welcome to such poor lonely creatures as mamma and I."

She looked at her little watch--a miniature hunter in a case of black
enamel, with a monogram in diamonds, one of her father's last gifts. It
was one o'clock already, and luncheon would be at half-past.

"Only half-an-hour for Rorie," she thought.

The minute-hand crept slowly to the half-hour, the luncheon-gong
sounded below, and there had been no announcement of Mr. Vawdrey.

"He may be downstairs with mamma all this time," thought Vixen. "Forbes
would not tell me, unless he were sent."

She went downstairs and met Forbes in the hall.

"Oh, if you please, ma'am, Mrs. Tempest does not feel equal to coming
down to luncheon. She will take a wing of chicken in her own room."

"And I don't feel equal to sitting in the library alone, Forbes," said
Violet; "so you may tell Phoebe to bring me a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Has nobody called this morning?"

"No, ma'am."

Vixen went back to her room, out of spirits and out of temper. It was
unkind of Rorie, cold, neglectful, heartless.

"If he had come home after an absence of two years--absence under such
sad circumstances--how anxious I should be to see him," she thought.
"But I don't suppose there is frost enough to stop the hunting, and I
daresay he is tearing across the heather on some big raw-boned horse,
and not giving me a thought. Or perhaps he is dancing attendance upon
Lady Mabel. But no, I don't think he cares much for that kind of thing."

She moved about the room a little, rearranging things that were already
arranged exactly as she had left them two years ago. She opened a book
and flung it aside; tried the piano, which sounded muffled and woolly.

"My poor little Broadwood is no better for being out at grass," she
said.

She went to one of the windows, and stood there looking out, expecting
every instant to see a dog-cart with a rakish horse, a wasp-like body,
and high red wheels, spin round the curve of the shrubbery. She stood
thus for a long time, as she had done on that wet October afternoon of
Rorie's home-coming; but no rakish horse came swinging round the curve
of the carriage-drive. The flying snow drifted past the window; the
winter sky looked blue and clear between the brief showers, the tall
feathery fir-trees and straight slim cypresses stood up against the
afternoon light, and Vixen gazed at them with angry eyes, full of
resentment against Roderick Vawdrey.

"The ground is too hard