeness to
+her very life out of doors. She hardly cared to go into her
+conservatories, or to loiter on her lawn, with those hard unfamiliar
+eyes looking at her. And it wrung her heart to think of the Squire's
+old servants thrust out in their old age, unpensioned, uncared for. Yet
+this was a change that had come about with her knowledge, and,
+seemingly, with her consent. That is to say, the Captain had argued her
+into a corner, where she stood, like the last forlorn king in a game of
+draughts, fenced round and hemmed in by opponent kings. She had not the
+strength of mind to assert herself boldly, and say: "I will not have it
+so. This injustice shall not be."
+
+A change had come over the spirit of the Abbey House kitchen, which was
+sorely felt in Beechdale and those half-dozen clusters of cottages
+within a two-mile radius, which called themselves villages, and all of
+which had turned to the Abbey House for light and comfort, as the
+sunflower turns to the sun. Captain Winstanley had set his face against
+what he called miscellaneous charity. Such things should be done and no
+other. His wife should subscribe liberally to all properly organised
+institutions--schools, Dorcas societies, maternity societies,
+soup-kitchens, regulated dole of bread or coals, every form of relief
+that was given systematically and by line and rule; but the good
+Samaritan business--the picking up stray travellers, and paying for
+their maintenance at inns--was not in the Captain's view of charity.
+Henceforward Mrs. Winstanley's name was to appear with due honour upon
+all printed subscription-lists, just as it had done when she was Mrs.
+Tempest; but the glory of the Abbey House kitchen had departed. The
+beggar and the cadger were no longer sure of a meal. The villagers were
+no longer to come boldly asking for what they wanted in time of
+trouble--broth, wine, jelly, for the sick, allowances of new milk, a
+daily loaf when father was out of work, broken victuals at all times.
+It was all over. The kitchen-doors were to be closed against all
+intruders.
+
+"My love, I do not wonder that you have spent every sixpence of your
+income," said Captain Winstanley. "You have been keeping an Irish
+household. I can fancy an O'Donoghue or a Knight of Glyn living in this
+kind of way; but I should hardly have expected such utter riot and
+recklessness in an English gentleman's house."
+
+"I am afraid Trimmer has been rather extravagant," assented Mrs.
+Winstanley. "I have trusted everything to her entirely, knowing that
+she is quite devoted to us, poor dear soul."
+
+"She is so devoted, that I should think in another year or so, at the
+rate she was going, she would have landed you in the bankruptcy court.
+Her books for the last ten years--I have gone through them
+carefully--show an expenditure that is positively ruinous. However, I
+think I have let her see that her housekeeping must be done upon very
+different lines in future."
+
+"You made her cry very bitterly, poor thing," said his wife. "Her eyes
+were quite red when she came out of your study."
+
+"Made her cry!" echoed the Captain contemptuously. "She is so fat that
+the slightest emotion liquefies her. It isn't water, but oil that she
+sheds when she makes believe to weep."
+
+"She has been a faithful servant to me for the last twenty years,"
+moaned Mrs. Winstanley.
+
+"And she will be a much more faithful servant to you for the next
+twenty years, if she lives so long. I am not going to send her away.
+She is an admirable cook, and now she knows that she is not to let your
+substance run out at the back door, I daresay she will be a fairly good
+manager. I shall look after her rather sharply, I assure you. I was
+caterer for our mess three years, and I know pretty well what a
+household ought to cost per head."
+
+"Oh, Conrad!" cried his wife piteously, "you talk as if we were an
+institution, or a workhouse, or something horrid."
+
+"My love, a man of sense ought to be able to regulate a private
+establishment at least as well as a board of thick-headed guardians can
+regulate a workhouse."
+
+Poor Mrs. Trimmer had left her new master's presence sorely bowed down
+in spirit. She was so abased that she could only retire to her own snug
+sitting-room, a panelled parlour, with an ancient ivy-wreathed casement
+looking into the stable-yard, and indulge herself with what she called
+"a good cry." It was not until later that she felt equal to
+communicating her grief to Forbes and Pauline, over the one-o'clock
+dinner.
+
+She had had a passage of arms, which she denominated "a stand further,"
+with the Captain; but it appeared that her own stand had been feeble.
+He had been going over the housekeeping accounts for the last ten
+years--accounts which neither the Squire nor his wife had ever taken
+the trouble to examine--accounts honestly, but somewhat carelessly and
+unskillfully made out. There had been an expenditure that was
+positively scandalous, Captain Winstanley told Mrs. Trimmer.
+
+"If you're dissatisfied, sir, perhaps I'd better go," the old woman
+said, tremulous with indignation. "If you think there's anything
+dishonest in my accounts, I wouldn't sleep under this roof another
+night, though it's been my home near upon forty year--I was
+kitchen-maid in old Squire Tempest's time--no, I wouldn't stay another
+hour--not to be doubted."
+
+"I have not questioned your honesty, Trimmer. The accounts are honest
+enough, I have no doubt, but they show a most unjustifiable waste of
+money."
+
+"If there's dissatisfaction in your mind, sir, we'd better part. It's
+always best for both parties. I'm ready to go at an hour's notice, or
+to stay my month, if it's more convenient to my mistress."
+
+"You are a silly old woman," said the Captain. "I don't want you to go.
+I am not dissatisfied with you, but with the whole system of
+housekeeping. There has been a great deal too much given away."
+
+"Not a loaf of bread without my mistress's knowledge," cried Trimmer.
+"I always told Mrs. Tempest every morning who'd been for soup, or wine,
+or bread--yes, even to broken victuals--the day before. I had her leave
+and license for all I did. 'I'm not strong enough to see to the poor
+things myself, Trimmer,' she used to say, 'but I want them cared for. I
+leave it all to you.'"
+
+"Very well, Trimmer. That kind of thing must cease from this very hour.
+Your mistress will contribute to all the local charities. She will give
+the Vicar an allowance of wine to be distributed by him in urgent
+cases; but this house will no longer be the village larder--no one is
+to come to this kitchen for anything.
+
+"What, sir?--not in case of sickness?"
+
+"No. Poor people are always sick. It is their normal state, when there
+is anything to be got by sickness. There are hospitals and infirmaries
+for such cases. My house is not to be an infirmary. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I understand that everything is to be different from what it
+was in my late master's time."
+
+"Precisely. Expenses are to be kept within a certain limit. They are
+not to fluctuate, as they do in these books of yours. You must get rid
+of two or three women-servants. There are at least three too many. I am
+always seeing strange faces about upstairs. One might as well live in a
+hotel. Think it over, Trimmer, and make up your mind as to which you
+can best spare, and give them a month's wages, and pack them off. I
+don't care to have servants about me who are under notice to quit. They
+always look sulky."
+
+"Is that all, sir?" inquired the housekeeper, drying her angry tears
+upon her linen apron.
+
+"Well, yes, that is all at present. Stay. What wages has my wife given
+you?"
+
+"Sixty pounds a year," replied Trimmer, quite prepared to be told that
+her stipend was to be reduced.
+
+"Then I shall give you seventy."
+
+At this unexpected grace Trimmer began to tremble with an excess of
+indignation. She saw in this bounty a bribe to meanness.
+
+"Thank you, sir; but I have never asked to have my wages raised, and I
+am quite contented to remain as I am," she answered with dignity.
+"Perhaps, if the ways of the house are to be so much altered, I may not
+feel myself comfortable enough to stay."
+
+"Oh, very well, my good soul; please yourself," replied the Captain
+carelessly; "but remember what I have told you about cadgers and
+interlopers; and get rid of two or three of those idle young women. I
+shall examine your housekeeping accounts weekly, and pay all the
+tradespeople weekly."
+
+"They have not been used to it, sir."
+
+"Then they must get used to it. I shall pay every account
+weekly--corn-merchant, and all of them. Bring me up your book on
+Saturday morning at ten, and let me have all other accounts at the same
+time."
+
+Here was a revolution. Trimmer and Forbes and Pauline sat long over
+their dinner, talking about the shipwreck of a fine old house.
+
+"I knew that things would be different," said Pauline, "but I didn't
+think it would be so bad as this. I thought it would be all the other
+way, and that there'd be grand doings and lots of company. What awful
+meanness! Not a drop of soup to be given to a poor family; and I
+suppose, if I ask my aunt and uncle to stop to tea and supper, anywhen
+that they call to ask how I am, it will be against the rules."
+
+"From what I gather, there's not a bit nor a sup to be given to
+mortal," said Mrs. Trimmer solemnly.
+
+"Well, thank Providence, I can afford to buy a bit of tea and sugar and
+a quart loaf when a friend drops in," said Pauline, "but the meanness
+isn't any less disgusting. He'll want her to sell her cast-off dresses
+to the secondhand dealers, I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"And he'll be asking for the keys of the cellars, perhaps," said
+Forbes, "after I've kept them for five-and-twenty years."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The Owner of Bullfinch.
+
+Captain Winstanley had been master of the Abbey House three months, and
+there had been no open quarrel between him and Violet Tempest. Vixen
+had been cold as marble, but she had been civil. For her mother's sake
+she had held her peace. She remembered what Roderick Vawdrey had said
+about her duty, and had tried to do it, difficult as that duty was to
+the girl's undisciplined nature. She had even taken the loss of
+Titmouse very quietly--her father's first gift, the pony that had
+carried her when she was a seven-year-old huntress with tawny hair
+flowing loose under her little velvet _toque_. She gave no expression
+to her indignation at the sale of this old favourite, as she had done
+in the case of Bullfinch. If she wept for him, her tears were shed in
+secret. She took the sale of her pet almost as a matter of course.
+
+"The Captain thinks we have too many horses and ponies, dear; and you
+know dear papa was a little extravagant about his stables," said her
+mother apologetically, when she announced the fate of Titmouse; "but of
+course Arion will always be kept for you."
+
+"I am glad of that, mamma," Vixen answered gravely. "I should be sorry
+to part with the last horse papa gave me as well as with the first."
+
+To the Captain himself Vixen said no word about her pony, and he made
+no apology for or explanation of his conduct, He acted as if Heaven had
+made him lord of the Abbey House and all its belongings in his cradle,
+and as if his wife and her daughter were accidental and subordinate
+figures in the scene of his life.
+
+Despite the era of retrenchment which the new master had inaugurated,
+things at the Abbey House had never been done with so much dignity and
+good style. There had been a slipshod ease, an old-fashioned liberality
+in the housekeeping during the Squire's reign, which had in some
+measure approximated to the popular idea of an Irish household. Now all
+was done by line and rule, and according to the latest standard of
+perfection. There was no new fashion in Belgravia--from a brand of
+champagne to the shape of a menu-holder--which Captain Winstanley had
+not at his finger's ends. The old-style expensive heavy dinners at the
+Abbey House: the monster salmon under whose weight the serving man
+staggered; the sprawling gigantic turbot, arabesqued with sliced lemon
+and barberries; the prize turkey, too big for anything but a poultry
+show; these leviathans and megatheria of the market were seen no more.
+In their stead came the subdued grace of the _diner a la Russe_, a
+well-chosen menu, before composing which Captain Winstanley studied
+Gouffe's artistic cookery-book as carefully as a pious Israelite
+studies the Talmud. The new style was as much more economical than the
+old as it was more elegant. The table, with the Squire's old silver,
+and fine dark blue and gold Worcester china, and the Captain's
+picturesque grouping of hothouse flowers and ferns, was a study worthy
+of a painter of still life. People exclaimed at the beauty of the
+picture. The grave old dining-room was transformed from its heavy
+splendour to a modern grace that delighted everybody. Mrs. Winstanley's
+bosom thrilled with a gentle pride as she sat opposite her husband--he
+and she facing each other across the centre of the oval table--at their
+first dinner-party.
+
+"My love, I am delighted that you are pleased," he said afterwards,
+when she praised his arrangements. "I think I shall be able to show you
+that economy does not always mean shabbiness. Our dinners shall not be
+too frequent, but they shall be perfect after their kind."
+
+The Captain made another innovation in his wife's mode of existence.
+Instead of a daily dropping in of her acquaintance for tea and gossip,
+she was to have her afternoon, like Lady Ellangowan. A neat
+copper-plate inscription on her visiting-card told her friends that she
+was at home on Tuesdays from three to six, and implied that she was not
+at home on any other day. Mrs. Winstanley felt her dignity enhanced by
+this arrangement, and the Captain hoped thereby to put a stop to a good
+deal of twaddling talk, and to lessen the consumption of five-shilling
+tea, pound-cake, and cream.
+
+The Duke and Duchess returned to Ashbourne with Lady Mabel a short time
+before Christmas, and the Duchess and her daughter came to one of Mrs.
+Winstanley's Tuesday afternoons, attended by Roderick Vawdrey. They
+came with an evident intention of being friendly, and the Duchess was
+charmed with the old oak hall, the wide hearth and Christmas fire of
+beech-logs, the light flashing upon the men in armour, and reflected
+here and there on the beeswaxed panels as on dark water. In this wintry
+dusk the hall looked its best, dim gleams of colour from the old
+painted glass mixing with the changeful glow of the fire.
+
+"It reminds me a little of our place in Scotland," said the Duchess,
+"only this is prettier. It has a warmer homelier air. All things in
+Scotland have an all-pervading stoniness. It is a country overgrown
+with granite."
+
+Mrs. Winstanley was delighted to be told that her house resembled one
+of the ducal abodes.
+
+"I daresay your Scotch castle is much older than this," she said
+deprecatingly. "We only date from Henry the Eighth. There was an abbey,
+built in the time of Henry the First; but I am afraid there is nothing
+left of that hut the archway leading into the stables."
+
+"Oh, we are dreadfully ancient at Dundromond; almost as old as the
+mountains, I should think," answered the Duchess. "Our walls are ten
+feet thick, and we have an avenue of yew trees said to be a thousand
+years old. But all that does not prevent the Duke getting bronchitis
+every time he goes there."
+
+Vixen was in attendance upon her mother, dressed in dark green cloth.
+Very much the same kind of gown she had on that day at the kennels,
+Rorie thought, remembering how she looked as she stood with quickened
+breath and tumbled hair, encircled by those eager boisterous hounds.
+
+"If Landseer could have lived to paint her, I would have given a small
+fortune for the picture," he thought regretfully.
+
+Lady Mabel was particularly gracious to Violet. She talked about dogs
+and horses even, in her desire to let herself down to Miss Tempest's
+level; praised the Forest; made a tentative remark about point lace;
+and asked Violet if she was fond of Chopin.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not enlightened enough to care so much for him as I
+ought." Vixen answered frankly.
+
+"Really! Who is your favourite composer?"
+
+Violet felt as if she were seated before one of those awful books which
+some young ladies keep instead of albums, in which the sorely-tormented
+contributor is catechised as to his or her particular tastes,
+distastes, and failings.
+
+"I think I like Mozart best."
+
+"Do you, really?" inquired Lady Mabel, looking as if Violet had sunk
+fathoms lower in her estimation by this avowal. "Don't you think that
+he is dreadfully tuney?"
+
+"I like tunes," retorted Vixen, determined not to be put down. "I'd
+rather have written '_Voi che sapete_,' and '_Batti, batti_,' than all
+Chopin's nocturnes and mazurkas."
+
+"I think you would hardly say that if you knew Chopin better," said
+Lady Mabel gravely, as if she had been gently reproving some one for
+the utterance of infidel opinions. "When are you coming to see our
+orchids?" she asked graciously. "Mamma is at home on Thursdays. I hope
+you and Mrs. Winstanley will drive over and look at my new
+orchid-house. Papa had it built for me with all the latest
+improvements. I'm sure you must be fond of orchids, even if you don't
+appreciate Chopin."
+
+Violet blushed. Rorie was looking on with a malicious grin. He was
+sitting a little way off in a low Glastonbury chair, with his knees up
+to his chin, making himself an image of awkwardness.
+
+"I don't believe Violet cares twopence for the best orchid you could
+show her," he said. "I don't believe your _Dendrobium Formosum_ would
+have any more effect upon her than it has upon me."
+
+"Oh, but I do admire them; or, at least, I should admire them
+immensely," remonstrated Vixen, "if I could see them in their native
+country. But I don't know that I have ever thoroughly appreciated them
+in a hothouse, hanging from the roof, and tumbling on to one's nose, or
+shooting off their long sprays at a tangent into awkward corners. I'm
+afraid I like the bluebells and foxgloves in our enclosures ever so
+much better. I have seen the banks in New Park one sheet of vivid blue
+with hyacinths, one blaze of crimson with foxgloves; and then there are
+the long green swamps, where millions of marsh marigolds shine like
+pools of liquid gold. If I could see orchids blooming like that I
+should be charmed with them."
+
+"You paint of course," said Lady Mabel. "Wild flowers make delightful
+studies, do they not?"
+
+Vixen blushed violently.
+
+"I can't paint a little bit," she said. "I am a dreadfully
+unaccomplished person."
+
+"That's not true," remonstrated Rorie. "She sketches capitally in pen
+and ink--dogs, horses, trees, you and me, everything, dashed off with
+no end of spirit."
+
+Here the Duchess, who had been describing the most conspicuous costumes
+at the German baths, to the delight of Mrs. Winstanley, rose to go, and
+Lady Mabel, with her graceful, well-drilled air, rose immediately.
+
+"We shall be so glad to see you at Ashbourne," she murmured sweetly,
+giving Violet her slim little hand in its pearl-gray glove.
+
+ She was dressed from head to foot in artistically blended
+shades of gray--a most unpretending toilet. But to Violet's mind the
+very modesty of her attire seemed to say: "I am a duke's only daughter,
+but I don't want to crush you."
+
+Vixen acknowledged her graciousness politely, but without any warmth;
+and it would hardly have done for Lady Mabel to have known what Miss
+Tempest said to herself when the Dovedale barouche had driven round the
+curve of the shrubbery, with Roderick smiling at her from his place as
+it vanished.
+
+"I am afraid I have a wicked tendency to detest people," said Vixen
+inwardly. "I feel almost as bad about Lady Mabel as I do about Captain
+Winstanley."
+
+"Are they not nice?" asked Mrs. Winstanley gushingly, when she and
+Violet were alone.
+
+"Trimmer's drop-cakes?" said Vixen, who was standing by the tea-table
+munching a dainty little biscuit. "Yes, they are always capital."
+
+"Nonsense, Violet; I mean the Duchess and her daughter."
+
+Vixen yawned audibly.
+
+"I'm glad you do not find the Duchess insupportably dreary," she said.
+"Lady Mabel weighed me down like a nightmare."
+
+"Oh Violet! when she behaved so sweetly--quite caressingly, I thought.
+You really ought to cultivate her friendship. It would be so nice for
+you to visit at Ashbourne. You would have such opportunities----"
+
+"Of doing what, mamma? Heading polonaises and mazurkas in seven double
+flats; or seeing orchids with names as long as a German compound
+adjective."
+
+"Opportunities of being seen and admired by young men of position,
+Violet. Sooner or later the time must come for you to think of
+marrying."
+
+"That time will never come, mamma. I shall stay at home with you till
+you are tired of me, and when you turn me out I will have a cottage in
+the heart of the Forest--upon some wild ridge topped with a hat of
+firs--and good old McCroke to take care of me; and I will spend my days
+botanising and fern-hunting, riding and walking, and perhaps learn to
+paint my favourite trees, and live as happily and as remote from
+mankind as the herons in their nests at the top of the tall beeches on
+Vinny Ridge."
+
+"I am very glad there is no one present to hear you talk like that,
+Violet," Mrs. Winstanley said gravely.
+
+"Why, mamma?'
+
+"Because anybody hearing you might suppose you were not quite right in
+your mind."
+
+
+The Duchess's visit put Mrs. Winstanley in good-humour with all the
+world, but especially with Roderick Vawdrey. She sent him an invitation
+to her next dinner, and when her husband seemed inclined to strike his
+name out of her list, she defended her right of selection with a
+courage that was almost heroic.
+
+"I can't understand your motive for asking this fellow," the Captain
+said, with a blacker look than his wife had ever before seen on his
+countenance.
+
+"Why should I not ask him, Conrad? I have known him ever since he was
+at Eton, and the dear Squire was very fond of him."
+
+"If you are going to choose your acquaintance in accordance with the
+taste of your first husband, it will be rather a bad look out for your
+second," said the Captain.
+
+"What objection can you have to Roderick?"
+
+"I can have, and I have, a very strong objection to him. But I am not
+going to talk about it yet awhile."
+
+"But, Conrad, if there is anything I ought to know----" began Mrs.
+Winstanley, alarmed.
+
+"When I think you ought to know it you will be told, my dear Pamela. In
+the meantime, allow me to have my own opinion about Mr. Vawdrey."
+
+"But, Conrad, in dear Edward's time he used to come to this house
+whenever he liked, as if he had been a near relation. And he is the
+Duchess's nephew, remember; and when he marries Lady Mabel, and the
+Duke dies, he will be one of the largest landowners in South Hampshire."
+
+"Very well, let him come to your dinner. It can make very little
+difference."
+
+"Now you are offended, Conrad," said Mrs. Winstanley, with a
+deprecating air.
+
+"No, I am not offended; but I have my own opinion as to your wisdom in
+giving any encouragement to Mr. Vawdrey."
+
+This sounded mysterious, and made Mrs. Winstanley uncomfortable. But
+she was determined not to offend the Duchess, who had been so
+particularly gracious, and who had sent Captain and Mrs. Winstanley
+a card for a dinner to be given on the last day of the year.
+
+So Roderick got his invitation, and accepted it with friendly
+promptitude. He was master of the hounds now, and a good many of his
+days were given up to the pleasures of the hunting-field. He was an
+important person in his way, full of business; but he generally found
+time to drop in for an hour on Mrs. Winstanley's Tuesday afternoons, to
+lounge with his back against the massive oaken chimney-breast and talk
+to Violet, or pat Argus, while the lady-visitors gossiped and tittered
+over their tea-cups.
+
+This last dinner of Mrs. Winstanley was to take place a few days before
+Christmas, and was to be given in honour of a guest who was coming to
+spend the holidays at the Abbey House. The guest was Captain
+Winstanley's Irish friend, Lord Mallow, the owner of Bullfinch.
+
+Vixen's heart gave an indignant bound when she heard that he was coming.
+
+"Another person for me to hate," she said to herself, almost
+despairingly. "I am becoming a mass of envy, hatred, and malice, and
+all uncharitableness."
+
+Lord Mallow had spent the early morning of life in the army, it
+appeared, with no particular expectations. He and Captain Winstanley
+had been brother-officers. But the fell sergeant Death had promoted
+Patrick Hay to his elder brother's heritage, and he had surrendered a
+subaltern's place in a line regiment to become Viscount Mallow, and the
+owner of a fine stretch of fertile hill and valley in County Cork. He
+had set up at once as the model landlord, eager for his tenantry's
+welfare, full of advanced ideas, a violent politician, liberal to the
+verge of radicalism. If the Irish Church had not been disestablished
+before Lord Mallow went into Parliament, he would have gripped his
+destructive axe and had a chop or two at the root of that fine old
+tree. Protestant, and loyal to the Church of England in his own
+person--so far as such loyalty may be testified by regular attendance
+at divine service every Sunday morning, and a gentlemanlike reverence
+for bishops--it seemed to him not the less an injustice that his native
+land should be taxed with the maintenance of an alien clergy.
