u for a minute in the hall, before I start."

"You must do as you please, dear," replied her mother. "I hardly feel
equal to going down to dinner myself; but it would not be fair to let
Conrad eat a second meal in solitude, especially when we are to be
parted for two or three days and he is going across the sea. I shall
not have a minute's rest to-night, thinking of you both."

"Sleep happily, dear mother, and leave us to Providence. The voyage
cannot be perilous in such weather as this," said Vixen, with assumed
cheerfulness.

Two hours later the carriage was at the door, and Violet Tempest was
ready to start. Her trunks were on the roof of the brougham, her
dressing-bag, and travelling-desk, and wraps were stowed away inside;
Argus was by her side, his collar provided with a leather strap, by
which she could hold him when necessary. Captain Winstanley was smoking
a cigar on the porch.

Mrs. Winstanley came weeping out of the drawing-room, and hugged her
daughter silently. Violet returned the embrace, but said not a word
till just at the last.

"Dear mother," she whispered earnestly, "never be unhappy about me. Let
me bear the blame of all that has gone amiss between us."

"You had better be quick, Miss Tempest, if you want to be in time for
the boat," said the Captain from the porch.

"I am quite ready," answered Vixen calmly.

Phoebe was at the carriage-door, tearful, and in everybody's way, but
pretending to help. Argus was sent up to the box, where he sat beside
the coachman with much gravity of demeanour, having first assured
himself that his mistress was inside the carriage. Mrs. Winstanley
stood in the porch, kissing her hand; and so the strong big horses bore
the carriage away, through the dark shrubberies, between banks of
shadowy foliage, out into the forest-road, which was full of ghosts at
this late hour, and would have struck terror to the hearts of any
horses unaccustomed to its sylvan mysteries.

They drove through Lyndhurst, where the twinkling little lights in the
shop-windows were being extinguished by envious shutters, and where the
shop-keepers paused in their work of extinction to stare amazedly at
the passing carriage; not that a carriage was a strange apparition in
Lyndhurst, but because the inhabitants had so little to do except stare.

Anon they came to Bolton's Bench, beneath a cluster of pine-trees on a
hilly bit of common, and then the long straight road to Southampton lay
before