earnest wish that your future should be
provided for. I told her a few days before she died that I should make
you this offer. I do it with all my heart; and I shall consider myself
obliged by your acceptance of it."

The Captain's reply was brief and firm.

"I thank you for your generous offer," he said, "which I feel assured
is made in good faith; but I think you ought to know that there are
reasons why it is impossible I should accept any benefit from your
hand. I shall not re-enter the Abbey House after my wife's funeral. You
will be sole and sovereign mistress of all things from that hour."

He kept his word. He was chief mourner at the quiet but stately burial
under the old yew-tree in Beechdale churchyard. When all was over he
got into a fly, and drove to the station at Lyndhurst Road, whence he
departed by the first train for London. He told no one anything about
his plans for the future; he left no address but his club. He was next
heard of six months later, in South America.

Violet had telegraphed to her old governess directly after Mrs.
Winstanley's death; and that good and homely person arrived on the day
after the funeral, to take up her abode with her old pupil, as
companion and chaperon, until Miss Tempest should have become Mrs.
Vawdrey, and would have but one companion henceforward in all the
journey of life. Rorie and Vixen were to be married in six months. Mrs.
Winstanley had made them promise that her death should delay their
marriage as little as possible.

"You can have a very quiet wedding, you know, dear," she said. "You can
be married in your travelling-dress--something pretty in gray silk and
terry velvet, or with chinchilla trimming, if it should be winter.
Chinchilla is so distinguished-looking. You will go abroad, I suppose,
for your honeymoon. Pau, or Monaco, or any of those places on the
Mediterranean."

It had pleased her to settle everything for the lovers. Violet
remembered all these speeches with a tender sorrow. There was comfort
in the thought that her mother had loved her, according to her lights.

It had been finally settled between the lovers that they were to live
at the Abbey House. Briarwood was to be let to any wealthy individual
who might desire a handsome house, surrounded by exquisitely arranged
gardens, and burdened with glass that would cost a small fortune
annually to maintain. Before Mr. Vawdrey could put his property into
the hands of the auctioneers, he