+
+The late Lord Mallow had been a violent Tory, Orange to the marrow of
+his bones. The new Lord Mallow was violently progressive, enthusiastic
+in his belief in Hibernian virtues, and his indignation at Hibernian
+wrongs. He wanted to disestablish everything. He saw his country as she
+appears in the eyes of her poets and song-writers--a fair dishevelled
+female, oppressed by the cruel Sassenach, a lovely sufferer for whose
+rescue all true men and leal would fight to the death. He quoted the
+outrages of Elizabeth's reign, the cruelties of Cromwell's soldiery,
+the savagery of Ginkell, as if those wrongs had been inflicted
+yesterday, and the House of Commons of to-day were answerable for them.
+He made fiery speeches which were reported at length in the Irish
+newspapers. He was a fine speaker, after a florid pattern, and had a
+great command of voice, and a certain rugged eloquence that carried his
+hearers along with him, even when he was harping upon so hackneyed a
+string as the wrongs of "Ould Ireland."
+
+Lord Mallow was not thirty, and he looked younger than his years. He
+was tall and broad-shouldered, robust, and a trifle clumsy in figure,
+and rode fourteen stone. He had a good-looking Irish face, smiling blue
+eyes, black hair, white teeth, bushy whiskers, and a complexion
+inclining to rosiness.
+
+"He is the perfection of a commonplace young man," Vixen said, when she
+talked him over with her mother on the day of his arrival at the Abbey
+House.
+
+"Come, Violet, you must admit that he is very handsome," remonstrated
+Mrs. Winstanley, who was sitting before her dressing-room fire, with
+her feet on a fender-stool of her own crewel-work, waiting for Pauline
+to commence the important ceremony of dressing for dinner. "I think I
+never saw a finer set of teeth, and of course at his age they must all
+be real."
+
+"Unless he has had a few of the original ones knocked out in the
+hunting-field, mamma. They go over a good many stone walls in Ireland,
+you know, and he may have come to grief."
+
+"If you would only leave off talking in that horrid way, Violet. He is
+a very agreeable young man. How he enjoyed a cup of tea after his
+journey, instead of wanting soda-water and brandy. Conrad tells me he
+has a lovely place near Mallow--on the slope of a hill, sheltered on
+the north with pine woods; and I believe it is one of the prettiest
+parts of Ireland--so green, and fertile, and sweet, and such a happy
+peasantry."
+
+"I think I'd better leave you to dress for dinner, mamma. You like a
+clear hour, and it's nearly half-past six."
+
+"True, love; you may ring for Pauline. I have been wavering between my
+black and maize and my amethyst velvet, but I think I shall decide upon
+the velvet. What are you going to wear?"
+
+"I? oh, anything. The dress I wore last night."
+
+"My love, it is positively dowdy. Pray wear something better in honour
+of Lord Mallow. There is the gown you had for my wedding," suggested
+Mrs. Winstanley, blushing. "You look lovely in that."
+
+"Mamma, do you think I'm going to make a secondhand bridesmaid of
+myself to oblige Lord Mallow? No; that dress too painfully bears the
+stamp of what it was made for. I'm afraid it will have to rot in the
+wardrobe where it hangs. If it were woolen, the moths would inevitably
+have it; but, I suppose, as it is silk it will survive the changes of
+time; and some day it will be made into chair-covers, and future
+generations of Tempests will point to it as a relic of my great-aunt
+Violet."
+
+"I never heard anything so absurd," cried Mrs. Winstanley fretfully.
+"It was Theodore's _chef-d'oeuvre_, and no doubt I shall have to pay an
+awful price for it."
+
+"Ah, mamma, we are continually doing things for which we have to pay an
+awful price," said Vixen, with one of her involuntary bursts of bitter
+sadness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Something like a Ride.
+
+It was impossible to go on hating Lord Mallow for ever. He was a man
+whose overflowing good-nature would have conciliated the direst foe,
+could that enemy have been exposed long enough to its softening
+influence. He came upon the dull daily life of the Abbey House like a
+burst of sudden sunshine on a gloomy plain. The long winter evenings,
+when there was no company, had been sorely oppressive to Vixen. Out of
+respect to her mother she had kept her place in the drawing-room,
+reading, or working at some uninteresting strip of point-lace, which
+she had no hope of ever finishing, though it had been promised to Mr.
+Scobel for his church. Captain Winstanley read the newspapers or the
+quarterlies, and paced the room thoughtfully at intervals. He talked to
+his wife just enough to escape the charge of neglect, but rarely spoke
+to or noticed Violet. Sometimes Mrs. Winstanley asked for a little
+music; whereupon Violet went to the piano and played her scanty
+recollections of Mozart or Beethoven--all "tuney" bits, remembered out
+of the sonatas or symphonies Miss McCroke had taught her; or, if asked
+to sing, the girl sang a ballad or two, to order, in her full round
+mezzo-soprano, which had a thrilling expression at times, when feeling
+got the better of her proud reserve, and all the pent-up sorrow of her
+heart broke loose into her song. But Captain Winstanley took no notice
+of these efforts, and even her mother's praises were not enthusiastic.
+
+"Very sweet, very nice," was the most Vixen ever heard from those
+maternal lips as she closed the piano.
+
+But here was Lord Mallow, passionately fond of music and singing, and
+the beauties of nature, and all things that appeal to the sensitive
+Hibernian character. It seemed a new thing to Violet to have someone
+standing by the piano, turning over the leaves, applauding rapturously,
+and entreating for another and yet another Irish melody. When she sang
+"The Minstrel Boy," he joined in with a rich baritone that harmonised
+finely with her full ripe notes. The old room vibrated with the strong
+gush of melody, and even Captain Winstanley was impelled to praise.
+
+"How well your voices harmonise," he said. "You ought to try some
+duets. I remember that fine baritone of yours in days of old, Mallow."
+
+Thereupon Lord Mallow asked Miss Tempest if she had any duets, and
+Vixen produced her small stock of vocal music. They tried one or two of
+Mendelssohn's, "I would that my love," and "Greeting," and discovered
+that they got on wonderfully well together. Vixen fell asleep that
+night wondering at her own amiability.
+
+"To think that I should sing sentimental duets with him," she said to
+herself. "The man who has Bullfinch!"
+
+Lord Mallow's presence at the Abbey House had a marked effect upon
+Captain Winstanley's treatment of his stepdaughter. Hitherto there had
+been a veiled bitterness in all his speeches, a constrained civility in
+his manners. Now he was all kindness, all expansion. Even his wife, who
+admired him always, and thought him the soul of wisdom in all he did,
+could not be blind to the change, and a new sense of peacefulness stole
+into her feeble mind. It was so pleasant to see dear Conrad so sweetly
+kind to Violet.
+
+"What are we going to do with Lord Mallow this morning, Violet?" asked
+the Captain at breakfast, the day after the Irishman's arrival. "We
+must try to amuse him somehow."
+
+"I don't think I have much to do with it," Vixen answered coldly. "You
+will find plenty of amusement, I daresay, in the billiard-room, in the
+stables, or in showing Lord Mallow your improvements."
+
+"That would do very well for a wet morning, but it would be a
+profligate waste of fine weather. No; I propose that you should show
+Mallow some of the prettiest bits in the Forest. I am not half so
+accomplished a guide as you; but we'll all go. I'll order the horses at
+once if you like my plan, Mallow," said Captain Winstanley, turning to
+his friend, and taking Violet's consent for granted.
+
+"I shall be quite too delighted, if Miss Tempest will honour us with
+her company," replied the Irishman, with a pleasant look at Vixen's
+fresh morning face, rosy-red with vexation.
+
+It was the first time her stepfather had ever asked her to ride with
+him, and she hated doing it. It was the first time she had ever been
+asked to ride with anyone but her father or Roderick Vawdrey. Yet to
+refuse would have been impossible, without absolute discourtesy to her
+mother's husband and her mother's guest. So she sat in her place and
+said nothing; and Lord Mallow mistook the angry carnation for the warm
+red of happy girlhood, which blushes it knows not wherefore.
+
+Captain Winstanley ordered the horses to be at the door in
+half-an-hour: and then he took Lord Mallow off to look at the stables,
+while Violet went upstairs to put on her habit. Why was the Captain so
+unusually amiable? she speculated. Was his little soul so mean that he
+put on better manners to do honour to an Irish peer?
+
+She came tripping down the wide old staircase at the end of the
+half-hour, in habit and hat of Lincoln green, with a cock's feather in
+the neat little hat, and a formidable hooked hunting-crop for opening
+gates, little feet daintily shod in patent leather, but no spur. She
+loved her horse too well to run a needle into his sleek hide at the
+slightest provocation.
+
+There were three horses, held by Bates and Lord Mallow's groom.
+Bullfinch, looking as if he had just taken a prize at Islington and was
+inclined to be bumptious about it. Arion, tossing his delicately
+modelled Greek head, and peering furtively after bogies in the adjacent
+shrubbery. Captain Winstanley's well-seasoned hunter, Mosstrooper,
+nodding his long bony head, and swaying his fine-drawn neck up and down
+in a half-savage half-scornful manner, as if he were at war with
+society in general, like the Miller of Dee.
+
+Vixen, who had looked the picture of vexation at the breakfast-table,
+was now all gaiety. Her hazel eyes sparkled with mischief. Lord Mallow
+stood in the porch, watching her as she came down the shining oak
+staircase, glorious in the winter sunlight. He thought her the
+perfection of a woman--nay, more than a woman, a goddess. Diana, the
+divine huntress, must have looked so, he fancied. He ran forward to
+mount her on the fidgety Arion; but honest old Bates was too quick for
+him; and she was looking down at Lord Mallow graciously from her perch
+on the well-worn doeskin saddle before he had time to offer his
+services.
+
+She leaned over to pat Bullfinch's massive crest.
+
+"Dear old horse," she murmured tenderly, remembering those winter
+mornings of old when he had stood before the porch as he stood to-day,
+waiting for the noble rider who was never more to mount him.
+
+"Yet life goes on somehow without our beloved dead," thought Violet.
+
+Her changeful face saddened at the idea, and she rode along the
+shrubberied drive in silence.
+
+"Where are you going to take us?" asked the Captain, when they had
+emerged from the Abbey House grounds, crossed the coach-road, and made
+their plunge into the first cart-track that offered itself.
+
+"Everywhere," answered Vixen, with a mischievous laugh. "You have
+chosen me for your guide, and all you have to do is to follow."
+
+And she gave Arion a light touch with her hunting-crop, and cantered
+gaily down the gently sloping track to a green lawn, which looked, to
+Captain Winstanley's experienced eye, very much like a quaggy bog.
+
+"Steer towards your left!" he cried anxiously to Lord Mallow.
+
+If there was danger near Vixen managed to avoid it; she made a sweeping
+curve, skirted the treacherous-looking lawn, and disappeared in another
+cart-track, between silvery trunks of veteran beeches, self-sown in the
+dark ages, with here and there a gnarled old oak, rugged and
+lichen-mantled, with feathery tufts of fern nestling in the hollow
+places between his gaunt limbs.
+
+That was a ride! Lord Mallow could remember nothing like it, and he was
+destined to carry this in his memory for a lifetime. The ghostly trees;
+the silver-shining bark of the beeches, varying with a hundred
+indescribable shades of green, and purple, and warmest umber; the
+rugged gray of the grand old oaks; the lichens and mosses, the
+mysterious wintry growths of toadstool and weed and berry; that awful
+air of unearthliness which pervaded the thicker portions of the wood,
+as of some mystic underworld--half shadow and half dream. No, Lord
+Mallow could never forget it; nor yet the way that flying figure in
+Lincoln green led them by bog and swamp, over clay and gravel--through
+as many varieties of soil as if she had been trying to give them a
+practical lesson in geology; across snaky ditches and pebbly fords;
+through furze-bushes and thickets of holly; through everything likely
+to prove aggravating to the temper of a wellbred horse; and finally,
+before giving them breathing-time, she led them up the clayey side of a
+hill, as steep as a house, on the top of which she drew rein, and
+commanded them to admire the view.
+
+"This is Acres Down, and there are the Needles," she said, pointing her
+whip at the dim blue horizon. "If it were a clear day, and your sight
+were long enough, I daresay you would see Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney,
+and Sark. But, I think, to-day you must be content with the Needles.
+Can you see them?" she asked Lord Mallow.
+
+"See them!" exclaimed the Irishman. "I can see well enough to thread
+one of them if I wanted."
+
+"Now, you've seen the Isle of Wight," said Vixen. "That's a point
+accomplished. The ardent desire of everyone in the Forest is to see the
+Isle of Wight. They are continually mounting hills and gazing into
+space, in order to get a glimpse at that chalky little island. It seems
+the main object of everybody's existence."
+
+"They might as well go and live there at once, if they're so fond of
+it," suggested Lord Mallon.
+
+"Yes; and then they would be straining their eyes in the endeavour to
+see the Great Horse--that's a group of firs on the top of a hill, and
+one of our Forest seamarks. That frantic desire to behold distant
+objects has always seemed to me to be one of the feeblest tendencies of
+the human mind. Now you have seen the Needles, we have accomplished a
+solemn duty, and I may show you our woods."
+
+Vixen shook her rein and trotted recklessly down a slippery path,
+jumped a broad black ditch, and plunged into the recesses of the wood,
+Bullfinch and Mosstrooper following meekly.
+
+They went a wonderful round, winding in and out of Bratley Wood,
+piercing deep into the wintry glories of Mark Ash; through mud and moss
+and soft pitfalls, where the horses sank up to their hocks in withered
+leaves; avoiding bogs by a margin of a yard or so; up and down, under
+spreading branches, where the cattle line but just cleared the heads of
+the riders; across the blackened bracken; by shining hollies, whose
+silvery trunks stood up like obelisks out of a thicket of dwarf bushes:
+through groves, where the tall beech-trunks had a solemn look like the
+columns of some gigantic temple; then into wondrous plantations of
+Scotch firs, where the air was balmy as in summer, and no breath of the
+December wind penetrated the dense wall of foliage. Then to higher
+ground, where the wintry air blew keen again, and where there was a
+soft green lawn, studded with graceful conifers--cypress, deodora,
+Douglas fir--tall with a growth of thirty years; the elegant
+importations of an advanced civilisation. Anon by the gray lichened
+walls of a deserted garden, which had a strangely-romantic look, and
+was as suggestive of a dreamy idyllic world as a poem by Tennyson; and
+so down into the green-and-gray depths of Mark Ash again, but never
+returning over the same ground; and then up the hill to Vinny Ridge and
+the Heronry, where Captain Winstanley cracked his whip to scare the
+herons, and had the satisfaction of scaring his own and the other two
+horses, while the herons laughed him to scorn from their cradles in the
+tree-tops, and would not stir a feather for his gratification. Then by
+a long plantation to a wild stretch of common, where Vixen told her
+companions that they were safe for a good while, and set them an
+example by starting Arion across the short smooth turf at a
+hand-gallop. They pulled up just in time to escape a small gulf of moss
+and general sponginess, waded a stream or two, splashed through a good
+deal of spewy ground, and came to Queen's Bower; thence into the oak
+plantations of New Park; then across Gretnam Wood; and then at a smart
+trot along the road towards home.
+
+"I hope I haven't kept you out too long?" said Vixen politely.
+
+"We've only been five hours," answered the Captain with grim civility;
+"but if Mallow is not tired, I shall not complain."
+
+"I never enjoyed anything so much in my life, never," protested Lord
+Mallow.
+
+"Well, to-morrow we can shoot the pheasants. It will be a rest for us
+after this."
+
+"It will be dull work after the enchantments of to-day," said the
+Irishman.
+
+Captain Winstanley rode homewards a few paces in the rear of the other
+two, smiling to himself grimly, and humming a little song of Heine's:
+
+  "Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
+  Doch bleibt sie immer neu."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Rorie objects to Duets.
+
+Mrs. Winstanley's little dinner went off smoothly and pleasantly, as
+all such entertainments had done under the new _regime_. The Captain
+knew how to select his guests, as well as he knew how to compose a
+_menu_. People felt pleased with themselves and with their neighbours
+at his table. There was nothing heavy in the dinner or in the
+conversation; there were no long sittings over old port or particular
+claret. The wines were of the first quality; but there was no fuss made
+about them. Colonel Carteret remembered how he and the Squire had sat
+prosing over their port or Chateau Lafitte, and felt as if he were
+living in a new world--a world in which full-blooded friendship and
+boisterous hospitality were out of fashion. People whose talk had
+hitherto been intensely local--confined, for the most part to petty
+sessions, commoners' rights, hunting, and the parish church and
+schools--found themselves discussing the widest range of topics, from
+the prospect of a European war--that European war which has been
+impending more or less distinctly for the last twenty years--to the
+latest social scandal in the upper currents of London society. Captain
+and Mrs. Winstanley's country friends, inspired by one or two clever
+young men just imported from the London clubs, were surprised to
+discover how well they were able to criticise the latest productions in
+literature, art, and the drama; the newest results of scientific
+investigation; or the last record of African or Central Asian
+exploration. It was quite delightful to quiet country people, who went
+to London on an average once in three years, to find themselves talking
+so easily about the last famous picture, the latest action for libel in
+artistic circles, or the promised adaptation of Sardou's last comedy at
+a West End theatre, just as glibly as if they knew all about art, and
+had read every play of Sardou's.
+
+Roderick Vawdrey enjoyed himself wonderfully at this particular
+dinner-party, so long as the dinner lasted; for Captain Winstanley, by
+an oversight which made him inwardly savage all dinner-time, had placed
+Mr. Vawdrey and Miss Tempest side by side. There had been some
+confusion in his mind as he finished his plan of the table; his
+attention having been called away at the last moment, or this thing
+could not have happened--for nothing was farther from Captain
+Winstanley's intention than that Violet and her old playfellow should
+be happy in each other's society. And there they sat, smiling and
+sparkling at each other in the exuberance of youth and high spirits,
+interchanging little confidential remarks that were doubtless to the
+disparagement of some person or persons in the assembly. If dark
+electric glances shot from the covert of bent brows could have slain
+those two happy triflers, assuredly neither of them would have lived to
+the end of that dinner.
+
+"How do you like him?" asked Rorie, stooping to sniff at the big
+Marechal Niel bud, in the specimen glass by his plate.
+
+"Whom?"
+
+"The man who has Bullfinch."
+
+Lord Mallow was in the place of honour next his hostess. Involuntarily
+Violet glanced in that direction, and was startled to find the
+Irishman's good-humoured gaze meeting hers, just as if he had been
+watching her for the last half-hour.
+
+"How do I like him? Well, he seems very good-natured."
+
+"Seems good-natured. You ought to be able to give me a more definite
+answer by this time. You have lived in the same house with him--let me
+see, is it three or four days since he came?"
+
+"He has been here nearly a week."
+
+"A week! Why then you must know him as well as if he were your brother.
+There is no man living who could keep himself dark for a week. No; I
+don't believe the most inscrutable of men, born and bred in diplomatic
+circles, could keep the secret of a solitary failing from the eyes of
+those who live under the same roof with him for seven days. It would
+leak out somehow--if not at breakfast, at dinner. Man is a
+communicative animal, and so loves talking of himself that if he has
+committed murder he must tell somebody about it sooner or later. And as
+to that man," continued Rorie, with a contemptuous glance at the
+single-minded Lord Mallow, "he is a creature whom the merest beginner
+in the study of humanity would know by heart in half-an-hour."
+
+"What do you know about him?" asked Vixen laughing. "You have had more
+than half-an-hour for the study of his character."
+
+"I know ever so much more than I want to know."
+
+"Answered like a Greek oracle."
+
+"What, have you taken to reading Greek?"
+
+"No; but I know the oracles were a provoking set of creatures who
+answered every inquiry with an enigma. But I won't have you abuse Lord
+Mallow. He has been very kind to Bullfinch, and has promised me that he
+will never part with him. The dear old horse is to have a comfortable
+stable and kindly treatment to his dying day--not to be sent out to
+grass in his old age, to shiver in a dreary solitude, or to be scorched
+by the sun and tormented by the flies."
+
+"He has promised all that, has he? He would promise a good deal more, I
+daresay," muttered Rorie, stooping over his rosebud. "Do you think him
+handsome? Do women admire a fresh complexion and black whiskers, and
+that unmistakable air of a hairdresser's wax model endowed with
+animation?"
+
+"I see you consider him an idiot," said Vixen laughing. "But I assure
+you he is rather clever. He talks wonderfully about Ireland, and the
+reforms he is going to bring about for her."
+
+"Of course. Burke, and Curran, and Castlereagh, and O'Connell, and
+fifty more have failed to steer that lumbering old vessel off the
+mudbank on which she stranded at some time in the dark ages; in fact,
+nobody except Oliver Cromwell ever did understand how to make Ireland
+prosperous and respectable, and he began by depopulating her. And here
+is a fresh-coloured young man, with whiskers _a la cotelette de
+mouton_, who thinks he was born to be her pilot, and to navigate her
+into a peaceful haven. He is the sort of man who will begin by being
+the idol of a happy tenantry, and end by being shot from behind one of
+his own hedges."
+
+"I hope not," said Vixen, "for I am sure he means well. And I should
+like him to outlive Bullfinch."
+
+Roderick had been very happy all dinner-time. From the soups to the
+ice-puddings the moments had flown for him. It seemed the briefest
+dinner he had ever been at; and yet when the ladies rose to depart the
+silvery chime of the clock struck the half-hour after nine. But Lord
+Mallow's hour came later, in the drawing-room, where he contrived to
+hover over Violet, and fence her round from all other admirers for the
+rest of the evening. They sang their favourite duets together, to the
+delight of everyone except Rorie, who felt curiously savage at "I would
+that my love," and icily disapproving at "Greeting;" but vindictive to
+the verge of homicidal mania at "Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast!"
+
+"His 'plaidie,' indeed," he ejaculated inwardly. "The creature never
+possessed anything so comfortable or civilised. How preposterous it is
+to hear an Irishman sing Scotch songs. If an Irishman had a plaidie, he
+would pawn it for a dhrop o' the cratur."
+
+Later Violet and Lord Mallow sang a little duet by Masini, "_O, que la
+mer est belle!_" the daintiest, most bewitching music--such a melody as
+the Loreley might have sung when the Rhine flowed peacefully onward
+below mountain-peaks shining in the evening light, luring foolish
+fishermen to their doom. Everybody was delighted. It was just the kind
+of music to please the unlearned in the art. Mrs. Carteret came to the
+piano to compliment Violet.
+
+"I had no idea you could sing so sweetly," she said. "Why have you
+never sung to us before?"
+
+"Nobody ever asked me," Vixen answered frankly. "But indeed I am no
+singer."
+
+"You have one of the freshest, brightest voices I ever had the
+happiness of hearing," Lord Mallow exclaimed enthusiastically.
