rmondsey Bounce, or
the Whitechapel Wiggle; it was waltzing pure and simple, unaffected,
graceful; the waltzing of a man with a musical ear, and an athlete's
mastery of the art of motion. Vixen hated the Captain, but she enjoyed
the waltz. They danced till the last bar died away in a tender
diminuendo.

"You look pale," said the Captain, "let us go into the garden." He
brought her cloak and wrapped it round her, and she took his offered
arm without a word. It was one of those rare nights in late October,
when the wind is not cold. There was hardly the flutter of a leaf in
the Pavilion garden. The neighbouring sea made the gentlest music--a
melancholy ebb and flow of sound, like the murmuring of some great
imprisoned spirit.

In the searching light of day, when its adjacent cab-stands and
commonesses are visible, and its gravelled walks are peopled with
nursemaids and small children, the Pavilion garden can hardly be called
romantic. But by this tender moonlight, in this cool stillness of a
placid autumn midnight, even the Pavilion garden had its air of romance
and mystery. The various roofs and chimneys stood up against the sky,
picturesque as a city of old time. And, after all, this part of
Brighton has a peculiar charm which all the rest of Brighton lacks. It
speaks of the past, it tells its story of the dead. They were not great
or heroic, perhaps, those departed figures, whose ghosts haunt us in
the red and yellow rooms, and in the stiff town garden; but they had
their histories. They lived, and loved, and suffered; and, being dead
so long, come back to us in the softened light of vanished days, and
take hold of our fancy with their quaint garments and antique
head-gear, their powder, and court-swords, and diamond shoe-buckles,
and little loves and little sorrows.

Vixen walked slowly along the shining gravel-path with her black and
gold mantle folded round her, looking altogether statuesque and
unapproachable. They took one turn in absolute silence, and then
Captain Winstanley, who was not inclined to beat about the bush when he
had something particular to say, and a good opportunity for saying it,
broke the spell.

This was perhaps the first time, in an acquaintance of more than six
months, that he had ever found himself alone with Violet Tempest,
without hazard of immediate interruption.

"Miss Tempest," he began, with a firmness of tone that startled her, "I
want to know why you are so unkind to me."

"