's a pity; it would have saved time. I'll get down to St. Helier's
somehow, telegraph to Captain Winstanley to inquire the exact state of
your mother's health, and not come back till I bring you his answer."

"Oh, Rorie, that would be good of you!" exclaimed Vixen. "But it seems
too cruel to send you away like that; you have been travelling so long.
You have had nothing to eat. You must be dreadfully tired."

"Tired! Have I not been with you? There are some people whose presence
makes one unconscious of humanity's weaknesses. No, darling, I am
neither tired nor hungry; I am only ineffably happy. I'll go down and
set the wires in motion; and then I'll find out all about the steamer
for to-morrow morning, and we will go back to Hampshire together."

And again the rejoicing lover quoted the Laureate:

"And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold;
And far across the hills they went,
In that new world which is the old."

Rorie had to walk all the way to St. Helier's. He dispatched an urgent
message to Captain Winstanley, and then dined temperately at a French
restaurant not far from the quay, where the _bon vivants_ of Jersey are
wont to assemble nightly. When he had dined he walked about the
harbour, looking at the ships, and watching the lights beginning to
glimmer from the barrack-windows, and the straggling street along the
shore, and the far-off beacons shining out, as the rosy sunset darkened
to purple night.

He went to the office two or three times before the return message had
come; but at last it was handed to him, and he read it by the
office-lamp:

"_Captain Winstanley, Abbey House, Hampshire, to Mr. Vawdrey, St.
Heliers_.

"My wife is seriously ill, but in no immediate danger. The doctors
order extreme quiet; all agitation is to be carefully avoided. Let Miss
Tempest bear this in mind when she comes home."

Roderick drove back to Les Tourelles with this message, which was in
some respects reassuring, or at any rate afforded a certainty less
appalling than Violet's measureless fears.

Vixen was sitting on the pilgrim's bench beside the manor house
gateway, watching for her lover's return. Oh, happy lover, to be thus
watched for and thus welcomed; thrice, nay, a thousandfold happy in the
certainty that she was his own for ever! He put his arm round her, and
they wandered along the shadowy lane together, between dewy banks of
tangled verdure, luminous with glow-