+
+He would have liked to go on singing duets for an indefinite period. He
+felt lifted into some strange and delightful region--a sphere of love
+and harmony--while he was mingling his voice with Violet's. It made the
+popular idea of heaven, as a place where there is nothing but
+singing--an eternal, untiring choir--clearer and more possible to him
+than it had ever seemed before. Paradise would be quite endurable if he
+and Violet might stand side by side in the serried ranks of choristers.
+There was quite a little crowd round the piano, shutting in Violet and
+Lord Hallow, and Roderick Vawdrey was not in it. He felt himself
+excluded, and held himself gloomingly apart, talking hunting talk with
+a man for whom he did not care twopence. Directly his carriage was
+announced--_sotto voce_ by the considerate Forbes, so as not to wound
+anybody's feelings by the suggestion that the festivity was on its last
+legs--Mr. Vawdrey went up to Mrs. Winstanley and took leave. He would
+not wait to say good-night to Violet. He only cast one glance in the
+direction of the piano, where the noble breadth of Mrs. Carteret's
+brocaded amber back obscured every remoter object, and then went away
+moodily, denouncing duet-singing as an abomination.
+
+When Lady Mabel asked him next day what kind of an evening he had had
+at the Abbey House, in a tone which implied that any entertainment
+there must be on a distinctly lower level as compared with the
+hospitalities of Ashbourne, he told her that it had been uncommonly
+slow.
+
+"How was that? You had some stupid person to take into dinner, perhaps?"
+
+"No; I went in with Violet."
+
+"And you and she are such old friends. You ought to get on very well
+together."
+
+Rorie reddened furiously. Happily he was standing with his back to the
+light in one of the orchid-houses, enjoying the drowsy warmth of the
+atmosphere, and Mabel was engrossed with the contemplation of a fine
+zygopetalum, which was just making up its mind to bloom.
+
+"Oh, yes, that was well enough; but the evening was disgustingly slow.
+There was too much music."
+
+"Classical?"
+
+"Lord knows. It was mostly French and German. I consider it an insult
+to people to ask them to your house, and then stick them down in their
+chairs, and say h--sh--h! every time they open their months. If people
+want to give amateur concerts, let them say so when they send out their
+invitations, and then one would know what one has to expect."
+
+"I am afraid the music must have been very bad to make you so cross,"
+said Lady Mabel, rather pleased that the evening at the Abbey House
+should have been a failure. "Who were the performers?"
+
+"Violet, and an Irish friend of Captain Winstanley's--a man with a rosy
+complexion and black whiskers--Lord Mallow."
+
+"Lord Mallow! I think I danced with him once or twice last season. He
+is rather distinguished as a politician, I believe, among the young
+Ireland party. Dreadfully radical."
+
+"He looks it," answered Rorie. "He has a loud voice and a loud laugh,
+and they seem to be making a great deal of him at the Abbey House."
+
+"'Tommy loves a lord,'" says Lady Mabel brightly. Rorie hadn't the
+faintest idea whence the quotation came. "I daresay the Winstanleys are
+rather glad to have Lord Mallow staying with them."
+
+"The Squire would have kicked him out of doors," muttered Rorie
+savagely.
+
+"But why? Is he so very objectionable? He waltzes beautifully, if I
+remember right; and I thought him rather a well-meaning young man."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing serious against him that I know of; only I don't
+think Squire Tempest would have liked a singing man any more than he
+would have liked a singing mouse."
+
+"I didn't know Miss Tempest sang," said Lady Mabel. "I thought she
+could do nothing but ride."
+
+"Oh, she has a very pretty voice, but one may have too much of a good
+thing, you know. One doesn't go out to dinner to hear people sing
+duets."
+
+"I'm afraid they must have given you a very bad dinner, or you would
+hardly be so cross. I know that is the way with papa. If the dinner is
+bad he abuses everything, and declares the ladies were all ugly."
+
+"Oh, the dinner was excellent, I believe. I'm not a connoisseur, like
+my uncle. People might give me the most wonderful dinner in the world,
+and I would hardly be the wiser; or they might give me a wretched one,
+and I should not feel particularly angry with them."
+
+The next day was Tuesday, and, as the Duchess and her daughter happened
+to be driving within a mile or so of the Abbey House, Lady Mabel
+suggested that they should call upon Mrs. Winstanley.
+
+"I am rather anxious to see the wild Irishman they have captured
+lately--Lord Mallow. We met him at Lady Dumdrum's, if you remember,
+mamma. I danced with him twice."
+
+"My dear Mabel, do you think I can remember all your partners?"
+
+"But Lord Mallow is rather celebrated. He makes very good speeches.
+Papa read one of them to us the other day when there was a great debate
+going on upon the Irish land question."
+
+The Duchess remembered being read to one evening after dinner, but the
+debates, as delivered by the Duke, had generally a somnolent effect
+upon his wife. She had a faint idea of the beginning, and struggled
+heroically to discover what the speakers were talking about; then came
+a soft confusion of sound, like the falling of waters; and the middle
+and end of the debate was dreamland. Lady Mabel was of a more energetic
+temper, and was interested in everything that could enlarge her sphere
+of knowledge, from a parliamentary debate to a Greek play.
+
+The Duchess had never in her life refused compliance with any wish of
+her daughter's, so the horses' heads were turned towards the Abbey
+House, along a smooth hard road through a pine wood, then through a
+lodge-gate into a forest of rhododendrons.
+
+"This is really a nicer place than Ashbourne, mamma," remarked Lady
+Mabel disapprovingly.
+
+It appeared to her quite a mistake in the arrangement of the universe
+that Violet Tempest should be heiress to a more picturesque estate than
+that which she, the Duke of Dovedale's only daughter, was to inherit.
+
+"My dear, Ashbourne is perfect. Everyone says so. The stables, the
+offices, the way the house is lighted and heated, the ventilation."
+
+"Yes, mamma; but those are details which nobody thinks about except an
+architect or a house-agent. Ashbourne is so revoltingly modern. It
+smells of stucco. It will take a century to tone it down. Now this fine
+old place is like a dream of the past; it is a poem in wood and stone.
+Ashbourne would be very well for a hunting-box for anyone who had three
+or four other places, as my father has; but when my time comes, and I
+have only Ashbourne, I'm afraid I shall hate it."
+
+"But you will have a choice of places by-and-by," said the Duchess
+consolingly "You will have Briarwood."
+
+"Briarwood is a degree uglier than Ashbourne," sighed Lady Mabel,
+leaning back in the carriage, wrapped to the chin in Russian sable, the
+image of discontent.
+
+There are moments in every life, as in Solomon's, when all seems
+vanity. Lady Mabel Ashbourne's life had been cloudless--a continual
+summer, an unchangeable Italian sky; and yet there were times when she
+was weary of it, when some voice within her murmured, "This is not
+enough." She was pretty, she was graceful, accomplished, gifted with a
+self-confidence that generally passed for wit; all the blood in her
+veins was the bluest of the blue, everybody bowed down to her, more or
+less, and paid her homage; the man she liked best in the world, and had
+so preferred from her childhood, was to be her husband; nobody had ever
+contradicted her, or hinted that she was less than perfect; and yet
+that mysterious and rebellious voice sometimes repeated, "It is not
+enough." She was like the woman in the German fairy tale, who,
+beginning as the wife of a half-starved fisherman, came, by fairy
+power, to be king, and then emperor, and then pope: and still was not
+contented, but languished for something more, aye, even to have the
+ordering of the sun and moon.
+
+The rebellious voice expostulated loudly this winter afternoon, as Lady
+Mabel's languid eyes scanned the dark shining rhododendron bushes,
+rising bank above bank, a veritable jungle, backed by tall beeches and
+towerlike Douglas firs. A blackbird was whistling joyously amongst the
+greenery, and a robin was singing on the other side of the drive. The
+sunlit sky was soft and pearly. It was one of those mild winters in
+which Christmas steals unawares upon the footprints of a lovely autumn.
+The legendary oak was doubtless in full bud at Cadenham, like its
+miraculous brother, the Glastonbury thorn.
+
+"I don't think any of my father's places can compare with this," Lady
+Mabel said irritably.
+
+She would not have minded the beauty of the grounds so much had they
+been the heritage of any other heiress than Violet Tempest.
+
+The old hall was full of people and voices when the Duchess and her
+daughter were announced. There was a momentary hush at their entrance,
+as at the advent of someone of importance, and Mrs. Winstanley came
+smiling out of the firelight to welcome them, in Theodore's last
+invention, which was a kind of skirt that necessitated a peculiar
+gliding motion in the wearer, and was built upon the lines of a
+mermaid's tail.
+
+"How good of you!" exclaimed Mrs. Winstanley.
+
+"We were coming through Lyndhurst, and could not resist the temptation
+of coming in to see you," said the Duchess graciously. "How do you do,
+Miss Tempest? Were you out with the hounds this morning? We met some
+people riding home."
+
+"I have never hunted since my father's death," Violet answered gravely;
+and the Duchess was charmed with the answer and the seriously tender
+look that accompanied it.
+
+Lord Mallow was standing before the hearth, looking remarkably handsome
+in full hunting costume. The well-worn scarlet coat and high black
+boots became him. He had enjoyed his first day with the Forest hounds,
+had escaped the bogs, and had avoided making an Absalom of himself
+among the spreading beechen boughs. Bullfinch had behaved superbly over
+his old ground.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Scobel were among those dusky figures grouped around the
+wide firelit hearth, where the piled-up logs testified to the Tempest
+common of estovers. Mr. Scobel was talking about the last advance
+movement of the Ritualists, and expatiating learnedly upon the
+Ornaments Rubric of 1559, and its bearing upon the Advertisements of
+1566, with a great deal more about King Edward's first Prayer-book, and
+the Act of Uniformity, to Colonel Carteret, who, from an antique
+conservative standpoint, regarded Ritualists, Spirit-rappers, and
+Shakers in about the same category; while Mrs. Scobel twittered
+cheerily about the parish and the schools to the Colonel's bulky wife,
+who was a liberal patroness of all philanthropic institutions in her
+neighbourhood.
+
+Lord Mallow came eagerly forward to recall himself to the memories of
+Lady Mabel and her mother.
+
+"I hope your grace has not forgotten me," he said; and the Duchess, who
+had not the faintest recollection of his face or figure, knew that this
+must be Lord Mallow. "I had the honour of being introduced to you at
+Lady Dumdrum's delightful ball."
+
+The Duchess said something gracious, and left Lord Mallow free to talk
+to Lady Mabel. He reminded her of that never to be, by him, forgotten
+waltz, and talked, in his low-pitched Irish voice, as if he had lived
+upon nothing but the recollection of it ever since.
+
+It was idiosyncratic of Lord Mallow that he could not talk to any young
+woman without seeming to adore her. At this very moment he thought
+Violet Tempest the one lovable and soul-entrancing woman the world held
+for him; yet at sight of Lady Mabel he behaved as if she and no other
+was his one particular star.
+
+"It was a nice dance, wasn't it? but there were too many people for the
+rooms," said Lady Mabel easily; "and I don't think the flowers were so
+prettily arranged as the year before. Do you?"
+
+"I was not there the year before."
+
+"No? I must confess to having been at three balls at Lady Dumdrum's.
+That makes me seem very old, does it not? Some young ladies in London
+make believe to be always in their first season. They put on a
+hoydenish freshness, and pretend to be delighted with everything, as if
+they were just out of the nursery."
+
+"That's a very good idea up to thirty," said Lord Mallow. "I should
+think it would hardly answer after."
+
+"Oh, after thirty they begin to be fond of horses and take to betting.
+I believe young ladies after thirty are the most desperate--what is
+that dreadful slang word?--plungers in society. How do you like our
+hunting?"
+
+"I like riding about the Forest amazingly; but I should hardly call it
+hunting, after Leicestershire. Of course that depends in a measure upon
+what you mean by hunting. If you only mean hounds pottering about after
+a fox, this might pass muster; but if your idea of hunting includes
+hard riding and five-barred gates, I should call the kind of thing you
+do here by another name."
+
+"Was my cousin, Mr. Vawdrey, out to-day?"
+
+"The M. F. H.? In the first flight. May I get you some tea?"
+
+"If you please. Mrs. Winstanley's tea is always so good."
+
+Mrs. Winstanley was supremely happy in officiating at her gipsy table,
+where the silver tea-kettle of Queen Anne's time was going through its
+usual sputtering performances. To sit in a fashionable gown--however
+difficult the gown might be to sit in--and dispense tea to a local
+duchess, was Mrs. Winstanley's loftiest idea of earthly happiness. Of
+course there might be a superior kind of happiness beyond earth; but to
+appreciate that the weak human soul would have to go through a
+troublesome ordeal in the way of preparation, as the gray cloth at
+Hoyle's printing-works is dashed about in gigantic vats, and whirled
+round upon mighty wheels, before it is ready for the reception of
+particular patterns and dyes.
+
+Lady Mabel and Lord Mallow had a longish chat in the deep-set window
+where Vixen watched for Rorie on his twenty-first birthday. The
+conversation came round to Irish politics somehow, and Lord Mallow was
+enraptured at discovering that Lady Mabel had read his speeches, or had
+heard them read. He had met many young ladies who professed to be
+interested in his Irish politics; but never before had he encountered
+one who seemed to know what she was talking about. Lord Mallow was
+enchanted. He had found his host's lively step-daughter stonily
+indifferent to the Hibernian cause. She had said "Poor things" once or
+twice, when he dilated on the wrongs of an oppressed people; but her
+ideas upon all Hibernian subjects were narrow. She seemed to imagine
+Ireland a vast expanse of bog chiefly inhabited by pigs.
+
+"There are mountains, are there not?" she remarked once; "and tourists
+go there? But people don't live there, do they?'
+
+"My dear Miss Tempest, there are charming country seats; if you were to
+see the outskirts of Waterford, or the hills above Cork, you would find
+almost as many fine mansions as in England."
+
+"Really?" exclaimed Vixen, with most bewitching incredulity; "but
+people don't live in them? Now I'm sure you cannot tell me honestly
+that anyone lives in Ireland. You, for instance, you talk most
+enthusiastically about your beautiful country, but you don't live in
+it."
+
+"I go there every year for the fishing."
+
+"Yes; but gentlemen will go to the most uncomfortable places for
+fishing--Norway, for example. You go to Ireland just as you go to
+Norway."
+
+"I admit that the fishing in Connemara is rather remote from
+civilisation----"
+
+"Of course. It is at the other end of everything. And then you go into
+the House of Commons, and rave about Ireland, just as if you loved her
+as I love the Forest, where I hope to live and die. I think all this
+wild enthusiasm about Ireland is the silliest thing in the world when
+it comes from the lips of landowners who won't pay their beloved
+country the compliment of six months' residence out of the twelve."
+
+After this Lord Mallow gave up all hope of sympathy from Miss Tempest.
+What could be expected from a young lady who could not understand
+patriotism in the abstract, but wanted to pin a man down for life to
+the spot of ground for which his soul burned with the ardour of an
+orator and a poet? Imagine Tom Moore compelled to live in a humble cot
+in the Vale of Avoca! He infinitely preferred his humdrum cottage in
+Wiltshire. Indeed, I believe it has been proved against him that he had
+never seen the Meeting of the Waters, and wrote about that famous scene
+from hearsay. Ireland has never had a poet as Irish as Burns and Scott
+were Scottish. Her whole-hearted, single-minded national bard has yet
+to be born.
+
+It was a relief, therefore, to Lord Mallow's active mind to find
+himself in conversation with a young lady who really cared for his
+subject and understood him. He could have talked to Lady Mabel for
+ever. The limits of five-o'clock tea were far too narrow. He was
+delighted when the Duchess paused as she was going away, and said:
+
+"I hope you will come and see us at Ashbourne, Lord Mallow; the Duke
+will be very pleased to know you."
+
+Lord Mallow murmured something expressive of a mild ecstasy, and the
+Duchess swept onward, like an Australian clipper with all sails set,
+Lady Mabel gliding like a neat little pinnace in her wake.
+
+Lord Mallow was glad when the next day's post brought him a card of
+invitation to the ducal dinner on December the 31st. He fancied that he
+was indebted to Lady Mabel for this civility.
+
+"You are going, of course," he said to Violet, twisting the card
+between his fingers meditatively.
+
+"I believe I am asked."
+
+"She is," answered Mrs. Winstanley, from her seat behind the urn; "and
+I consider, under the circumstances, it is extremely kind of the
+Duchess to invite her."
+
+"Why?" asked Lord Mallow, intensely mystified.
+
+"Why, the truth is, my dear Lord Mallow, that Violet is in an anomalous
+position. She has been to Lady Southminster's ball, and a great many
+parties about here. She is out and yet not out, if you understand."
+
+Lord Mallow looked as if he was very far from understanding.
+
+"She has never been presented," explained Mrs. Winstanley. "It is too
+dreadful to think of. People would call me the most neglectful of
+mothers. But the season before last seemed too soon alter dear Edward's
+death, and last season, well"--blushing and hesitating a little--"my
+mind was so much occupied, and Violet herself was so indifferent about
+it, that somehow or other the time slipped by and the thing was not
+done. I feel myself awfully to blame--almost as much so as if I had
+neglected her confirmation. But early next season--at the very first
+drawing-room, if possible--she must be presented, and then I shall feel
+a great deal more comfortable in my mind."
+
+"I don't think it matters one little bit," said Lord Mallow, with
+appalling recklessness.
+
+"It would matter immensely if we were travelling. Violet could not be
+presented at any foreign court, or invited to any court ball. She would
+be an outcast. I shall have to be presented myself, on my marriage with
+Captain Winstanley. We shall go to London early in the spring. Conrad
+will take a small house in Mayfair."
+
+"If I can get one," said the captain doubtfully. "Small houses in
+Mayfair are as hard to get nowadays as black pearls--and as dear."
+
+"I am charmed to think you will be in town," exclaimed Lord Mallow;
+"and, perhaps, some night when there is an Irish question on, you and
+Miss Tempest might be induced to come to the Ladies' Gallery. Some
+ladies rather enjoy a spirited debate."
+
+"I should like it amazingly," cried Violet. "You are awfully rude to
+one another, are you not? And you imitate cocks and hens; and do all
+manner of dreadful things. It must be capital fun."
+
+This was not at all the kind of appreciation Lord Mallow desired.
+
+"Oh, yes; we are excruciatingly funny sometimes, I daresay, without
+knowing it," he said, with a mortified air.
+
+He was getting on the friendliest terms with Violet. He was almost as
+much at home with her as Rorie was, except that she never called him by
+his christian-name, nor flashed at him those lovely mirth-provoking
+glances which he surprised sometimes on their way to Mr. Vawdrey. Those
+two had a hundred small jokes and secrets that dated back to Vixen's
+childhood. How could a new-comer hope to be on such delightful terms
+with her? Lord Mallow felt this, and hated Roderick Vawdrey as
+intensely as it was possible for a nature radically good and generous
+to hate even a favoured rival. That Roderick was his rival, and was
+favoured, were two ideas of which Lord Mallow could not dispossess
+himself, notwithstanding the established fact of Mr. Vawdrey's
+engagement to his cousin.
+
+"A good many men begin life by being engaged to their cousins,"
+reflected Lord Mallow. "A man's relations take it into their heads to
+keep an estate in the family, and he is forthwith set at his cousin
+like an unwilling terrier at a rat. I don't at all feel as if this
+young man were permanently disposed of, in spite of all their talk; and
+I'm very sure Miss Tempest likes him better than I should approve of
+were I the cousin."
+
+While he loitered over his second cup of coffee, with the ducal card of
+invitation in his hand, it seemed to him a good opportunity for talking
+about Lady Mabel.
+
+"A very elegant girl, Lady Mabel," he said; "and remarkably clever. I
+never talked to a young woman, or an old one either, who knew so much
+about Ireland. She's engaged to that gawky cousin, isn't she?"
+
+Vixen shot an indignant look at him, and pouted her rosy underlip.
+
+"You mean young Vawdrey. Yes; it is quite an old engagement. They were
+affianced to each other in their cradles, I believe," answered Captain
+Winstanley.
+
+"Just what I should have imagined," said Lord Mallow.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they seem to care so little for each other now."
+
+"Oh but, dear Lord Mallow, remember Lady Mabel Ashbourne is too
+well-bred to go about the world advertising her affection for her
+future husband," remonstrated Mrs. Winstanley. "I'm sure, if you had
+seen us before our marriage, you would never have guessed from our
+manner to each other that Conrad and I were engaged. You would not have
+a lady behave like a housemaid with her 'young man.' I believe in that
+class of life they always sit with their arms round each other's waists
+at evening parties."
+
+"I would have a lady show that she has a heart, and is not ashamed to
+acknowledge its master," said Lord Mallow, with his eyes on Vixen, who
+sat stolidly silent, pale with anger. "However, we will put down Lady
+Mabel's seeming coldness to good-breeding. But as to Mr. Vawdrey, all I
+can say about him is, that he may be in love with his cousin's estate,
+but he is certainly not in love with his cousin."
+
+This was more than Vixen could brook.
+
+"Mr. Vawdrey is a gentleman, with a fine estate of his own!" she cried.
+"How dare you impute such meanness to him?"
+
+"It may be mean, but it is the commonest thing in life."
+
+"Yes, among adventurers who have no other road to fortune than by
+marrying for money; but do you suppose it can matter to Roderick
+whether he has a thousand acres less or more, or two houses instead of
+one? He is going to marry Lady Mabel because it was the dearest wish of
+his mother's heart, and because she is perfect, and proper, and
+accomplished, and wonderfully clever--you said as much yourself--and
+exactly the kind of wife that a young man would be proud of. There are
+reasons enough, I should hope," concluded Vixen indignantly.
+
+She had spoken breathlessly, in gasps of a few words at a time, and her
+eyes flashed their angriest light upon the astounded Irishman.
+
+"Not half a reason if he does not love her," he answered boldly. "But I
+believe young Englishmen of the present day marry for reason and not
+for love. Cupid has been cashiered in favour of Minerva. Foolish
+marriages are out of fashion. Nobody ever thinks of love in a cottage.
+First, there are no more cottages; and secondly, there is no more love."
+
+Christmas was close at hand: a trying time for Vixen, who remembered
+the jolly old Christmas of days gone by, when the poor from all the
+surrounding villages came to receive the Squire's lavish bounty, and
+not even the tramp or the cadger was sent empty-handed away. Under the
+new master all was done by line and rule. The distribution of coals and
+blankets took place down in Beechdale under Mr. and Mrs. Scobel's
+management. Vixen went about from cottage to cottage, in the wintry
+dusk, giving her small offerings out of her scanty allowance of
+pocket-money, which Captain Winstanley had put at the lowest figure he
+decently could.
+
+"What can Violet want with pocket-money?" he asked, when he discussed
+the subject with his wife. "Your dressmaker supplies all her gowns, and
+bonnets, and hats. You give her gloves--everything. Nobody calls upon
+her for anything."
+
+"Her papa always gave her a good deal of money," pleaded Mrs.
+Winstanley. "I think she gave it almost all away to the poor."
+
+"Naturally. She went about pauperising honest people because she had
+more money than she knew what to do with. Let her have ten pounds a
+quarter to buy gloves and eau-de-cologne, writing-paper, and
+postage-stamps, and trifles of that kind. She can't do much harm with
+that, and it is quite as much as you can afford, since we have both
+made up our minds to live within our incomes."
+
+Mrs. Winstanley sighed and assented, as she was wont to do. It seemed
+hard that there should be this need of economy, but it was in a manner
+Violet's fault that they were all thus restricted, since she was to
+take so much, and to reduce her mother almost to penury by-and-by.
+
+"I don't know what would become of me without Conrad's care," thought
+the dutiful wife.
+
+Going among her poor this Christmas, with almost empty hands, Violet
+Tempest discovered what it was to be really loved. Honest eyes
+brightened none the less at her coming, the little children flocked as
+fondly to her knee. The changes at the Abbey House were very well
+understood. They were all put down to Captain Winstanley's account; and
+many a simple heart burned with indignation at the idea that the
+Squire's golden-haired daughter was being "put upon."
+
+One bright afternoon in the Christmas holidays Vixen consented, half
+reluctantly, to let Lord Mallow accompany her in her visits among the
+familiar faces. That was a rare day for the Squire's old pensioners.
+The Irishman's pockets were full of half-crowns and florins and
+sixpences for the rosy-faced, bare-footed, dirty, happy children.
+
+"It puts me in mind of the old country," he said, when he had made
+acquaintance with the interior of half-a-dozen cottages. "The people
+seem just as kind and friendly, and improvident, and idle, and
+happy-go-lucky as my friends at home. That old Sassenach Forester, now,
+that we saw sitting in the winter sun, drinking his noon-day pint, on a
+bench outside a rustic beer-shop, looking the very image of rustic
+enjoyment--what Irishman could take life more lightly or seem better
+pleased with himself? a freeborn child of the sun and wind, ready to
+earn his living anyhow, except by the work of his hands. Yes, Miss
+Tempest, I feel a national affinity to your children of the Forest. I
+wish I were Mr. Vawdrey, and bound to spend my life here."
+
+"Why, what would life be to you if you had not Ould Ireland to fight
+for?" cried Vixen, smiling at him.
+
+"Life would be simply perfect for me if I had----"
+
+"What?" asked Vixen, as he came to a sudden stop.
+
+"The dearest wish of my heart. But I dare not tell you what that is yet
+awhile."
+
+Vixen felt very sorry she had asked the question. She looked wildly
+round for another cottage. They had just done the last habitation in a
+straggling village in the heart of the woods. There was nothing human
+in sight by which the conversation might be diverted from the
+uncomfortable turn it had just taken. Yes; yonder under the beechen
+boughs Vixen descried a small child with red legs, like a Jersey
+partridge, dragging a smaller child by the arm, ankle-deep in the
+sodden leaves. To see them, and to dart across the wet grass towards
+them were almost simultaneous.
+
+"Tommy," cried Vixen, seizing the red-legged child, "why do you never
+come to the Abbey House?"
+
+"Because Mrs. Trimmer says there's nothing for me," lisped the infant.
+"The new master sells the milk up in Lunnun."
+
+"Laudable economy," exclaimed Vixen to Lord Mallow, who had followed
+her into the damp woodland and heard the boy's answer. "The poor old
+Abbey House can hardly know itself under such admirable management."
+
+"There is as big a house where you might do what you liked; yes, and
+give away the cows as well as the milk, if you pleased, and none should
+say you nay," said Lord Mallow in a low voice, full of unaffected
+tenderness.
+
+"Oh, please don't!" cried Vixen; "don't speak too kindly. I feel
+sometimes as if one little kind word too much would make me cry like a
+child. It's the last straw, you know, that crushes the camel; and I
+hate myself for being so weak and foolish."
+
+After this Vixen walked home as if she had been winning a match, and
+Lord Mallow, for his life, dared not say another tender word.
+
+This was their last _tete-a-tete_ for some time. Christmas came with
+its festivities, all of a placid and eminently well-bred character, and
+then came the last day of the year and the dinner at Ashbourne.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+"Fading in Music."
+
+"Mrs. Winstanley, on her marriage, by the Duchess of Dovedale."
+
+That was the sentence that went on repeating itself like a cabalistic
+formula in Pamela Winstanley's mind, as her carriage drove through the
+dark silent woods to Ashbourne on the last night of the year.
+
+A small idea had taken possession of her small mind. The Duchess was
+the fittest person to present her to her gracious mistress, or her
+gracious mistress's representative, at the first drawing-room of the
+coming season. Mrs. Winstanley had old friends, friends who had known
+her in her girlhood, who would have been happy to undertake the office.
+Captain Winstanley had an ancient female relative, living in a fossil
+state at Hampton Court, and vaguely spoken of as "a connection," who
+would willingly emerge from her aristocratic hermitage to present her
+kinsman's bride to her sovereign, and whom the Captain deemed the
+proper sponsor for his wife on that solemn occasion. But what social
+value had a fossilised Lady Susan Winstanley, of whom an outside world
+knew nothing, when weighed in the balance with the Duchess of Dovedale?
+No; Mrs. Winstanley felt that to be presented by the Duchess was the
+one thing needful to her happiness.
+
+It was a dinner of thirty people; quite a state dinner. The finest and
+newest orchids had been brought out of their houses, and the
+dinner-table looked like a tropical forest in little. Vixen went in to
+dinner with Lord Ellangowan, which was an unappreciated honour, as that
+nobleman had very little to say for himself, except under extreme
+pressure, and in his normal state could only smile and look
+good-natured. Roderick Vawdrey was ever so far away, between his
+betrothed and an enormous dowager in sky-blue velvet and diamonds.
+
+After dinner there was music. Lady Mabel played a dreary minor melody,
+chiefly remarkable for its delicate modulation from sharps to flats and
+back again. A large gentleman sang an Italian buffo song, at which the
+company smiled tepidly; a small young lady sighed and languished
+through "Non e ver;" and then Miss Tempest and Lord Mallow sang a duet.
+
+This was the success of the evening. They were asked to sing again and
+again. They were allowed to monopolise the piano; and before the
+evening was over everyone had decided that Lord Mallow and Miss Tempest
+were engaged. Only the voices of plighted lovers could be expected to
+harmonise as well as that.
+
+"They must have sung very often together," said the Duchess to Mrs.
+Winstanley.
+
+"Only within the last fortnight. Lord Mallow never stayed with us
+before, you know. He is my husband's friend. They were
+brother-officers, and have known each other a long time. Lord Mallow
+insists upon Violet singing every evening. He is passionately fond of
+music."
+
+"Very pleasant," murmured the Duchess approvingly: and then she glided
+on to shed the sunshine of her presence upon another group of guests.
+
+Carriages began to be announced at eleven--that is to say, about
+half-an-hour after the gentlemen had left the dining-room--but the Duke
+insisted that people should stop till twelve.
+
+"We must see the old year out," he said. "It is a lovely night. We can
+go out on the terrace and hear the Ringwood bells."
+
+This is how Violet and Lord Mallow happened to sing so many duets.
+There was plenty of time for music during the hour before midnight.
+After the singing, a rash young gentleman, pining to distinguish
+himself somehow--a young man with a pimply complexion, who had said
+with Don Carlos, "Three-and-twenty years of age, and nothing done for
+immortality"--recited Tennyson's "Farewell to the Old Year," in a voice
+which was like anything but a trumpet, and with gesticulation painfully
+suggestive of Saint Vitus.
+
+The long suite of rooms terminated in the orangery, a substantial stone
+building with tesselated pavement, and wide windows opening on the
+terrace. The night was wondrously mild. The full moon shed her tender
+light upon the dark Forest, the shining water-pools, the distant
+blackness of a group of ancient yew-trees on the crest of a hill.
+Ashbourne stood high, and the view from the terrace was at all times
+magnificent, but perhaps finest of all in the moonlight.
+
+The younger guests wandered softly in and out of the rooms, and looked
+at the golden oranges glimmering against their dark leaves, and put
+themselves into positions that suggested the possibility of flirtation.
+Young ladies whose study of German literature had never gone beyond
+Ollendorff gazed pensively at the oranges, and murmured the song of
+Mignon. Couples of maturer growth whispered the details of unsavoury
+scandals behind perfumed fans.
+
+Vixen and Rorie were among these roving couples. Violet had left the
+piano, and Roderick was off duty. Lady Mabel and Lord Mallow were deep
+in the wrongs of Ireland. Captain Winstanley was talking agriculture
+with the Duke, whose mind was sorely exercised about guano.
+
+"My dear sir, in a few years we shall have used up all the guano, and
+then what can become of us?" demanded the Duke. "Talk about our
+exhausting our coal! What is that compared with the exhaustion of
+guano? We may learn to exist without fires. Our winters are becoming
+milder; our young men are going in for athletics; they can keep
+themselves warm upon bicycles. And then we have the gigantic
+coal-fields of America, the vast basin of the Mississippi to fall back
+upon, with ever-increasing facilities in the mode of transport. But
+civilisation must come to a deadlock when we have no more guano. Our
+grass, our turnips, our mangel, must deteriorate, We shall have no more
+prize cattle. It is too awful to contemplate."
+
+"But do you really consider such a calamity at all probable, Duke?"
+asked the Captain.
+
+"Probable, sir? It is inevitable. In 1868 the Chincha Islands were
+estimated to contain about six million tons of guano. The rate of
+exportation had at that time risen to four hundred thousand tons per
+annum. At this rate the three islands will be completely exhausted by
+the year 1888, and England will have to exist without guano. The glory
+of the English people, as breeders of prize oxen, will have departed."
+
+"Chemistry will have discovered new fertilisers by that time,"
+suggested the Captain, in a comforting tone.
+
+"Sir," replied the Duke severely, "the discoveries of modern science
+tend to the chimerical rather than the practical. Your modern
+scientists can liquefy oxygen, they can light a city with electricity,
+but they cannot give me anything to increase the size and succulence of
+my turnips. Virgil knew as much about agriculture as your modern
+chemist."
+
+While the Duke was holding forth about guano, Vixen and Rorie were on
+the terrace, in the stillness and moonlight. There was hardly a breath
+of wind. It might have been a summer evening. Vixen was shrouded from
+head to foot in a white cloak which Rorie had fetched from the room
+where the ladies had left their wraps. She looked all white and solemn
+in the moonlight, like a sheeted ghost.
+
+Although Mr. Vawdrey had been civil enough to go in quest of Violet's
+cloak, and had seemed especially desirous of bringing her to the
+terrace, he was by no means delightful now he had got her there. They
+took a turn or two in silence, broken only by a brief remark about the
+beauty of the night, and the extent of the prospect.
+
+"I think it is the finest view in the Forest," said Vixen, dwelling on
+the subject for lack of anything else to say. "You must be very fond of
+Ashbourne."
+
+"I don't exactly recognise the necessity. The view is superb, no doubt;
+but the house is frightfully commonplace. It is a little better than
+Briarwood. That is about all which an enthusiastic admirer could
+advance in its favour. How much longer does Lord Mallow mean to take up
+his abode with you?"
+
+Vixen shrugged her cloaked shoulders with an action that seemed to
+express contemptuous carelessness.
+
+"I haven't the least idea. That is no business of mine, you know."
+
+"I don't know anything of the kind," retorted Rorie captiously. "I
+should have thought it was very much your business."
+
+"Should you, really?" said Vixen mockingly.
+
+If the gentleman's temper was execrable, the lady's mood was not too
+amiable.
+
+"Yes. Are not you the load-star? It is your presence that makes the
+Abbey House pleasant to him. Who can wonder that he protracts his stay?"
+
+"He has been with us a little more than a fortnight."
+
+"He has been with you an age. Mortals who are taken up to Paradise
+seldom stay so long. Sweet dreams are not so long. A fortnight in the
+same house with you, meeting with you at breakfast, parting with you at
+midnight, seeing you at noontide and afternoon, walking with you,
+riding with you, singing with you, kneeling down to family prayer at
+your side, mixing his 'Amen' with yours; why he might as well be your
+husband at once. He has as much delight in your society."
+
+"You forget the hours in which he is shooting pheasants and playing
+billiards."
+
+"Glimpses of purgatory, which make his heaven all the more divine,"
+said Rorie. "Well, it is none of my business, as you said just now.
+There are people born to be happy, I suppose; creatures that come into
+the world under a lucky star."
+
+"Undoubtedly, and among them notably Mr. Vawdrey, who has everything
+that the heart of a reasonable man can desire."
+
+"So had Solomon, and yet he made his moan."
+
+"Oh, there is always a crumpled rose-leaf in everybody's bed. And if
+the rose-leaves were all smooth, a man would crumple one on purpose, in
+order to have something to grumble about. Hark, Rorie!" cried Vixen,
+with a sudden change of tone, as the first silvery chime of Ringwood
+bells came floating over the woodland distance--the low moon-lit hills;
+"don't be cross. The old year is dying. Remember the dear days that are
+gone, when you and I used to think a new year a thing to be glad about.
+And now, what can the new years bring us half so good as that which the
+old ones have taken away?"
+
+She had slipped her little gloved hand through his arm, and drawn very
+near to him, moved by tender thoughts of the past. He looked down at
+her with eyes from which all anger had vanished. There was only love in
+them--deep love; love such as a very affectionate brother might
+perchance give his only sister--but it must be owned that brothers
+capable of such love are rare.
+
+"No, child," he murmured sadly. "Years to come can bring us nothing so
+good or so dear as the past. Every new year will drift us farther."
+
+They were standing at the end of the terrace farthest from the orangery
+windows, out of which the Duchess and her visitors came trooping to
+hear the Ringwood chimes. Rorie and Vixen kept quite apart from the
+rest. They stood silent, arm-in-arm, looking across the landscape
+towards the winding Avon and the quiet market-town, hidden from them by
+intervening hill. Yonder, nestling among those grassy hills, lies
+Moyles Court, the good old English manor-house where noble Alice Lisle
+sheltered the fugitives from Sedgemoor; paying for that one act of
+womanly hospitality with her life. Farther away, on the banks of the
+Avon, is the quiet churchyard where that gentle martyr of Jeffreys's
+lust for blood takes her long rest. The creeping spleenwort thrives
+amidst the gray stones of her tomb. To Vixen these things were so
+familiar, that it was as if she could see them with her bodily eyes, as
+she looked across the distance, with its mysterious shadows, its
+patches of silver light.
+
+The bells chimed on with their tender cadence, half joyous, half
+sorrowful. The shallower spirits among the guests chattered about the
+beauty of the night, and the sweetness of the bells. Deeper souls were
+silent, full of saddest thoughts. Who is there who has not lost
+something in the years gone by, which earth's longest future cannot
+restore? Only eternity can give back the ravished treasures of the dead
+years.
+
+Violet's lips trembled and were dumb. Roderick saw the tears rolling
+down her pale cheeks, and offered no word of consolation. He knew that
+she was thinking of her father.
+
+"Dear old Squire," he murmured gently, after an interval of silence.
+"How good he was to me, and how fondly I loved him."
+
+That speech was the sweetest comfort he could have offered. Vixen gave
+his arm a grateful hug.
+
+"Thank God there is someone who remembers him, besides his dogs and
+me!" she exclaimed; and then she hastily dried her tears, and made
+herself ready to meet Lord Mallow and Lady Mabel Ashbourne, who were
+coming along the terrace towards them, talking gaily. Lord Mallow had a
+much wider range of subjects than Mr. Vawdrey. He had read more, and
+could keep pace with Lady Mabel in her highest flights; science,
+literature, politics, were all as one to him. He had crammed his
+vigorous young mind with everything which it behoved a man panting for
+parliamentary distinction to know.
+
+"Where have you two people been hiding yourselves for the last half
+hour?" asked Lady Mabel. "You were wanted badly just now for 'Blow,
+Gentle Gales.' I know you can manage the bass, Rorie, when you like."
+
+"'Lo, behold a pennant waving!'" sang Rorie in deep full tones. "Yes, I
+can manage that much, at a push. You seem music mad to-night, Mabel.
+The old year is making a swan-like end--fading in music."
+
+Rorie and Vixen were still standing arm-in-arm; rather too much as if
+they belonged to each other, Lady Mabel thought. The attitude was
+hardly in good taste, according to Lady Mabel's law of taste, which was
+a code as strict as Draco's.
+
+The bells rang on.
+
+"The new year has come!" cried the Duke. "Let us all shake hands in the
+friendly German fashion."
+
+On this there was a general shaking of hands, which appeared to last a
+long time. It seemed rather as if the young people of opposite sexes
+shook hands with each other more than once. Lord Mallow would hardly
+let Violet's hand go, once having got it in his hearty grasp.
+
+"Hail to the first new year we greet together," he said softly. "May it
+not be the last. I feel that it must not, cannot be the last."
+
+"You are wiser than I, then," Vixen answered coldly; "for my feelings
+tell me nothing about the future--except"--and here her face beamed at
+him with a lovely smile--"except that you will be kind to Bullfinch."
+
+"If I were an emperor I would make him a consul," answered the Irishman.
+
+He had contrived to separate Roderick and Vixen. The young man had
+returned to his allegiance, and was escorting Lady Mabel back to the
+house. Everybody began to feel chilly, now that the bells were silent,
+and there was a general hurrying off to the carriages, which were
+standing in an oval ring round a group of deodoras in front of the
+porch on the other side of the house.
+
+Rorie and Vixen met no more that night. Lord Mallow took her to her
+carriage, and sat opposite her and talked to her during the homewards
+drive. Captain Winstanley was smoking a cigar on the box. His wife
+slumbered peacefully.
+
+"I think I may be satisfied with Theodore," she said, as she composed
+herself for sleep; "my dress was not quite the worst in the room, was
+it, Violet?"
+
+"It was lovely, mamma. You can make yourself quite happy," answered
+Vixen truthfully; whereupon the matron breathed a gentle sigh of
+content, and lapsed into slumber.
+
+They had the Boldrewood Road before them, a long hilly road cleaving
+the very heart of the Forest; a road full of ghosts at the best of
+times, but offering a Walpurgis revel of phantoms on such a night as
+this to the eye of the belated wanderer. How ghostly the deer were, as
+they skimmed across the road and flitted away into dim distances,
+mixing with and melting into the shadows of the trees. The little gray
+rabbits, sitting up on end, were like circles of hobgoblins that
+dispersed and vanished at the approach of mortals. The leafless old
+hawthorns, rugged and crooked, silvered by the moonlight, were most
+ghostlike of all. They took every form, from the most unearthly to the
+most grotesquely human.
+
+Violet sat wrapped in her furred white mantle, watching the road as
+intently as if she had never seen it before. She never could grow tired
+of these things. She loved them with a love which was part of her
+nature.
+
+"What a delightful evening, was it not?" asked Lord Mallow.
+
+"I suppose it was very nice," answered Violet coolly; "but I have no
+standard of comparison. It was my first dinner at Ashbourne."
+
+"What a remarkably clever girl Lady Mabel is. Mr. Vawdrey ought to
+consider himself extremely fortunate."
+
+"I have never heard him say that he does not so consider himself."
+
+"Naturally. But I think he might be a little more enthusiastic. He is
+the coolest lover I ever saw."
+
+"Perhaps you judge him by comparison with Irish lovers. Your nation is
+more demonstrative than ours."
+
+"Oh, an Irish girl would cashier such a fellow as Mr. Vawdrey. But I
+may possibly misjudge him. You ought to know more about him than I. You
+have known him----"
+
+"All my life," said Violet simply. "I know that he is good, and stanch
+and true, that he honoured his mother, and that he will make Lady Mabel
+Ashbourne a very good husband. Perhaps if she were a little less clever
+and a little more human, he might be happier with her; but no doubt
+that will all come right in time."
+
+"Any way it will be all the same in a century or so," assented Lord
+Mallow. "We are going to have lovely weather as long as this moon
+lasts, I believe. Will you go for a long ride to-morrow--like that
+first ride of ours?"
+
+"When I took you all over the world for sport?" said Vixen laughing. "I
+wonder you are inclined to trust me, after that. If Captain Winstanley
+likes I don't mind being your guide again to-morrow."
+
+"Captain Winstanley shall like. I'll answer for that. I would make his
+life unendurable if he were to refuse."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Crying for the moon.
+
+Despite the glorious moonlight night which ushered in the new-born
+year, the first day of that year was abominable; a day of hopeless,
+incessant rain, falling from a leaden sky in which there was never a
+break, not a stray gleam of sunshine from morn till eve.
+
+"The new year is like Shakespeare's Richard," said Lord Mallow, when he
+stood in the porch after breakfast, surveying the horizon. "'Tetchy and
+wayward was his infancy.' I never experienced anything so provoking. I
+was dreaming all night of our ride."
+
+"Were you not afraid of being like that dreadful man in 'Locksley
+Hall'?--
+
+  Like a dog, he hunts in dreams,"
+
+asked Vixen mockingly.
+
+She was standing on the threshold, playing with Argus, looking the
+picture of healthful beauty, in her dark green cloth dress and plain
+linen collar. All Vixen's morning costumes were of the simplest and
+neatest; a compact style of dress which interfered with none of her
+rural amusements. She could romp with her dog, make her round of the
+stables, work in the garden, ramble in the Forest, without fear of
+dilapidated flounces or dishevelled laces and ribbons.
+
+"Violet's morning-dresses are so dreadfully strong-minded," complained
+Mrs. Winstanley. "To look at her, one would almost think that she was
+the kind of girl to go round the country lecturing upon woman's rights."
+
+"No ride this morning," said Captain Winstanley, coming into the hall,
+with a bundle of letters in his hand. "I shall go to my den, and do a
+morning's letter-writing and accountancy--unless you want me for a shy
+at the pheasants, Mallow?"
+
+"Let the pheasants be at rest for the first day of the year," answered
+Lord Mallow. "I am sure you would rather be fetching up your arrears of
+correspondence than shooting at dejected birds in a damp plantation;
+and I am luxurious enough to prefer staying indoors, if the ladies will
+have me. I can help Miss Tempest to wind her wools."
+
+"Thanks, but I never do any wool-work. Mamma is the artist in that
+line."
+
+"Then I place myself unreservedly at Mrs. Winstanley's feet."
+
+"You are too good," sighed the fair matron, from her arm-chair by the
+hearth; "but I shall not touch my crewels to-day. I have one of my
+nervous headaches. It is a penalty I too often have to pay for the
+pleasures of society. I'm afraid I shall have to lie down for an hour
+or two."
+
+And with a languid sigh Mrs. Winstanley wrapped her China crape shawl
+round her, and went slowly upstairs, leaving Violet and Lord Mallow in
+sole possession of the great oak-panelled hall; the lady looking at the
+rain from her favourite perch in the deep window-seat, the gentleman
+contemplating the same prospect from the open door. It was one of those
+mild winter mornings when a huge wood fire is a cheerful feature in the
+scene, but hardly essential to comfort.
+
+Vixen thought of that long rainy day, years ago, the day on which
+Roderick Vawdrey came of age. How well she remembered sitting in that
+very window, watching the ceaseless rain, with a chilly sense of having
+been forgotten and neglected by her old companion. And then, in the
+gloaming, just when she had lost all hope of seeing him, he had come
+leaping in out of the wet night, like a lion from his lair, and had
+taken her in his arms and kissed her before she knew what he was doing.
+
+Her cheeks crimsoned even to-day at the memory of that kiss. It had
+seemed a small thing then. Now it seemed awful--a burning spot of shame
+upon the whiteness of her youth.
+
+"He must have thought I was very fond of him, or he would not have
+dared to treat me so," she told herself. "But then we had been
+playfellows so long. I had teased him, and he had plagued me; and we
+had been really like brother and sister. Poor Rorie! If we could have
+always been young we should have been better friends."
+
+"How thoughtful you seem this morning, Miss Tempest," said a voice
+behind Vixen's shoulder.
+
+"Do I?" she asked, turning quickly round. "New Year's Day is a time to
+make one thoughtful. It is like beginning a new chapter in the volume
+of life, and one cannot help speculating as to what the chapter is to
+be about."
+
+"For you it ought to be a story full of happiness."
+
+"Ah, but you don't know my history. I had such a happy childhood. I
+drained my cup of bliss before I was a woman, and there is nothing left
+for me but the dregs, and they--they are dust and ashes."
+
+There was an intensity of bitterness in her tone that moved him beyond
+his power of self-control. That she--so fair, so lovely, so deeply dear
+to him already; she for whom life should be one summer-day of unclouded
+gladness--that she should give expression to a rooted sorrow was more
+than his patience could bear.
+
+"Violet, you must not speak thus; you wound me to the heart. Oh, my
+love, my love, you were born to be the giver of gladness, the centre of
+joy and delight. Grief should never touch you; sorrow and pain should
+never come near you. You are a creature of happiness and light."
+
+"Don't!" cried Vixen vehemently. "Oh, pray don't. It is all
+vain--useless. My life is marked out for me. No one can alter it. Pray
+do not lower yourself by one word more. You will be sorry--angry with
+yourself and me--afterwards."
+
+"Violet, I must speak."
+
+"To what end? My fate is as fixed as the stars. No one can change it."
+
+"No mortal perhaps, Violet. But Love can. Love is a god. Oh, my
+darling, I have learnt to love you dearly and fondly in this little
+while, and I mean to win you. It shall go hard with me if I do not
+succeed. Dear love, if truth and constancy can conquer fate, I ought to
+be able to win you. There is no one else, is there, Violet?" he asked
+falteringly, with his eyes upon her downcast face.
+
+A burning spot glowed and faded on her cheek before she answered him.
+
+"Can you not see how empty my life is?" she asked with a bitter laugh.
+"No; there is no one else. I stand quite alone. Death took my father
+from me; your friend has robbed me of my mother. My old playfellow,
+Roderick Vawdrey, belongs to his cousin. I belong to nobody."
+
+"Let me have you then, Violet. Ah, if you knew how I would cherish you!
+You should be loved so well that you would fancy yourself the centre of
+the universe, and that all the planets revolved in the skies only to
+please you. Love, let me have you--priceless treasure that others know
+not how to value. Let me keep and guard you."
+
+"I would not wrong you so much as to marry you without loving you, and
+I shall never love any more," said Vixen, with a sad steadfastness that
+was more dispiriting than the most vehement protestation.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I spent all my store of love while I was a child. I loved my
+father--ah, I cannot tell you how fondly. I do not think there are many
+fathers who are loved as he was. I poured out all my treasures of
+affection at his feet. I have no love left for a husband."
+
+"What, Violet, not if your old friend Roderick Vawdrey were pleading?"
+asked Lord Mallow.
+
+It was an unlucky speech. If Lord Mallow had had a chance, which he had
+not, that speech would have spoiled it. Violet started to her feet, her
+cheeks crimson, her eyes flashing.
+
+"It is shameful, abominable of you to say such a thing!" she cried, her
+voice tremulous with indignation. "I will never forgive you for that
+dastardly speech. Come, Argus."
+
+She had mounted the broad oak stairs with light swift foot before Lord
+Mallow could apologise. He was terribly crestfallen.
+
+"I was a brute," he muttered to himself. "But I hit the bull's-eye. It
+is that fellow she loves. Hard upon me, when I ask for nothing but to
+be her slave and adore her all the days of my life. And I know that
+Winstanley would have been pleased. How lovely she looked when she was
+angry--her tawny hair gleaming in the firelight, her great brown eyes
+flashing. Yes, it's the Hampshire squire she cares for, and I'm out of
+it. I'll go and shoot the pheasants," concluded Lord Mallow savagely;
+"those beggars shall not have it all their own way to-day."
+
+He went off to get his gun, in the worst humour he had ever been in
+since he was a child and cried for the moon.
+
+He spent the whole day in a young oak plantation, ankle-deep in oozy
+mud, moss, and dead fern, making havoc among the innocent birds. He was
+in so bloodthirsty a temper, that he felt as if he could have shot a
+covey of young children, had they come in his way, with all the
+ferocity of a modern Herod.
+
+"I think I've spoiled Winstanley's coverts for this year, at any rate,"
+he said to himself, as he tramped homewards in the early darkness, with
+no small hazard of losing himself in one of those ghostly plantations,
+which were all exactly alike, and in which a man might walk all day
+long without meeting anything nearer humanity than a trespassing forest
+pony that had leapt a fence in quest of more sufficing food than the
+scanty herbage of the open woods.
+
+Lord Mallow got on better than might have been expected. He went east
+when he ought to have gone west, and found himself in Queen's Bower
+when he fancied himself in Gretnam Wood; but he did not walk more than
+half-a-dozen miles out of his way, and he got home somehow at last,
+which was much for a stranger to the ground.
+
+The stable clock was chiming the quarter before six when he went into
+the hall, where Vixen had left him in anger that morning. The great
+wood fire was burning gaily, and Captain Winstanley was sitting in a
+Glastonbury chair in front of it. "Went for the birds after all, old
+fellow," he said, without looking round, recognising the tread of Lord
+Mallow's shooting-boots. "You found it too dismal in the house, I
+suppose? Consistently abominable weather, isn't it? You must be soaked
+to the skin."
+
+"I suppose I am," answered the other carelessly. "But I've been soaked
+a good many times before, and it hasn't done me much harm. Thanks to
+the modern inventions of the waterproof-makers, the soaking begins
+inside instead of out. I should call myself parboiled."
+
+"Take off your oilskins and come and talk. You'll have a nip, won't
+you?" added Captain Winstanley, ringing the bell. "Kirschenwasser,
+curacoa, Glenlivat--which shall it be?"
+
+"Glenlivat," answered Lord Mallow, "and plenty of it. I'm in the humour
+in which a man must either drink inordinately or cut his throat."
+
+"Were the birds unapproachable?" asked Captain Winstanley, laughing;
+"or were the dogs troublesome?"
+
+"Birds and dogs were perfect; but---- Well, I suppose I'd better make a
+clean breast of it. I've had a capital time here---- Oh, here comes the
+whisky. Hold your hand, old fellow!" cried Lord Mallow, as his host
+poured the Glenlivat somewhat recklessly into a soda-water tumbler.
+"You mustn't take me too literally. Just moisten the bottom of the
+glass with whisky before you put in the soda. That's as much as I care
+about."
+
+"All right. You were saying----"
+
+"That my visit here has been simply delightful, and that I must go to
+London by an early train to-morrow."
+
+"Paradoxical!" remarked the Captain. "That sounds like your well-bred
+servant, who tells you that he has nothing to say against the
+situation, but he wishes to leave you at the end of his month. What's
+the matter, dear boy? Do you find our Forest hermitage too dull?"
+
+"I should ask nothing kinder from Fate than to be allowed to spend my
+days in your Forest. Yes, I would say good-bye to the green hills and
+vales of County Cork, and become that detestable being, an absentee,
+if--if--Fortune smiled on me. But she doesn't, you see, and I must go.
+Perhaps you may have perceived, Winstanley--perhaps you may not have
+been altogether averse from the idea--in a word, I have fallen over
+head and ears in love with your bewitching stepdaughter."
+
+"My dear fellow, I'm delighted. It is the thing I would have wished,
+had I been bold enough to wish for anything so good. And of course
+Violet is charmed. You are the very man for her."
+
+"Am I? So I thought myself till this morning. Unfortunately the young
+lady is of a different opinion. She has refused me."
+
+"Refused you! Pshaw, they all begin that way. It's one of the small
+diplomacies of the sex. They think they enhance their value by an
+assumed reluctance. Nonsense, man, try again. She can't help liking
+you."
+
+"I would try again, every day for a twelvemonth, if there were a
+scintilla of hope. My life should be a series of offers. But the thing
+is decided. I know from her manner, from her face, that I have no
+chance. I have been in the habit of thinking myself rather a nice kind
+of fellow, and the women have encouraged the idea. But I don't answer
+here, Winstanley. Miss Tempest will have nothing to say to me."
+
+"She's a fool," said Captain Winstanley, with his teeth set, and that
+dark look of his which meant harm to somebody. "I'll talk to her."
+
+"My dear Winstanley, understand I'll have no coercion. If I win her, I
+must do it off my own bat. Dearly as I love her, if you were to bring
+her to me conquered and submissive, like Iphigenia at the altar, I
+would not have her. I love her much too well to ask any sacrifice of
+inclination from her. I love her too well to accept anything less than
+her free unfettered heart. She cannot give me that, and I must go. I
+had much rather you should say nothing about me, either to her or her
+mother."
+
+"But I shall say a great deal to both," exclaimed the Captain,
+desperately angry. "I am indignant. I am outraged by her conduct. What
+in Heaven's name does this wilful girl want in a husband? You have
+youth, good looks, good temper, talent, tastes that harmonise with her
+own. You can give her a finer position than she has any right to
+expect. And she refuses you. She is a spoiled child, who doesn't know
+her own mind or her own advantage. She has a diabolical temper, and is
+as wild as a hawk. Egad, I congratulate you on your escape, Mallow. She
+was not born to make any man happy."
+
+"Small thanks for your congratulations," retorted the Irishman. "She
+might have made me happy if she had chosen. I would have forgiven her
+tempers, and loved her for her wildness. She is the sweetest woman I
+ever knew; as fresh and fair as your furzy hill-tops. But she is not
+for me. Fate never meant me to be so blessed."
+
+"She will change her mind before she is many months older," said
+Captain Winstanley. "Her father and mother have spoilt her. She is a
+creature of whims and fancies, and must be ridden on the curb."
+
+"I would ride her with the lightest snaffle-bit that ever was made,"
+protested Lord Mallow. "But there's no use in talking about it. You
+won't think me discourteous or ungrateful if I clear out of this
+to-morrow morning, will you, Winstanley?"
+
+"Certainly not," answered his host; "but I shall think you a confounded
+ass. Why not wait and try your luck again?"
+
+"Simply because I know it would be useless. Truth and candour shine in
+that girl's eyes. She has a soul above the petty trickeries of her sex.
+No from her lips means No, between this and eternity. Oh, thrice
+blessed will that man be to whom she answers Yes; for she will give him
+the tenderest, truest, most generous heart in creation."
+
+"You answer boldly for her on so short an acquaintance."
+
+"I answer as a man who loves her, and who has looked into her soul,"
+replied Lord Mallow. "You and she don't hit it over well, I fancy."
+
+"No. We began by disliking each other, and we have been wonderfully
+constant to our first opinions."
+
+"I can't understand----"
+
+"Can't you? You will, perhaps, some day: if you ever have a handsome
+stepdaughter who sets up her back against you from the beginning of
+things. Have you ever seen a sleek handsome tabby put herself on the
+defensive at the approach of a terrier, her back arched, her eyes
+flashing green lightnings, her tail lashing itself, her whiskers
+bristling? That's my stepdaughter's attitude towards me, and I daresay
+before long I shall feel her claws. There goes the gong, and we must go
+too. I'm sorry Miss Tempest has been such a fool, Mallow; but I must
+repeat my congratulations, even at the risk of offending you."
+
+There were no duets that evening. Vixen was as cold as ice, and as
+silent as a statue. She sat in the shadow of her mother's arm-chair
+after dinner, turning over the leaves of Dore's "Tennyson," pausing to
+contemplate Elaine with a half-contemptuous pity--a curious feeling
+that hurt her like a physical pain.
+
+"Poor wretch!" she mused. "Are there women in our days so weak as to
+love where they can never be loved again, I wonder? It is foolish
+enough in a man; but he cures himself as quickly as the mungoose that
+gets bitten by a snake, and runs away to find the herb which is an
+antidote to the venom, and comes back ready to fight the snake again."
+
+"Are we not going to have any music?" asked Mrs. Winstanley languidly,
+more interested in the _picots_ her clever needle was executing on a
+piece of Italian point than in the reply. "Lord Mallow, cannot you
+persuade Violet to join you in one of those sweet duets of
+Mendelssohn's?"
+
+"Indeed, mamma, I couldn't sing a note. I'm as husky as a raven."
+
+"I'm not surprised to hear it," said the Captain, looking up from his
+study of _The Gardener's Chronicle_. "No doubt you managed to catch
+cold last night, while you were mooning upon the terrace with young
+Vawdrey."
+
+"How very incautious of you, Violet!" exclaimed Mrs. Winstanley, in her
+complaining tone.
+
+"I was not cold, mamma; I had my warm cloak."
+
+"But you confess you have caught cold. I detest colds; they always go
+through a house. I shall be the next victim, I daresay; and with me a
+cold is martyrdom. I'm afraid you must find us very dull, Lord Mallow,
+for New Year's Day, when people expect to be lively. We ought to have
+had a dinner-party."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Winstanley, I don't care a straw about New Year's Day,
+and I am not in a lively vein. This quiet evening suits me much better
+than high jinks, I assure you."
+
+"It's very good of you to say so."
+
+"Come and play a game of billiards," said Captain Winstanley, throwing
+down his paper.
+
+"Upon my honour, I'd rather sit by the fire and watch Mrs. Winstanley
+at her point-lace. I'm in an abominably lazy mood after my tramp in
+those soppy plantations." answered Lord Mallow, who felt a foolish
+pleasure--mingled with bitterest regrets--in being in the same room
+with the girl he loved.
+
+She was hidden from him in her shadowy corner; shrouded on one side by
+the velvet drapery of the fireplace, on the other by her mother's
+chair. He could only catch a glimpse of her auburn plaits now and then
+as her head bent over her open book. He never heard her voice, or met
+her eyes. And yet it was sweet to him to sit in the same room with her.
+
+"Come, Mallow, you can sing us something, at any rate," said the
+Captain, suppressing a yawn. "I know you can play your own
+accompaniment, when you please. You can't be too idle to give us one of
+Moore's melodies."
+
+"I'll sing, if you like, Mrs. Winstanley," assented Lord Mallow, "but
+I'm afraid you must be tired of my songs. My _repertoire_ is rather
+limited."
+
+"Your songs are charming," said Mrs. Winstanley.
+
+The Irishman seated himself at the distant piano, struck a chord or
+two, and began the old melody, with its familiar refrain:
+
+  Oh, there's nothing half so sweet in life
+  As love's young dream.
+
+
+Before his song was finished Violet had kissed her mother and glided
+silently from the room, Lord Mallow saw her go, and there was a sudden
+break in his voice as the door closed upon her, a break that sounded
+almost like a suppressed sob.
+
+When Vixen came down to breakfast next morning she found the table laid
+only for three.
+
+"What has become of Lord Mallow?" she asked Forbes, when he brought in
+the urn.
+
+"He left by an early train, ma'am. Captain Winstanley drove him to
+Lyndhurst."
+
+The old servants of the Abbey House had not yet brought themselves to
+speak of their new lord as "master." He was always "Captain Winstanley."
+
+The Captain came in while Violet knelt by the fire playing with Argus,
+whom even the new rule had not banished wholly from the family
+sitting-rooms.
+
+The servants filed in for morning prayers, which Captain Winstanley
+delivered in a cold hard voice. His manual of family worship was of
+concise and businesslike form, and the whole ceremony lasted about
+seven minutes. Then the household dispersed quickly, and Forbes brought
+in his tray of covered dishes.
+
+"You can pour out the tea, Violet. Your mother is feeling a little
+tired, and will breakfast in her room."
+
+"Then I think, if you'll excuse me, I'll have my breakfast with her,"
+said Vixen. "She'll be glad of my company, I daresay."
+
+"She has a headache and will be better alone. Stop where you are, if
+you please, Violet. I have something serious to say to you."
+
+Vixen left off pouring out the tea, clasped her hands in her lap, and
+looked at Captain Winstanley with the most resolute expression he had
+ever seen in a woman's face.
+
+"Are you going to talk to me about Lord Mallow?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then spare yourself the trouble. It would be useless."
+
+"I cannot conceive that you should be so besotted as to refuse a man
+who offers so much. A man who has wealth, rank, youth, good looks----"
+
+"Spare me the catalogue of your friend's merits. I think him a most
+estimable person. I acknowledge his rank and wealth. But I have refused
+him."
+
+"You will change your mind."
+
+"I never change my mind."
+
+"You will live to repent your folly then, Miss Tempest: and all I hope
+is that your remorse may be keen. It is not one woman in a thousand who
+gets such a chance. What are you that you should throw it away?"
+
+"I am a woman who would sooner cut my throat than marry a man I cannot
+honestly love," answered Vixen, with unblenching firmness.
+
+"I think I understand your motive," said Captain Winstanley. "Lord
+Mallow never had a chance with you. The ground was occupied before he
+came. You are a very foolish girl to reject so good an offer for the
+sake of another woman's sweetheart."
+
+"How dare you say that to me?" cried Vixen. "You have usurped my
+father's place; you have robbed me of my mother's heart. Is not that
+cause enough for me to hate you? I have only one friend left in the
+world, Roderick Vawdrey. And you would slander me because I cling to
+that old friendship, the last remnant of my happy childhood."
+
+"You might have a dozen such friends, if friendship is all you want,
+and be Lady Mallow into the bargain," retorted Captain Winstanley
+scornfully. "You are a simpleton to send such a man away despairing.
+But I suppose it is idle to ask you to hear reason. I am not your
+father, and even if I were, I daresay you would take your own way in
+spite of me."
+
+"My father would not have asked me to marry a man I did not love,"
+answered Vixen proudly, her eyes clouding with tears even at the
+thought of her beloved dead; "and he would have valued Lord Mallow's
+rank and fortune no more than I do. But you are so fond of a bargain,"
+she added, her eye kindling and her lip curving with bitterest scorn.
+"You sold Bullfinch, and now you want to sell me."
+
+"By Heaven, madam, I pity the man who may be fool enough to buy you!"
+cried the Captain, starting up from his untasted breakfast, and leaving
+Vixen mistress of the field.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"Kurz ist der Schmerz und ewig ist die Freude."
+
+Captain Winstanley said no more about Lord Mallow; but Violet had to
+listen to much plaintive bemoaning from her mother, who could not
+understand how any well-brought-up young woman could refuse an Irish
+peer with a fine estate, and the delights of a _trousseau_ made by the
+renowned Theodore. Upon this latter detail Mrs. Winstanley dwelt at
+more length than upon that minor circumstance in a marriage--the
+bridegroom.
+
+"It would have been such a pleasure to me to plan your _trousseau_,
+darling," she said; "such an occupation for my mind in these wretched
+winter afternoons when there is no possibility of driving or making
+calls. I should have attended to everything myself. Theodore's general
+way is to make a list of what she thinks necessary, allowing her
+customer to correct it; but I should not have been satisfied with that,
+even from Theodore, though I admit that her taste is perfect. And then,
+you know, she is hand in glove with Worth, and that alone is a liberal
+education, as somebody says somewhere about something. No, dear, I
+would have done it all myself. I know the exact shades that suit your
+complexion, the dashes of colour that contrast with and light up your
+hair, the style that sets off your figure. Your _trousseau_ should be
+talked about in society, and even described in the fashion magazines.
+And then Lord Mallow is really so very nice--and has such a charming
+baritone--what more can you want?"
+
+"Only to love him, mamma dearest, which I do not, and never shall. That
+frank loud voice of his does not stir a fibre of my heart. I like him
+extremely, and so I do Mr. Scobel, and Bates the groom. Lord Mallow is
+no more to me than either of those. Indeed, Bates is much nearer and
+dearer, for he loved my father."
+
+"My dear Violet, you have the most republican ideas. Imagine anyone
+putting Bates on a level with Lord Mallow!"
+
+"I don't, mamma. I only say he is more to me than Lord Mallow could
+ever be."
+
+"Your travelling-dress," murmured Mrs. Winstanley, her mind still
+dwelling on the _trousseau;_ "that affords more scope for taste than
+the wedding-gown. Velvet suits your style, but is too heavy for your
+age. A soft clinging cashmere, now, one of those delicious neutral
+tints that have been so fashionable lately, over an underskirt of a
+warmer colour in _poult de soie_, a picturesque costume that would
+faintly recall Lely's portraits at Hampton Court."
+
+"Dear mamma, what is the use of talking about dresses I am never going
+to require? Not for all the finery that Theodore ever made would I
+marry Lord Mallow, or anybody else. I am happy enough with you, and my
+horse, and my dog, and all the dear old things, animal and vegetable,
+that belong to this dear old place. I shall never leave you, or the
+Forest. Can you not be content to know this and let me alone?"
+
+"You are a very wilful girl, Violet, and ridiculously blind to your own
+interests," remarked Mrs. Winstanley, throwing herself back in her
+chair with a fretful look, "and you put me in an absurd position. The
+duchess quite congratulated me about your brilliant prospects, when we
+were chatting together on New Year's Eve. Anybody could see how devoted
+Lord Mallow was, she said, and what a splendid match it would be for
+you."
+
+"Let the Duchess marry her own daughter, and leave me alone," cried
+Vixen scornfully.
+
+This was the kind of thing she had to endure continually during the
+chill winter months that followed Lord Mallow's departure. Even her old
+friends the Scobels worried her about the Irish peer, and lamented her
+inability to perceive his merits. It was known throughout her
+particular circle that she had been idiotic enough to refuse Lord
+Mallow. Mrs. Winstanley had whispered the fact to all her friends,
+under the seal of strictest secrecy. Of all Vixen's acquaintance,
+Roderick Vawdrey was the only one who said no word to her about Lord
+Mallow; but he was much kinder to her after the Irishman's departure
+than he had shown himself during his visit.
+
+Spring put on her green mantle; and when the woods were starred with
+primroses, and the banks lovely with heaven-hued dog-violets, everyone
+of any pretension to importance in the social scale began to flee from
+the Forest as from a loathsome place. Lord Ellangowan's train of vans
+and waggons set out for the railway-station with their load of chests
+and baskets. Julius Caesar's baggage was as nothing to the Saratoga
+trunks and bonnet-boxes of Lady Ellangowan. The departure of the
+Israelites from Egypt was hardly a mightier business than this
+emigration of the Ellangowan household. The Duke and Duchess, and Lady
+Mabel Ashbourne, left for the Queen Anne house at Kensington, whereat
+the fashionable London papers broke out in paragraphs of rejoicing, and
+the local journals bewailed the extinction of their sun.
+
+The London season had begun, and only the nobodies stayed in the Forest
+to watch the rosy sunsets glow and fade behind the yellow oaks; to see
+the purple of the beech-boughs change mysteriously to brightest green;
+and the bluebells burst into blossom in the untrodden glades and
+bottoms. Captain Winstanley found a small house in Mayfair, which he
+hired for six weeks, at a rent which he pronounced exorbitant. He
+sacrificed his own ideas of prudence to the gratification of his wife;
+who had made up her mind that she had scarcely the right to exist until
+she had been presented to her sovereign in her new name. But when Mrs.
+Winstanley ventured to suggest the Duchess of Dovedale, as her sponsor
+on this solemn occasion, her husband sternly tabooed the notion.
+
+"My aunt, Lady Susan Winstanley, is the proper person to present you,"
+he said authoritatively.
+
+"But is she really your aunt, Conrad? You never mentioned her before we
+were married?"
+
+"She is my father's third cousin by marriage; but we have always called
+her Aunt. She is the widow of Major-General Winstanley, who
+distinguished himself in the last war with Tippoo Saib, and had a place
+at Court in the reign of William the Fourth."
+
+"She must be dreadfully old and dowdy," sighed Mrs. Winstanley, whose
+only historical idea of the Sailor King's reign was as a period of
+short waists and beaver bonnets.
+
+"She is not a chicken, and she does not spend eight hundred a year on
+her dressmaker," retorted the Captain. "But she is a very worthy woman,
+and highly respected by her friends. Why should you ask a favour of the
+Duchess of Dovedale?"
+
+"Her name would look so well in the papers," pleaded Mrs. Winstanley.
+
+"The name of your husband's kinswoman will look much more respectable,"
+answered the Captain; and in this, as in most matters, he had his own
+way.
+
+Lady Susan Winstanley was brought from her palatial retirement to spend
+a fortnight in Mayfair. She was bony, wiggy, and snuffy; wore false
+teeth and seedy apparel; but she was well-bred and well-informed, and
+Vixen got on with her much better than with the accomplished Captain.
+Lady Susan took to Vixen; and these two went out for early walks
+together in the adjacent Green Park, and perambulated the
+picture-galleries, before Mrs. Winstanley had braced herself up for the
+fatigues of a fashionable afternoon.
+
+Sometimes they came across Mr. Vawdrey at a picture-gallery or in the
+Park; and at the first of these chance meetings, struck by the obvious
+delight with which the two young people greeted each other, Lady Susan
+jumped to a conclusion.
+
+"That's your young man, I suppose, my dear," she said bluntly, when
+Rorie had left them.
+
+"Oh, Lady Susan!"
+
+"It's a vulgar expression, I know, my dear, but it comes natural to me;
+I hear it so often from our housemaids. I fancied that you and that
+handsome young fellow must be engaged."
+
+"Oh no. We are only old friends. He is engaged to Lady Mabel
+Ashbourne--a very grand match."
+
+"That's a pity," said Lady Susan.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, my dear," answered the old lady hesitatingly, "because when one
+hears of a grand match, it generally means that a young man is marrying
+for the sake of money, and that young old friend of yours looks too
+good to throw himself away like that."
+
+"Oh, but indeed, Lady Susan, it is not so in Rorie's case. He has
+plenty of money of his own."
+
+The important day came; and Lady Susan, Mrs. Winstanley, and Violet
+packed themselves and their finery into a capacious carriage, and set
+off for St. James's. The fair Pamela's costume was an elaborate example
+of Theodore's highest art; colours, design, all of the newest--a
+delicate harmony of half-tints, an indescribable interblending of
+feathers, lace, and flowers. Violet was simply and elegantly dressed by
+the same great artist. Lady Susan wore a petticoat and train that must
+have been made in the time of Queen Adelaide. Yes, the faded and
+unknown hue of the substantial brocade, the skimpiness of the satin,
+the quaint devices in piping-cord and feather-stitch--must assuredly
+have been coeval with that good woman's famous hat and spencer.
+
+Poor Mrs. Winstanley was horrified when she saw her husband's kinswoman
+attired for the ceremony, not a whit less wiggy and snuffy than usual,
+and with three lean ostrich feathers starting erect from her back hair,
+like the ladies in the proscenium boxes of Skelt's Theatre, whose gaily
+painted effigies were so dear to our childhood.
+
+Poor Pamela felt inclined to shed tears. Even her confidence in the
+perfection of her own toilet could hardly sustain her against the
+horror of being presented by such a scarecrow.
+
+The ceremony went off satisfactorily, in spite of Lady Susan's
+antiquated garments. Nobody laughed. Perhaps the _habitues_ of St.
+James's were accustomed to scarecrows. Violet's fresh young beauty
+attracted some little notice as she waited among the crowd of
+_debutantes;_ but, on its being ascertained that she was nobody in
+particular, curiosity languished and died.
+
+Mrs. Winstanley wanted to exhibit her court-dress at the opera that
+evening, but her husband protested against this display as bad style.
+Vixen was only too glad to throw off her finery, the tulle puffings and
+festoonings, and floral wreaths and bouquets, which made movement
+difficult and sitting down almost impossible.
+
+Those six weeks in town were chiefly devoted to gaiety. Mrs.
+Winstanley's Hampshire friends called on her, and followed up their
+calls by invitations to dinner, and at the dinners she generally met
+people who were on the eve of giving a garden-party, or a concert, or a
+dance, and who begged to be allowed to send her a card for that
+entertainment, spoken of modestly as a thing of no account. And then
+there was a hurried interchange of calls, and Violet found herself
+meandering about an unknown croquet-lawn, amongst unknown nobodies,
+under a burning sun, looking at other girls, dressed like herself in
+dresses a la Theodore, with the last thing in sleeves, and the last cut
+in trains, all pretending to be amused by the vapid and languid
+observations of the cavalier told off to them, paired like companions
+of the chain at Toulon, and almost as joyous.
+
+Violet Tempest attended no less than eight private concerts during
+those six weeks, and heard the same new ballad, and the same latest
+gavotte in C minor, at everyone of them. She was taken to pianoforte
+recitals in fashionable squares and streets, and heard Bach and
+Beethoven till her heart ached with pity for the patient labour of the
+performers, knowing how poorly she and the majority of mankind
+appreciated their efforts. She went to a few dances that were rather
+amusing, and waltzed to her heart's content. She rode Arion in the Row,
+and horse and rider were admired as perfect after then kind. Once she
+met Lord Mallow, riding beside Lady Mabel Ashbourne and the Duke of
+Dovedale. His florid cheek paled a little at the sight of her. They
+passed each other with a friendly bow, and this was their only meeting.
+Lord Mallow left cards at the house in Mayfair a week before the
+Winstanleys went back to Hampshire. He had been working hard at his
+senatorial duties, and had made some telling speeches upon the Irish
+land question. People talked of him as a rising politician; and,
+whenever his name appeared in the morning papers, Mrs. Winstanley
+uplifted her voice at the breakfast-table, and made her wail about
+Violet's folly in refusing such an excellent young man.
+
+"It would have been so nice to be able to talk about my daughter, Lady
+Mallow, and Castle Mallow," said Pamela in confidence to her husband.
+
+"No doubt, my dear," he answered coolly; "but when you bring up a young
+woman to have her own way in everything, you must take the
+consequences."
+
+"It is very ungrateful of Violet," sighed the afflicted mother, "after
+the pains I have taken to dress her prettily, ever since she was a
+baby. It is a very poor return for my care."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A Midsummer Night's Dream.
+
+They were all back at the Abbey House again early in June, and Vixen
+breathed more freely in her sweet native air. How dear, how doubly
+beautiful, everything seemed to her after even so brief an exile. But
+it was a grief to have missed the apple-bloom and the bluebells. The
+woods were putting on their ripe summer beauty; the beeches had lost
+the first freshness of their tender green, the amber glory of the young
+oak-leaves was over, the last of the primroses had paled and faded
+among the spreading bracken; masses of snowy hawthorn bloom gleamed
+white amidst the woodland shadows; bean-fields in full bloom filled the
+air with delicate odours; the summer winds swept across the long lush
+grass in the meadows, beautiful with ever-varying lights and shadows;
+families of sturdy black piglings were grubbing on the waste turf
+beside every road, and the forest-fly was getting strong upon the wing.
+The depths of Mark Ash were dark at noontide under their roof of
+foliage.
+
+Vixen revelled in the summer weather. She was out from morning till
+evening, on foot or on horseback, sketching or reading a novel, in some
+solitary corner of the woods, with Argus for her companion and
+guardian. It was an idle purposeless existence for a young woman to
+lead, no doubt; but Violet Tempest knew of no better thing that life
+offered her to do.
+
+Neither her mother nor Captain Winstanley interfered with her liberty.
+The Captain had his own occupations and amusements, and his wife was
+given up to frivolities which left no room in her mind for anxiety
+about her only daughter. So long as Violet looked fresh and pretty at
+the breakfast-table, and was nicely dressed in the evening, Mrs.
+Winstanley thought that all was well; or at least as well as it ever
+could be with a girl who had been so besotted as to refuse a wealthy
+young nobleman. So Vixen went her own way, and nobody cared. She seemed
+to have a passion for solitude, and avoided even her old friends, the
+Scobels, who had made themselves odious by their championship of Lord
+Mallow.
+
+The London season was at its height when the Winstanleys went back to
+Hampshire. The Dovedales were to be at Kensington till the beginning of
+July, with Mr. Vawdrey in attendance upon them. He had rooms in Ebury
+Street, and had assumed an urban air which in Vixen's opinion made him
+execrable.
+
+"I can't tell you how hateful you look in lavender gloves and a high
+hat," she said to him one day in Clarges Street.
+
+"I daresay I look more natural dressed like a gamekeeper," he answered
+lightly; "I was born so. As for the high hat, you can't hate it more
+than I do; and I have always considered gloves a foolishness on a level
+with pigtails and hair-powder."
+
+Vixen had been wandering in her old haunts for something less than a
+fortnight, when, on one especially fine morning, she mounted Arion
+directly after breakfast and started on one of her rambles, with the
+faithful Bates in attendance, to open gates or to pull her out of bogs
+if needful. Upon this point Mrs. Winstanley was strict. Violet might
+ride when and where she pleased--since these meanderings in the Forest
+were so great a pleasure to her--but she must never ride without a
+groom.
+
+Old Bates liked the duty. He adored his mistress, and had spent the
+greater part of his life in the saddle. There was no more enjoyable
+kind of idleness possible for him than to jog along in the sunshine on
+one of the Captain's old hunters; called upon for no greater exertion
+than to flick an occasional fly off his horse's haunch, or to bend down
+and hook open the gate of a plantation with his stout hunting-crop.
+Bates had many a brief snatch of slumber in those warm enclosures,
+where the air was heavy with the scent of the pines, and the buzzing of
+summer flies made a perpetual lullaby. There was a delicious sense of
+repose in such a sleep, but it was not quite so pleasant to be jerked
+suddenly into the waking world by a savage plunge of the aggravated
+hunter's hindlegs, goaded to madness by a lively specimen of the
+forest-fly.
+
+On this particular morning Vixen was in a thoughtful mood, and Arion
+was lazy. She let him walk at a leisurely pace under the beeches of
+Gretnam Wood, and through the quiet paths of the New Park plantations.
+He came slowly out into Queen's Bower, tossing his delicate head and
+sniffing the summer air. The streamlets were rippling gaily in the
+noontide sun; far off on the yellow common a solitary angler was
+whipping the stream--quite an unusual figure in the lonely landscape. A
+delicious slumberous quiet reigned over all the scene. Vixen was lost
+in thought, Bates was dreaming, when a horse's hoofs came up stealthily
+beside Arion, and a manly voice startled the sultry stillness.
+
+"I've got rid of the high hat for this year, and I'm my own man again,"
+said the voice; and then a strong brown hand was laid upon Vixen's
+glove, and swallowed up her slender fingers in its warm grasp.
+
+"When did you come back?" she asked, as soon as their friendly
+greetings were over, and Arion had reconciled himself to the
+companionship of Mr. Vawdrey's hack.
+
+"Late last night."
+
+"And have the Duchess and her people come back to Ashbourne?"
+
+"_Pas si bete_. The Duchess and her people--meaning Mabel--have
+engagements six deep for the next month--breakfasts, lawn-parties,
+music, art, science, horticulture, dancing, archery, every form of
+labourious amusement that the genius of man has invented. One of our
+modern sages has said that life would be tolerable but for its
+amusements. I am of that wise man's opinion. Fashionable festivities
+are my aversion. So I told Mabel frankly that I found my good spirits
+being crushed out of me by the weight of too much pleasure, and that I
+must come home to look after my farm. The dear old Duke recognised that
+duty immediately, and gave me all sorts of messages and admonitions for
+his bailiff."
+
+"And you are really free to do what you like for a month?" exclaimed
+Vixen naively. "Poor Rorie! How glad you must be!"
+
+"My liberty is of even greater extent. I am free till the middle of
+August, when I am to join the Dovedales in Scotland. Later, I suppose,
+the Duke will go to Baden, or to some newly-discovered fountain in the
+Black Forest. He could not exist for a twelvemonth without German
+waters."
+
+"And after that there will be a wedding, I suppose?" said Violet.
+
+She felt as if called upon to say something of this kind. She wanted
+Rorie to know that she recognised his position as an engaged man. She
+hated talking about the business, but she felt somehow that this was
+incumbent upon her.
+
+"I suppose so," answered Rorie; "a man must be married once in his
+life. The sooner he gets the ceremony over the better. My engagement
+has hung fire rather. There is always a kind of flatness about the
+thing between cousins, I daresay. Neither of us is in a hurry. Mabel
+has so many ideas and occupations, from orchids to Greek choruses."
+
+"She is very clever," said Vixen.
+
+"She is clever and good, and I am very proud of her," answered Rorie
+loyally.
+
+He felt as if he were walking on the brink of a precipice, and that it
+needed all his care to steer clear of the edge.
+
+After this there was no more said about Lady Mabel. Vixen and Rorie
+rode on happily side by side, as wholly absorbed in each other as
+Launcelot and Guinevere--when the knight brought the lady home through
+the smiling land, in the glad boyhood of the year, by tinkling rivulet
+and shadowy covert, and twisted ivy and spreading chestnut fans--and
+with no more thought of Lady Mabel than those two had of King Arthur.
+
+It was the first of many such rides in the fair June weather. Vixen and
+Rorie were always meeting in that sweet pathless entanglement of oak
+and beech and holly, where the cattle-line of the spreading branches
+were just high enough to clear Vixen's coquettish little hat, or in the
+long straight fir plantations, where the light was darkened even at
+noonday, and where the slumberous stillness was broken only by the hum
+of summer flies. It was hardly possible, it seemed to Violet, for two
+people to be always riding in the Forest without meeting each other
+very often. Various as the paths are they all cross somewhere: and what
+more natural than to see Rorie's brown horse trotting calmly along the
+grass by the wayside, at the first bend of the road? They made no
+appointments, or were not conscious of making any; but they always met.
+There was a fatality about it: yet neither Rorie nor Violet ever seemed
+surprised at this persistence of fate. They were always glad to see
+each other; they had always a world to tell each other. If the earth
+had been newly made every day, with a new set of beings to people it,
+those two could hardly have had more to say.
+
+"Darned if I can tell what our young Miss and Muster Vawdrey can find
+to talk about," said honest old Bates, over his dish of tea in the
+servants' hall; "but their tongues ha' never done wagging."
+
+Sometimes Miss Tempest and Mr. Vawdrey went to the kennels together,
+and idled away an hour with the hounds; while their horses stood at
+ease with their bridles looped round the five-barred gate, their heads
+hanging lazily over the topmost bar, and their big soft eyes dreamily
+contemplating the opposite pine wood, with that large capacity for
+perfect idleness common to their species. Bates was chewing a straw and
+swinging his hunting-crop somewhere in attendance. He went with his
+young mistress everywhere, and played the part of the "dragon of
+prudery placed within call;" but he was a very amiable dragon, and
+nobody minded him. Had it come into the minds of Rorie and Vixen to
+elope, Bates would not have barred their way. Indeed he would have been
+very glad to elope with them himself. The restricted license of the
+Abbey House had no charm for him.
+
+Whither were those two drifting in the happy summer weather, lulled by
+the whisper of forest leaves faintly stirred by the soft south wind, or
+by the low murmur of the forest river, stealing on its stealthy course
+under overarching boughs, mysterious as that wondrous river in Kubla
+Khan's dream, and anon breaking suddenly out into a clamour loud enough
+to startle Arion as the waters came leaping and brawling over the
+shining moss-green boulders? Where were these happy comrades going as
+they rode side by side under the glancing lights and wavering shadows?
+Everybody knows what became of Launcelot and Guinevere after that
+famous ride of theirs. What of these two, who rode together day after
+day in sun and shower, who loitered and lingered in every loveliest
+nook in the Forest, who had the same tastes, the same ideas, the same
+loves, the same dislikes? Neither dared ask that question. They took
+the happiness fate gave them, and sought not to lift the veil of the
+future. Each was utterly and unreasonably happy, and each knew very
+well that this deep and entire happiness was to last no longer than the
+long summer days and the dangling balls of blossom on the beechen
+boughs. Before the new tufts on the fir-branches had lost their early
+green, this midsummer dream would be over. It was to be brief as a
+schoolboy's holiday.
+
+What was the good of being so happy, only to be so much more miserable
+afterwards? A sensible young woman might have asked herself that
+question, but Violet Tempest did not. Her intentions were pure as the
+innocent light shining out of her hazel eyes--a gaze frank, direct, and
+fearless as a child's. She had no idea of tempting Roderick to be false
+to his vows. Had Lady Mabel, with her orchids and Greek plays, been
+alone in question, Violet might have thought of the matter more
+lightly: but filial duty was involved in Rorie's fidelity to his
+betrothed. He had promised his mother on her death-bed. That was a
+promise not to be broken.
+
+One day--a day for ever to be remembered by Vixen and Rorie--a day that
+stood out in the foreground of memory's picture awfully distinct from
+the dreamy happiness that went before it, these two old friends
+prolonged their ride even later than usual. The weather was the
+loveliest that had ever blessed their journeyings--the sky Italian, the
+west wind just fresh enough to fan their cheeks, and faintly stir the
+green feathers of the ferns that grew breast-high on each side of the
+narrow track. The earth gave forth her subtlest perfumes under the fire
+of the midsummer sun. From Boldrewood the distant heights and valleys
+had an Alpine look in the clear bright air, the woods rising line above
+line in the far distance, in every shade of colour, from deepest umber
+to emerald green, from the darkest purple to translucent azure, yonder,
+where the farthest line of verdure met the sunlit sky. From Stony Cross
+the vast stretch of wood and moor lay basking in the warm vivid light,
+the yellow of the dwarf furze flashing in golden patches amidst the
+first bloom of the crimson heather. This southern corner of Hampshire
+was a glorious world to live in on such a day as this. Violet and her
+cavalier thought so, as their horses cantered up and down the smooth
+stretch of turf in front of The Forester's Inn.
+
+"I don't know what has come to Arion," said Vixen, as she checked her
+eager horse in his endeavour to break into a mad gallop. "I think he
+must be what Scotch people call 'fey.'"
+
+"And pray what may that mean?" asked Rorie, who was like the young lady
+made famous by Sydney Smith: what he did not know would have made a big
+book.
+
+"Why, I believe it means that in certain moments of life, just before
+the coming of a great sorrow, people are wildly gay. Sometimes a man
+who is doomed to die breaks out into uproarious mirth, till his friends
+wonder at him. Haven't you noticed that sometimes in the accounts of
+suicides, the suicide's friends declare that he was in excellent
+spirits the night before he blew out his brains?"
+
+"Then I hope I'm not 'fey,'" said Rorie, "for I feel uncommonly jolly."
+
+"It's only the earth and sky that make us feel happy," sighed Violet,
+with a sudden touch of seriousness. "It is but an outside happiness
+after all."
+
+"Perhaps not; but it's very good of its kind."
+
+They went far afield that day; as far as the yews of Sloden; and the
+sun was low in the west when Vixen wished her knight good-bye, and
+walked her horse down the last long glade that led to the Abbey House.
+She was very serious now, and felt that she had transgressed a little
+by the length of her ride. Poor Bates had gone without his dinner, and
+that dismal yawn of his just now doubtless indicated a painful vacuity
+of the inner man. Rorie and she were able to live upon air and
+sunshine, the scent of the clover, and the freshness of the earth; but
+Bates was of the lower type of humanity, which requires to be sustained
+by beef and beer; and for Bates this day of sylvan bliss had been
+perhaps a period of deprivation and suffering.
+
+Violet had been accustomed to be at home, and freshly dressed, in time
+for Mrs. Winstanley's afternoon tea. She had to listen to the
+accumulated gossip of the day--complaints about the servants, praises
+of Conrad, speculations upon impending changes of fashion, which
+threatened to convulse the world over which Theodore presided; for the
+world of fashion seems ever on the verge of a crisis awful as that
+which periodically disrupts the French Chamber.
+
+To have been absent from afternoon tea was a breach of filial duty
+which the mild Pamela would assuredly resent. Violet felt herself
+doomed to one of those gentle lectures, which were worrying as the
+perpetual dropping of rain. She was very late--dreadfully late--the
+dressing-bell rang as she rode into the stable-yard. Not caring to show
+herself at the porch, lest her mother and the Captain should be sitting
+in the hall, ready to pronounce judgment upon her misconduct, she ran
+quickly up to her dressing-room, plunged her face into cold water,
+shook out her bright hair, brushed and plaited the long tresses with
+deft swift fingers, put on her pretty dinner-dress of pale blue muslin,
+fluttering all over with pale blue bows, and went smiling down to the
+drawing-room like a new Hebe, dressed in an azure cloud.
+
+Mrs. Winstanley was sitting by an open window, while the Captain stood
+outside and talked to her in a low confidential voice. His face had a
+dark look which Vixen knew and hated, and his wife was listening with
+trouble in her air and countenance. Vixen, who meant to have marched
+straight up to her mother and made her apologies, drew back
+involuntarily at the sight of those two faces.
+
+Just at this moment the dinner-bell rang. The Captain gave his wife his
+arm, and the two passed Vixen without a word. She followed them to the
+dining-room, wondering what was coming.
+
+The dinner began in silence, and then Mrs. Winstanley began to falter
+forth small remarks, feeble as the twitterings of birds before the
+coming storm. How very warm it had been all day, almost oppressive: and
+yet it had been a remarkably fine day. There was a fair at Emery
+Down--at least not exactly a fair, but a barrow of nuts and some horrid
+pistols, and a swing. Violet answered, as in duty bound; but the
+Captain maintained his ominous silence. Not a word was said about
+Violet's long ride. It seemed hardly necessary to apologise for her
+absence, since her mother made no complaint. Yet she felt that there
+was a storm coming.
+
+"Perhaps he is going to sell Arion," she thought, "and that's why the
+dear thing was 'fey.'"
+
+And then that rebellious spirit of hers arose within her, ready for war.
+
+"No, I would not endure that. I would not part with my father's last
+gift. I shall be rich seven years hence, if I live so long. I'll do
+what the young spendthrifts do. I'll go to the Jews. I will not be
+Captain Winstanley's helot. One slave is enough for him, I should
+think. He has enslaved poor mamma. Look at her now, poor soul; she sits
+in bodily fear of him, crumbling her bread with her pretty fingers,
+shining and sparkling with rings. Poor mamma! it is a bad day for her
+when fine dresses and handsome jewels cannot make her happy."
+
+It was a miserable dinner. Those three were not wont to be gay when
+they sat at meat together; but the dinner of to-day was of a gloomier
+pattern than usual. The strawberries and cherries were carried round
+solemnly, the Captain filled his glass with claret, Mrs. Winstanley
+dipped the ends of her fingers into the turquois-coloured glass, and
+disseminated a faint odour of roses.
+
+"I think I'll go and sit in the garden, Conrad," she said, when she had
+dried those tapering fingers on her fringed doiley. "It's so warm in
+the house."
+
+"Do, dear. I'll come and smoke my cigar on the lawn presently,"
+answered the Captain.
+
+"Can't you come at once, love?"
+
+"I've a little bit of business to settle first. I won't be long!"
+
+Mrs. Winstanley kissed her hand to her husband, and left the room,
+followed by Vixen.
+
+"Violet," she said, when they were outside, "how could you stay out so
+long? Conrad is dreadfully angry."
+
+"Your husband angry because I rode a few miles farther to-day than
+usual? Dear mother, that is too absurd. I was sorry not to be at home
+in time to give you your afternoon tea, and I apologise to you with all
+my heart; but what can it matter to Captain Winstanley?"
+
+"My dearest Violet, when will you understand that Conrad stands in the
+place of your dear father?"
+
+"Never, mamma, for that is not true. God gave me one father, and I
+loved and honoured him with all my heart. There is no sacrifice he
+could have asked of me that I would not have made; no command of his,
+however difficult, that I would not have obeyed. But I will obey no
+spurious father. I recognise no duty that I owe to Captain Winstanley."
+
+"You are a very cruel girl," wailed Pamela, "and your obstinacy is
+making my life miserable."
+
+"Dear mother, how do I interfere with your happiness? You live your
+life, and I mine. You and Captain Winstanley take your own way, I mine.
+Is it a crime to be out riding a little longer than usual, that you
+should look so pale and the Captain so black when I come home?"
+
+"It is worse than a crime, Violet; it is an impropriety."
+
+Vixen blushed crimson, and turned upon her mother with an expression
+that was half startled, half indignant.
+
+"What do you mean, mamma?"
+
+"Had you been riding about the Forest all those hours alone, it would
+have been eccentric--unladylike--masculine even. You know that your
+habit of passing half your existence on horseback has always been a
+grief to me. But you were not alone."
+
+"No, mamma, I was not alone. I had my oldest friend with me; one of the
+few people in this big world who care for me."
+
+"You were riding about with Roderick Vawdrey, Lady Mabel Ashbourne's
+future husband."
+
+"Why do you remind me of his engagement, mamma? Do you think that
+Roderick and I have even forgotten it? Can he not be my friend as well
+as Lady Mabel's husband? Am I to forget that he and I played together
+as children, that we have always thought of each other and cared for
+each other as brother and sister, only because he is engaged to Lady
+Mabel Ashbourne?"
+
+"Violet, you must know that all talk about brother and sister is sheer
+nonsense. Suppose I had set up brother and sister with Captain
+Winstanley! What would you--what would the world have thought?"
+
+"That would have been different," said Vixen. "You did not know each
+other as babies. In fact you couldn't have done so, for you had left
+off being a baby before he was born," added Vixen naively.
+
+"You will have to put a stop to these rides with Roderick. Everybody in
+the neighbourhood is talking about you."
+
+"Which everybody?"
+
+"Colonel Carteret to begin with."
+
+"Colonel Carteret slanders everybody. It is his only intellectual
+resource. Dearest mother, be your own sweet easy-tempered self, not a
+speaking-tube for Captain Winstanley. Pray leave me my liberty. I am
+not particularly happy. You might at least let me be free."
+
+Violet left her mother with these words. They had reached the lawn
+before the drawing-room windows. Mrs. Winstanley sank into a low
+basket-chair, like a hall-porter's, which a friend had sent her from
+the sands of Trouville; and Vixen ran off to the stables to see if
+Arion was in any way the worse for his long round.
+
+The horses had been littered down for the night, and the stable-yard
+was empty. The faithful Bates, who was usually to be found at this hour
+smoking his evening pipe on a stone bench beside the stable pump, was
+nowhere in sight. Vixen went into Arion's loose-box, where that animal
+was nibbling clover lazily, standing knee-deep in freshly-spread straw,
+his fine legs carefully bandaged. He gave his mistress the usual grunt
+of friendly greeting, allowed her to feed him with the choicest bits of
+clover, and licked her hands in token of gratitude.
+
+"I don't think you're any the worse for our canter over the grass, old
+pet," she cried cheerily, as she caressed his sleek head, "and Captain
+Winstanley's black looks can't hurt you."
+
+As she left the stable she saw Bates, who was walking slowly across the
+court-yard, wiping his honest old eyes with the cuff of his drab coat,
+and hanging his grizzled head dejectedly.
+
+Vixen ran to him with her cheeks aflame, divining mischief. The Captain
+had been wreaking his spite upon this lowly head.
+
+"What's the matter, Bates?"
+
+"I've lived in this house, Miss Voylet, man and boy, forty year come
+Michaelmas, and I've never wronged my master by so much as the worth of
+a handful o' wuts or a carriage candle. I was stable-boy in your
+grandfeyther's time, miss, as is well-beknown to you; and I remember
+your feyther when he was the finest and handsomest young squire within
+fifty mile. I've loved you and yours better than I ever loved my own
+flesh and blood: and to go and pluck me up by the roots and chuck me
+out amongst strangers in my old age, is crueller than it would be to
+tear up the old cedar on the lawn, which I've heard Joe the gardener
+say be as old as the days when such-like trees was fust beknown in
+England. It's crueller, Miss Voylet, for the cedar ain't got no
+feelings--but I feel it down to the deepest fibres in me. The lawn 'ud
+look ugly and empty without the cedar, and mayhap nobody'll miss
+me--but I've got the heart of a man, miss, and it bleeds."
+
+Poor Bates relieved his wounded feelings with this burst of eloquence.
+He was a man who, although silent in his normal condition, had a great
+deal to say when he felt aggrieved. In his present state of mind his
+only solace was in many words.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Bates," cried Vixen, very pale now,
+divining the truth in part, if not wholly. "Don't cry, dear old fellow,
+it's too dreadful to see you. You don't mean--you can't mean--that--my
+mother has sent you away?"
+
+"Not your ma, miss, bless her heart. She wouldn't sack the servant that
+saddled her husband's horse, fair weather and foul, for twenty years.
+No, Miss Voylet, it's Captain Winstanley that's given me the sack. He's
+master here, now, you know, miss."
+
+"But for what reason? What have you done to offend him?"
+
+"Ah, miss, there's the hardship of it! He's turned me off at a minute's
+notice, and without a character too. That's hard, ain't it, miss? Forty
+years in one service, and to leave without a character at last! That do
+cut a old feller to the quick."
+
+"Why don't you tell me the reason, Bates? Captain Winstanley must have
+given you his reason for such a cruel act."
+
+"He did, miss; but I ain't going to tell you."
+
+"Why not, in goodness' name?"
+
+"Because it's an insult to you, Miss Voylet; and I'm not going to
+insult my old master's granddaughter. If I didn't love you for your own
+sake--and I do dearly love you, miss, if you'll excuse the liberty--I'm
+bound to love you for the sake of your grandfeyther. He was my first
+master, and a kind one. He gave me my first pair o' tops. Lor, miss, I
+can call to mind the day as well as if it was yesterday. Didn't I fancy
+myself a buck in 'em."
+
+Bates grinned and sparkled at the thought of those first top-boots. His
+poor old eyes, dim with years of long service, twinkled with the memory
+of those departed vanities.
+
+"Bates," cried Vixen, looking at him resolutely, "I insist upon knowing
+what reason Captain Winstanley alleged for sending you away."
+
+"He didn't allege nothing, miss: and I ain't agoing to tell you what he
+said."
+
+"But you must. I order you to tell me. You are still my servant,
+remember. You have always been a faithful servant, and I am sure you
+won't disobey me at the last. I insist upon knowing what Captain
+Winstanley said; however insulting his words may have been to me, they
+will not surprise or wound me much. There is no love lost between him
+and me. I think everybody knows that. Don't be afraid of giving me
+pain, Bates. Nothing the Captain could say would do that. I despise him
+too much."
+
+"I'm right down glad 'o that, miss. Go on a-despising of him. You can't
+give it him as thick as he deserves."
+
+"Now, Bates, what did he say?"
+
+"He said I was a old fool, miss, or a old rogue, he weren't quite clear
+in his mind which. I'd been actin' as go-between with you and Mr.
+Vawdrey, encouragin' of you to meet the young gentleman in your rides,
+and never givin' the Cap'en warnin', as your stepfeather, of what was
+goin' on behind his back. He said it was shameful, and you were makin'
+yourself the talk of the county, and I was no better than I should be
+for aidin' and abettin' of you in disgracin' yourself. And then I
+blazed up a bit, miss, and maybe I cheeked him: and then he turned upon
+me sharp and short and told me to get out of the house this night, bag
+and baggage, and never to apply to him for a character; and then he
+counted out my wages on the table, miss, up to this evening, exact to a
+halfpenny, by way of showing me that he meant business, perhaps. But I
+came away and left his brass upon the table, staring at him in the
+face. I ain't no pauper, praise be to God! I've had a good place and
+I've saved money: and I needn't lower myself by taking his dirty
+half-pence."
+
+"And you're going away, Bates, to-night?" exclaimed Vixen, hardly able
+to realise this calamity.
+
+That Captain Winstanley should have spoken insultingly of her and of
+Rorie touched her but lightly. She had spoken truly just now when she
+said that she scorned him too much to be easily wounded by his
+insolence. But that he should dismiss her father's old servant as he
+had sold her father's old horse; that this good old man, who had grown
+from boyhood to age under her ancestral roof, who remembered her father
+in the bloom and glory of early youth; that this faithful servant
+should be thrust out at the bidding of an interloper--a paltry schemer,
+who, in Vixen's estimation, had been actuated by the basest and most
+mercenary motives when he married her mother;--that these things should
+be, moved Violet Tempest with an overwhelming anger.
+
+She kept her passion under, so far as to speak very calmly to Bates.
+Her face was white with suppressed rage, her great brown eyes shone
+with angry fire, her lips quivered as she spoke, and the rings on one
+clinched hand were ground into the flesh of the slender fingers.
+
+"Never mind, Bates," she said very gently; "I'll get you a good place
+before ten o'clock to-night. Pack up your clothes, and be ready to go
+where I tell you two hours hence. But first saddle Arion."
+
+"Bless yer heart, Miss Voylet, you're not going out riding this
+evening? Arion's done a long day's work."
+
+"I know that; but he's fresh enough to do as much more--I've just been
+looking at him. Saddle him at once, and keep him ready in his stable
+till I come for him. Don't argue, Bates. If I knew that I were going to
+ride him to death I should ride him to-night all the same. You are
+dismissed without a character, are you?" cried Vixen, laughing
+bitterly. "Never mind, Bates, I'll give you a character; and I'll get
+you a place."
+
+She ran lightly off and was gone, while Bates stood stock still
+wondering at her. There never was such a young lady. What was there in
+life that he would not have done for her--were it to the shedding of
+blood? And to think he was no more to serve and follow her; no longer
+to jog contentedly through the pine-scented Forest--watching the
+meteoric course of that graceful figure in front of him, the lively
+young horse curbed by the light and dexterous hand, the ruddy brown
+hair glittering in the sunlight, the flexible form moving in unison
+with every motion of the horse that carried it! There could be no
+deeper image of desolation in Bates's mind than the idea that this
+rider and this horse were to be henceforth severed from his existence.
+What had he in life save the familiar things and faces among which he
+had grown from youth to age? Separate him from these beloved
+surroundings, and he had no standpoint in the universe. The reason of
+his being would be gone. Bates was as strictly local in his ideas as
+the zoophyte which has clung all its life to one rock.
+
+He went to the harness-room for Miss Tempest's well-worn saddle, and
+brought Arion out of his snug box, and wisped him and combed him, and
+blacked his shoes, and made him altogether lovely--a process to which
+the intelligent animal was inclined to take objection, the hour being
+unseemly and unusual. Poor Bates sighed over his task, and brushed away
+more than one silent tear with the back of the dandy-brush. It was kind
+of Miss Violet to think about getting him a place; but he had no heart
+for going into a new service. He would rather have taken a room in one
+of the Beechdale cottages, and have dragged out the remnant of his days
+within sight of the chimney-stacks beneath which he had slept for forty
+years. He had money in the bank that would last until his lees of life
+were spilt, and then he would be buried in the churchyard he had
+crossed every Sunday of his life on his way to morning service. His
+kindred were all dead or distant--the nearest, a married niece, settled
+at Romsey, which good old humdrum market-town was--except once a week
+or so by carrier's cart--almost as unapproachable as the Bermudas. He
+was not going to migrate to Romsey for the sake of a married niece;
+when he could stop at Beechdale, and see the gables and chimneys of the
+home from which stern fate had banished him.
+
+He had scarcely finished Arion's toilet when Miss Tempest opened the
+stable-door and looked in, ready to mount. She had her hunting-crop,
+with the strong horn hook for opening gates, her short habit, and
+looked altogether ready for business.
+
+"Hadn't I better come with you, miss?" Bates asked, as he lifted her
+into her saddle.
+
+"No, Bates. You are dismissed, you know. It wouldn't do for you to take
+one of Captain Winstanley's horses. He might have you sent to prison
+for horse-stealing."
+
+"Lord, miss, so he might!" said Bates, grinning. "I reckon he's capable
+of it. But I cheeked him pretty strong, Miss Voylet. The thought o'
+that'll always be a comfort to me. You wouldn't ha' knowed me for your
+feyther's old sarvant if you'd heard me. I felt as if Satan had got
+hold o' my tongue, and was wagging it for me. The words came so pat. It
+seemed as if I'd got all the dictionary at the tip of my poor old
+tongue."
+
+"Open the gate," said Vixen. "I am going out by the wilderness."
+
+Bates opened the gate under the old brick archway, and Vixen rode
+slowly away, by unfrequented thickets of rhododendron and arbutus,
+holly and laurel, with a tall mountain-ash, or a stately deodora,
+rising up among them, here and there, dark against the opal evening sky.
+
+It was a lovely evening. The crescent moon rode high above the
+tree-tops; the sunset was still red in the west. The secret depths of
+the wood gave forth their subtle perfume in the cool, calm air. The
+birds were singing in suppressed and secret tones among the low
+branches. Now and then a bat skimmed across the open glade, and melted
+into the woodland darkness, or a rabbit flitted past, gray and
+ghostlike. It was an hour when the woods assumed an awful beauty. Not
+to meet ghosts seemed stranger than to meet them. The shadows of the
+dead would have been in harmony with the mystic loveliness of this
+green solitude--a world remote from the track of men.
+
+Even to-night, though her heart was swelling with indignant pain,
+Violet felt all the beauty of these familiar scenes. They were a part
+of her life, and so long as she lived she must love and rejoice in
+them. To-night as she rode quietly along, careful not to hurry Arion
+after his long day's work, she looked around her with eyes full of deep
+love and melancholy yearning. It seemed to her to-night that out of all
+that had been sweet and lovely in her life only these forest scenes
+remained. Humanity had not been kind to her. The dear father had been
+snatched away: just when she had grown to the height of his stout
+heart, and had fullest comprehension of his love, and greatest need of
+his protection. Her mother was a gentle, smiling puppet, to whom it
+were vain to appeal in her necessities. Her mother's husband was an
+implacable enemy. Rorie, the friend of her childhood--who might have
+been so much--had given himself to another. She was quite alone.
+
+"The charcoal-burner in Mark Ash is not so solitary as I am," thought
+Vixen bitterly. "Charcoal-burning is only part of his life. He has his
+wife and children in his cottage at home."
+
+By-and-by she came out of the winding forest ways into the straight
+high-road that led to Briarwood, and now she put her horse at a smart
+trot, for it was growing dark already, and she calculated that it must
+be nearly eleven o'clock before she could accomplish what she had to do
+and get back to the Abbey House. And at eleven doors were locked for
+the night, and Captain Winstanley made a circuit of inspection, as
+severely as the keeper of a prison. What would be said if she should
+not get home till after the gates were locked, and the keys delivered
+over to that stern janitor?
+
+At last Briarwood came in sight above the dark clumps of beach and oak,
+a white portico, shining lamplit windows. The lodge-gate stood
+hospitably open, and Violet rode in without question, and up to the
+pillared porch.
+
+Roderick Vawdrey was standing in the porch smoking. He threw away his
+cigar as Vixen rode up, and ran down the steps to receive her.
+
+"Why, Violet, what has happened?" he asked, with an alarmed look.
+
+It seemed to him, that only sudden death or dire calamity could bring
+her to him thus, in the late gloaming, pale, and deeply moved. Her lips
+trembled faintly as she looked at him, and for the moment she could
+find no words to tell her trouble.
+
+"What is it, Violet?" he asked again, holding her gloved hand in his,
+and looking up at her, full of sympathy and concern.
+
+"Not very much, perhaps, in your idea of things: but it seems a great
+deal to me. And it has put me into a tremendous passion. I have come to
+ask you to do me a favour."
+
+"A thousand favours if you like; and when they are all granted, the
+obligation shall be still on my side. But come into the drawing-room
+and rest--and let me get you some tea--lemonade--wine--something to
+refresh you after your long ride."
+
+"Nothing, thanks. I am not going to get off my horse. I must not lose a
+moment. Why it must be long after nine already, and Captain Winstanley
+locks up the house at eleven."
+
+Rorie did not care to tell her that it was on the stroke of ten. He
+called in a stentorian voice for a servant, and told the man to get
+Blue Peter saddled that instant.
+
+"Where's your groom, Violet?" he asked, wondering to see her unattended.
+
+"I have no groom. That's just what I came to tell you. Captain
+Winstanley has dismissed Bates, at a minute's warning, without a
+character."
+
+"Dismissed old Bates, your father's faithful servant! But in Heaven's
+name what for?"
+
+"I would rather not tell you that. The alleged reason is an insult to
+me. I can tell you that it is not for dishonesty, or lying, or
+drunkenness, or insolence, or any act that a good servant need be
+ashamed of. The poor old man is cast off for a fault of mine; or for an
+act of mine, which Captain Winstanley pleases to condemn. He is thrust
+out of doors, homeless, without a character, after forty years of
+faithful service. He was with my grandfather, you know. Now, Rorie, I
+want you to take Bates into your service. He is not so ornamental as a
+young man, perhaps; but he is ever so much more useful. He is faithful
+and industrious, honest and true. He is a capital nurse for sick
+horses; and I have heard my dear father say that he knows more than the
+common run of veterinary surgeons. I don't think you would find him an
+incumbrance. Now, dear Rorie," she concluded coaxingly, with innocent
+childish entreaty, almost as if they had still been children and
+playfellows, "I want you to do this for me--I want you to take Bates."
+
+"Why, you dear simple-minded baby, I would take a regiment of Bateses
+for your sake. Why this is not a favour----"
+
+"''Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,'" cried Vixen, quoting
+Desdemona's speech to her general.
+
+Rorie's ready promise had revived her spirit. She felt that, after all,
+there was such a thing as friendship in the world. Life was not
+altogether blank and dreary. She forgot that her old friend had given
+himself away to another woman. She had a knack of forgetting that
+little fact when she and Rorie were together. It was only in her hours
+of solitude that the circumstance presented itself distinctly to her
+mind.
+
+"I am so grateful to you for this, Rorie," she cried. "I cannot tell
+you what a load you have taken off my mind. I felt sure you would do me
+this favour. And yet, if you had said No----! It would have been too
+dreadful to think of. Poor old Bates loafing about Beechdale, living
+upon his savings! I shall be able to pension him by-and-by, when I am
+of age; but now I have only a few pounds in the world, the remains of a
+quarter's pocket-money, according to the view and allowance of the
+forester," added Vixen, quoting the Forest law, with a little mocking
+laugh. "And now good-night; I must go home as fast as I can."
+
+"So you must, but I am coming with you," answered Rorie; and then he
+roared again in his stentorian voice in the direction of the stables,
+"Where's that Blue Peter?"
+
+"Indeed, there is no reason for you to come," cried Vixen. "I know
+every inch of the Forest."
+
+"Very likely; but I am coming with you all the same."
+
+A groom led out Blue Peter, a strong useful-looking hack, which Mr.
+Vawdrey kept to do his dirty work, hunting in bad weather, night-work,
+and extra journeys of all kinds. Rorie was in the saddle and by Vixen's
+side without a minute's lost time, and they were riding out of the
+grounds into the straight road.
+
+They rode for a considerable time in silence. Vixen had seldom seen her
+old friend so thoughtful. The night deepened, the stars shone out of
+the clear heaven, at first one by one: and then, suddenly in a
+multitude that no tongue could number. The leaves whispered and rustled
+with faint mysterious noises, as Violet and her companion rode slowly
+down the long steep hill.
+
+"What a beast that Winstanley is!" said Rorie, when they got to the
+bottom of the hill, as if he had been all this time arriving at an
+opinion about Violet's stepfather. "I'm afraid he must make your life
+miserable."
+
+"He doesn't make it particularly happy," answered Vixen quietly; "but I
+never expected to be happy after mamma married. I did not think there
+was much happiness left for me after my father's death; but there was
+at least peace. Captain Winstanley has made an end of that."
+
+"He is a wretch, and I should like to shoot him," said Rorie
+vindictively. "Dear little Vixen--yes, I must call you by the old pet
+name--to think that you should be miserable, you whom I remember so
+bright and happy, you who were born for happiness! But you are not
+always wretched, dear," he said, leaning over to speak to her in
+closer, more confidential tones, as if the sleepy birds and the
+whispering forest leaves could hear and betray him. "You were happy--we
+were happy--this morning."
+
+He had laid his hand on hers. That useful Blue Peter needed no
+guidance. They were just leaving the road, and entering a long glade
+that led through a newly-opened fir plantation, a straight ride of a
+mile and a half or so. The young moon was gleaming cool and clear above
+the feathering points of the firs.
+
+"Yes," she answered recklessly, involuntarily, with a stifled sob, "I
+am always happy with you. You are all that remains to me of my old
+life."
+
+"My dearest, my loveliest, then be happy for ever!" he cried, winding
+his arm round her slim waist, and leaning over her till his head almost
+rested on her shoulder. Their horses were close together, walking at a
+foot-pace, Blue Peter in nowise disconcerted by this extraordinary
+behaviour of his rider.
+
+"My love, if you can be happy at so small a price, be happy always!"
+said Rorie, his lips close to the girl's pale cheek, his arm feeling
+every beat of the passionate heart. "I will break the toils that bind
+me. I will be yours, and yours only. I have never truly loved anyone
+but you, and I have loved you all my life--I never knew how dearly till
+of late. No, dearest love, never did I know how utterly I loved you
+till these last summer days which we have lived together, alone and
+supremely happy, in the forest that is our native land. My Violet, I
+will break with Mabel to-morrow. She and I were never made for one
+other. You and I were. Yes, love, yes: we have grown up together side
+by side, like the primroses and violets in the woods. It is my second
+nature to love you. Why should we be parted? Why should I go on acting
+a dismal farce, pretending love to Mabel, pretending a friendship to
+you--alike false to both? There is no reason, Violet, none--except----"
+
+"Except your promise to your dying mother," said Violet, escaping from
+his arm, and looking at him steadily, bravely, through the dim light.
+"You shall not break that for my sake--you ought not, were I ten times
+a better woman than I am. No, Rorie, you are to do your duty, and keep
+your word. You are to marry Lady Mabel, and be happy ever after, like
+the prince in a fairy tale. Depend upon it, happiness always comes in
+the long run to the man who does his duty."
+
+"I don't believe it," cried Roderick passionately; "I have seen men who
+have done right ail through life--men who have sacrificed feeling to
+honour, and been miserable. Why should I imitate them? I love you. I
+loved you always; but my mother worried and teased me, vaunting Mabel's
+perfections, trying to lessen you in my esteem. And then, when she was
+dying, and it seemed a hard thing to oppose her wishes, or to refuse
+her anything, were it even the happiness of my life, I was weak, and
+let myself be persuaded, and sold myself into bondage. But it is not
+too late, Violet. I will write Mabel an honest letter to-morrow, and
+tell her the truth for the first time in my life."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind!" cried Violet resolutely. "What, do
+you think I have no pride--no sense of honour? Do you think I would let
+it be said of me, that I, knowing you to be engaged to your cousin, set
+myself to lure you away from her; that we rode together, and were seen
+together, happy in each other's company, and as careless of slander as
+if we had been brother and sister; and that the end of all was that you
+broke your faith to your promised wife in order to marry me? No, Rorie,
+that shall never be said. If I could stoop so low I should be worthy of
+the worst word my mother's husband could say of me."
+
+"What does it matter what people say--your mother's husband above all?
+Malice can always find something evil to say of us, let us shape our
+lives how we may. What really matters is that we should be happy: and I
+can be happy with no one but you, Violet. I know that now. I will never
+marry Mabel Ashbourne."
+
+"And you will never marry me," answered Vixen, giving Arion a light
+touch of her whip which sent him flying along the shadowy ride.
+
+Blue Peter followed as swiftly. Rorie was by Violet's side again in a
+minute, with his hand grasping hers.
+
+"You mean that you don't love me?" he exclaimed angrily. "Why could you
+not have said so at the first; why have you let me live in a fool's
+paradise?"
+
+"The paradise was of your own making," she answered. "I love you a
+little for the past, because my father loved you--because you are all
+that remains to me of my happy childhood. Yes, if it were not for you,
+I might look back and think those dear old days were only a dream. But
+I hear your voice, I look at you, and know that you are real, and that
+I once was very happy. Yes, Rorie, I do love you--love you--yes, with
+all my heart, dearer, better than I have ever loved anyone upon this
+earth, since my father was laid in the ground. Yes, dear." Their horses
+were walking slowly now; and her hand was locked in his as they rode
+side by side. "Yes, dear, I love you too well, and you and I must part.
+I had schooled myself to believe that I loved you only as I might have
+loved a brother; that you could be Lady Mabel's husband and my true
+friend. But that was a delusion--that can never be. You and I must
+part, Rorie. This night-ride in the Forest must be our last. Never any
+more, by sun or moon, must you and I ride together. It is all over,
+Rorie, the old childish friendship. I mean to do my duty, and you must
+do yours."
+
+"I will never marry a woman I do not love."
+
+"You will keep your promise to your mother; you will act as a man of
+honour should. Think, Rorie, what a shameful thing it would be to do,
+to break off an engagement which has been so long publicly known, to
+wound and grieve your good aunt and uncle."
+
+"They have been very kind to me," sighed Rorie. "It would hurt me to
+give them pain."
+
+His conscience told him she was right, but he was angry with her for
+being so much wiser than himself.
+
+Then, in a moment, love--that had slumbered long, idly happy in the
+company of the beloved, and had suddenly awakened to know that this
+summer-day idlesse meant a passion stronger than death--love got the
+better of conscience, and he cried vehemently:
+
+"What need I care for the Duke and Duchess! They can have their choice
+of husbands for their daughter; an heiress like Mabel has only to
+smile, and a man is at her feet. Why should I sacrifice myself, love,
+truth, all that makes life worth having? Do you think I would do it for
+the sake of Ashbourne, and the honour of being a duke's son-in-law?"
+
+"No, Rorie, but for the sake of your promise. And now look, there is
+Lyndhurst steeple above the woods. I am near home, and we must say
+good-night."
+
+"Not till you are at your own gate."
+
+"No one must see you. I want to ride in quietly by the stables. Don't
+think I am ashamed of my errand to-night. I am not; but I want to save
+my mother trouble, and if Captain Winstanley and I were to discuss the
+matter there would be a disturbance."
+
+Roderick Vawdrey seized Arion by the bridle.
+
+"I shall not let you go so easily," he said resolutely. "Vixen, I have
+loved you ever since I can remember you. Will you be my wife?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why did you say that you loved me?"
+
+"Because I cannot tell a lie. Yes, I love you, Rorie; but I love your
+honour, and my own, better than the chance of a happiness that might
+fade and wither before we could grasp it. I know that your mother had a
+very poor opinion of me while she was alive; I should like her to know,
+if the dead know anything, that she was mistaken, and that I am not
+quite unworthy of her respect. You will marry Lady Mabel Ashbourne,
+Rorie: and ten years hence, when we are sober middle-aged people, we
+shall be firm friends once again, and you will thank and praise me for
+having counselled you to cleave to the right. Let go the bridle, Rorie,
+there's no time to lose. There's a glorious gallop from Queen's Bower
+to the Christchurch Road."
+
+It was a long grassy ride, safe only for those who knew the country
+well, for it was bordered on each side by treacherous bogs. Violet knew
+every inch of the way. Arion scented his stable afar off, and went like
+the wind; Blue Peter stretched his muscular limbs in pursuit. It was a
+wild ride along the grassy track, beside watery marshes and reedy pools
+that gleamed in the dim light of a new moon. The distant woods showed
+black against the sky. There was no light to mark a human habitation
+within ken. There was nothing but night and loneliness and the solemn
+beauty of an unpeopled waste. A forest pony stood here and
+there--pastern-deep in the sedges--and gazed at those two wild riders,
+grave and gay, like a ghost. A silvery snake glided across the track; a
+water-rat plunged, with a heavy splash, into a black pool as the horses
+galloped by. It was a glorious ride. Miserable as both riders were,
+they could not but enjoy that wild rush through the sweet soft air,
+under the silent stars.
+
+Vixen gave a long sigh presently, when they pulled up their horses on
+the hard road.
+
+"I think I am 'fey' now," she said. "I wonder what is going to happen
+to me?"
+
+"Whatever misfortunes come to you henceforth will be your own fault,"
+protested Rorie savagely. "You won't be happy, or make me so."
+
+"Don't be angry with me, Rorie," she answered quite meekly. "I would
+rather be miserable in my own way than happy in yours."
+
+Arion, having galloped for his own pleasure, would now have liked to
+crawl. He was beginning to feel the effects of unusual toil, and hung
+his head despondently; but Vixen urged him into a sharp trot, feeling
+that matters were growing desperate.
+
+Ten minutes later they were at the lodge leading to the stables. The
+gate was locked, the cottage wrapped in darkness.
+
+"I must go in by the carriage-drive," said Vixen. "It's rather a bore,
+as I am pretty sure to meet Captain Winstanley. But it can't be helped."
+
+"Let me go in with you."
+
+"No, Rorie; that would do no good. If he insulted me before you, his
+insolence would pain me."
+
+"And I believe I should pain him," said Rorie. "I should give him the
+sweetest horsewhipping he ever had in his life."
+
+"That is to say you would bring disgrace upon me, and make my mother
+miserable. That's a man's idea of kindness. No, Rorie, we part here.
+Good-night, and--good-bye."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" cried Rorie. "I shall wait for you all to-morrow
+morning at the kennels."
+
+Vixen had ridden past the open gate. The lodge-keeper stood at his door
+waiting for her. Roderick respected her wishes and stayed outside.
+
+"Good-night," she cried again, looking back at him; "Bates shall come
+to you to-morrow morning."
+
+The hall-door was wide open, and Captain Winstanley stood on the
+threshold, waiting for his stepdaughter. One of the underlings from the
+stable was ready to take her horse. She dismounted unaided, flung the
+reins to the groom, and walked up to the Captain with her firmest step.
+When she was in the hall he shut the door, and bolted and locked it
+with a somewhat ostentatious care. She seemed to breathe less freely
+when that great door had shut out the cool night. She felt as if she
+were in a jail.
+
+"I should like half-a-dozen words with you in the drawing-room before
+you go upstairs," Captain Winstanley said stiffly.
+
+"A hundred, if you choose," answered Vixen, with supreme coolness.
+
+She was utterly fearless. What risks or hazards had life that she need
+dread? She hoped nothing--feared nothing. She had just made the
+greatest sacrifice that fate could require of her: she had rejected the
+man she fondly loved. What were the slings and arrows of her
+stepfather's petty malice compared with such a wrench as that?
+
+She followed Captain Winstanley to the drawing-room. Here there was
+more air; one long window was open, and the lace curtains were faintly
+stirred by the night winds. A large moderator lamp burned upon Mrs.
+Winstanley's favourite table--her books and basket of crewels were
+there, but the lady of the house had retired.
+
+"My mother has gone to bed, I suppose?" inquired Vixen.
+
+"She has gone to her room, but I fear she is too much agitated to get
+any rest. I would not allow her to wait here any longer for you."
+
+"Is it so very late?" asked Vixen, with the most innocent air.
+
+Her heart was beating violently, and her temper was not at its best.
+She stood looking at the Captain, with a mischievous sparkle in her
+eyes, and her whip tightly clenched.
+
+She was thinking of that speech of Rorie's about the "sweetest
+horsewhipping." She wondered whether Captain Winstanley had ever been
+horsewhipped; whether that kind of chastisement was numbered in the sum
+of his experiences. She opined not. The Captain was too astute a man to
+bring himself in the way of such punishment. He would do things that
+deserved horsewhipping, and get off scot free.
+
+"It is a quarter-past eleven. I don't know whether you think that a
+respectable hour for a young lady's evening ride. May I ask the motive
+of this nocturnal expedition?"
+
+"Certainly. You deprived Bates of a comfortable place--he has only been
+in the situation forty years--and I went to get him another. I am happy
+to say that I succeeded."
+
+"And pray who is the chivalrous employer willing to receive my
+dismissed servant without a character?"
+
+"A very old friend of my father's--Mr. Vawdrey."
+
+"I thought as much," retorted the Captain. "And it is to Mr. Vawdrey
+you have been, late at night, unattended?"
+
+"It is your fault that I went unattended. You have taken upon yourself
+to dismiss my groom--the man who broke my first pony, the man my father
+gave me for an attendant and protector, just as he gave me my horse.
+You will take upon yourself to sell my horse next, I suppose?"
+
+"I shall take a great deal more upon myself, before you and I have done
+with each other, Miss Tempest," answered the Captain, pale with passion.
+
+Never had Vixen seen him so strongly moved. The purple veins stood out
+darkly upon his pale forehead, his eyes had a haggard look; he was like
+a man consumed inwardly by some evil passion that was stronger than
+himself, like a man possessed by devils. Vixen looked at him with
+wonder. They stood facing each other, with the lamplit table between
+them, the light shining on both their faces.
+
+"Why do you look at me with that provoking smile?" he asked. "Do you
+want to exasperate me? You must know that I hate you."
+
+"I do," answered Vixen; "but God only knows why you should do so."
+
+ "Do you know no reason?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can't you guess one?"
+
+"No; unless it is because my father's fortune will belong to me
+by-and-by, if I live to be five-and-twenty, and your position here will
+be lessened."
+
+"That is not the reason; no, I am not so base as that. That its not why
+I hate you, Violet. If you had been some dumpy, homely, country lass,
+with thick features and a clumsy figure, you and I might have got on
+decently enough. I would have made you obey me; but I would have been
+kind to you. But you are something very different. You are the girl I
+would have perilled my soul to win--the girl who rejected me with
+careless scorn. Have you forgotten that night in the Pavilion Garden at
+Brighton? I have not. I never look up at the stars without remembering
+it; and I can never forgive you while that memory lives in my mind. If
+you had been my wife, Violet, I would have been your slave. You forced
+me to make myself your stepfather; and I will be master instead of
+slave. I will make your life bitter to you if you thwart me. I will put
+a stop to your running after another woman's sweetheart. I will come
+between you and your lover, Roderick Vawdrey. Your secret meetings,
+your clandestine love-making, shall be stopped. Such conduct as you
+have been carrying on of late is a shame and disgrace to your sex."
+
+"How dare you say that?" cried Vixen, beside herself with anger.
+
+She grasped the lamp with both her hands, as if she would have hurled
+it at her foe. It was a large moon-shaped globe upon a bronze
+pedestal--a fearful thing to fling at one's adversary. A great wave of
+blood surged up into the girl's brain. What she was going to do she
+knew not; but her whole being was convulsed by the passion of that
+moment. The room reeled before her eyes, the heavy pedestal swayed in
+her hands, and then she saw the big moonlike globe roll on to the
+carpet, and after it, and darting beyond it, a stream of liquid fire
+that ran, and ran, quicker than thought, towards the open window.
+
+Before she could speak or move, the flame had run up the lace curtain,
+like a living thing, swift as the flight of a bird or the gliding
+motion of a lizard. The wide casement was wreathed with light. They
+two--Vixen and her foe--seemed to be standing in an atmosphere of fire.
+
+Captain Winstanley was confounded by the suddenness of the catastrophe.
+While he stood dumb, bewildered, Vixen sprang through the narrow space
+between the flaming curtains, as if she had plunged into a gulf of
+fire. He heard her strong clear voice calling to the stablemen and
+gardeners. It rang like a clarion in the still summer night.
+
+There was not a moment lost. The stablemen rushed with pails of water,
+and directly after them the Scotch gardener with his garden-engine,
+which held several gallons. His hose did some damage to the
+drawing-room carpet and upholstery, but the strong jet of water
+speedily quenched the flames. In ten minutes the window stood blank,
+and black, and bare, with Vixen standing on the lawn outside,
+contemplating the damage she had done.
+
+Mrs. Winstanley rushed in at the drawing-room door, ghostlike, in her
+white _peignoir_, pale and scared.
+
+"Oh, Conrad, what has happened?" she cried distractedly, just able to
+distinguish her husband's figure standing in the midst of the
+disordered room.
+
+"Your beautiful daughter has been trying to set the house on fire," he
+answered. "That is all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+"That must end at once."
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when all the confusion was over, Violet was
+kneeling by her mother's chair, trying to restore tranquillity to Mrs.
+Winstanley's fluttered spirits. Mother and daughter were alone together
+in the elder lady's dressing-room, the disconsolate Pamela sitting,
+like Niobe, amidst her scattered fineries, her pomade-pots and
+powder-boxes, fan-cases and jewel-caskets, and all the arsenal of
+waning beauty.
+
+"Dear mother," pleaded Violet, with unusual gentleness, "pray don't
+give way to this unnecessary grief. You cannot surely believe that I
+tried to set this dear old home on fire--that I could be so
+foolish--granting even that I were wicked enough to do it--as to
+destroy a place I love--the house in which my father was born! You
+can't believe such a thing, mother."
+
+"I know that you are making my life miserable," sobbed Mrs. Winstanley,
+feebly dabbing her forehead with a flimsy Valenciennes bordered
+handkerchief, steeped in eau-de-cologne, "and I am sure Conrad would
+not tell a falsehood."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Vixen with a gloomy look. "We will take it for
+granted that he is perfection and could not do wrong. But in this case
+he is mistaken. I felt quite capable of killing him, but not of setting
+fire to this house."
+
+"Oh," wailed Pamela distractedly, "this is too dreadful! To think that
+I should have a daughter who confesses herself at heart a murderess."
+
+"Unhappily it is true, mother," said Vixen, moodily contrite. "For just
+that one moment of my life I felt a murderous impulse--and from the
+impulse to the execution is a very short step. I don't feel myself very
+superior to the people who are hanged at Newgate, I assure you."
+
+"What is to become of me?" inquired Mrs. Winstanley in abject
+lamentation. "It is too hard that my own daughter should be a source of
+misery in my married life, that she should harden her heart against the
+best of stepfathers, and try, yes, actually try, to bring discord
+between me and the husband I love. I don't know what I have done that I
+should be so miserable."
+
+"Dear mother, only be calm and listen to me," urged Violet, who was
+very calm herself, with a coldly resolute air which presently obtained
+ascendency over her agitated parent. "If I have been the source of
+misery, that misery cannot too soon come to an end. I have long felt
+that I have no place in this house--that I am one too many in our small
+family. I feel now--yes, mamma, I feel and know that the same roof
+cannot cover me and Captain Winstanley. He and I can no longer sit at
+the same board, or live in the same house. That must end at once."
+
+"What complaint can you have to make against him, Violet?" cried her
+mother hysterically, and with a good deal more dabbing of the perfumed
+handkerchief upon her fevered brow. "I am sure no father could be
+kinder than Conrad would be to you if you would only let him. But you
+have set yourself against him from the very first. It seems as if you
+grudged me my happiness."
+
+"It shall seem so no longer, mamma. I will cease to be a thorn in your
+garland of roses," replied Vixen, with exceeding bitterness. "I will
+leave the Abbey House directly any other home can be found for me. If
+dear old McCroke would take care of me I should like to go abroad,
+somewhere very far, to some strange place, where all things would be
+different and new to me," continued Vixen, unconsciously betraying that
+aching desire for forgetfulness natural to a wounded heart. "Sweden, or
+Norway, for instance. I think I should like to spend a year in one of
+those cold strange lands, with good old McCroke for my companion. There
+would be nothing to remind me of the Forest," she concluded with a
+stifled sob.
+
+"My dear Violet, you have such wild ideas," exclaimed her mother with
+an injured air. "It is just as Conrad says. You have no notion of the
+proprieties. Sweden or Norway, indeed! Was there ever anything so
+outlandish? What would people say, I wonder?"
+
+"Ah, what indeed, mamma. Perhaps, they might for once say what is true:
+that I could not get on with Captain Winstanley, and so was forced to
+find another home."
+
+"And what a reproach that would be to me," cried her mother. "You are
+so selfish, Violet; you think of no one but yourself."
+
+"Perhaps that is because nobody else thinks of me, mother."
+
+"How can you say such abominable things, Violet? Am I not thinking of
+you this moment? I am sure I have thought of you this evening until my
+head aches. You force one to think about you, when you behave in such a
+disgraceful manner."
+
+"What have I done that is disgraceful, mamma? I have ridden out at an
+unusual hour to get a place for an old servant--a man who has served in
+this house faithfully for forty years. That is what I have done, and I
+should not be ashamed if it were known to everybody in Hampshire. Yes,
+even to Lady Mabel Ashbourne, that pattern of chilly propriety. The
+disgrace is Captain Winstanley's. It is he who ought to be ashamed of
+turning off my father and grandfather's old servant. What you have to
+be sorry for, mamma, is that you have married a man capable of such an
+action."
+
+"How dare you speak against him!" cried the offended wife. "He has done
+everything for the best. It was your own foolish conduct that obliged
+him to dismiss Bates. To think that a daughter of mine should have so
+little self-respect as to go roaming about the Forest with an engaged
+man! It is too dreadful."
+
+"You need not make yourself unhappy about the engaged man, mamma," said
+Vixen scornfully. "He is out of danger. Rorie and I need never see each
+other again. I should be more than content that it should be so. Only
+arrange with Captain Winstanley for some allowance to be made me--just
+money enough to enable me to live abroad with dear old McCroke. I want
+no gaieties, I want no fine dresses, The simplest mode of life, in a
+strange country, will suit me best."
+
+"I can't bear the idea of your going away," whimpered Mrs. Winstanley.
+"People will talk so. A stepfather's is such a delicate position.
+People are sure to say cruel things about Conrad. And it is all your
+fault, Violet. We might have lived so happily together if you had
+liked."
+
+"We might, perhaps, mamma; but I don't think any of us knew the way.
+Captain Winstanley could hardly expect that to sell my father's
+favourite horse was the shortest way to my liking; and that's how he
+began his reign in this house. Don't let us talk any more, my dear
+mother. Words are useless to heal such wounds as ours. Good-night.
+Sleep well, and forget all about me. To-morrow you and the Captain can
+give me my liberty."
+
+"I thought you were so fond of the Abbey House," moaned her mother.
+
+"So I was when it was home. It has ceased to be my home, and I shall be
+glad to leave it."
+
+"Oh, Violet, you have a hard heart."
+
+"Good-night, mamma."
+
+She was gone, leaving Mrs. Winstanley feebly moaning, and vaguely
+dabbing her forehead, feeling that the Fates had not been kind to her.
+Life seemed to have gone all askew. It was as if Theodore had taken to
+sending home misfits. Nothing was smooth or pleasant in an existence
+whose halcyon calm had once been undisturbed by so much as a crumpled
+rose-leaf.
+
+Vixen went straight to her room, accompanied by Argus, who had followed
+her from the hall to the door of her mother's dressing-room, and had
+waited patiently for her in the corridor, with his head leaning against
+the closed door, as if he scented trouble within.
+
+When girl and dog were alone together, Violet flung herself on the
+ground, threw her arms round the mastiff's thick neck, and let her
+tears flow freely against that faithful head.
+
+"Oh, Argus," she cried piteously, "you are the only friend left me in
+this wide world!"
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note: Typographical errors silently corrected:
+
+volume 2 chapter 11: =sighed Mabel= replaced by
+                     =sighed Lady Mabel=
+
+chapter 12: =We many learn= replaced by =We may learn=
+
+chapter 12: =drift us farther.= replaced by =drift us farther."=
+
+chapter 15: =outside, "How= replaced by =outside, "how=
+
+chapter 15: =in your grandfather's time= replaced by
+            =in your grandfeyther's time=
+
+chapter 15: =as your stepfather= replaced by
+            =as your stepfeather=
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vixen, Volume II., by M. E. Braddon
+
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