Everybody knew Captain Hawbuck's cottage, a verandahed box of a house,
on the slope of the hill above Beechdale.

"I'm afraid you'll find the drawing-room chimney smokes," said a
matter-of-fact lady in sea-green; "poor Mrs. Hawbuck was a martyr to
that chimney."

"What does a bachelor want with a drawing-room? If there is one
sitting-room in which I can burn a good fire, I shall be satisfied. The
stable is in very fair order."

"The Hawbucks kept a pony-carriage," assented the sea-green lady.

"If Mrs. Hawbuck accepts my offer, I shall send for my horses next
week," said the Captain.

Mrs. Tempest blushed. Her life had flowed in so gentle and placid a
current, that the freshness of her soul had not worn off, and at
nine-and-thirty she was able to blush. There was something so
significant in Captain Winstanley's desire to establish himself at
Beechdale, that she could not help feeling fluttered by the fact. It
might be on Violet's account, of course, that he came; yet Violet and
he had never got on very well together.

"Poor fellow!" she thought blandly, "if he for a moment supposes that
anything would tempt me to marry again, he is egregiously mistaken."

And then she looked round the lovely old room, brightened by a crowd of
well-dressed people, and thought that next to being Edward Tempest's
wife, the best thing in life was to be Edward Tempest's widow.

"Dear Edward!" she mused, "how strange that we should miss him so
little to-night."

It had been with everyone as if the squire had never lived. Politeness
exacted this ignoring of the past, no doubt; but the thing had been so
easily done. The noble presence, the jovial laugh, the friendly smile
were gone, and no one seemed conscious of the void--no one but Violet,
who looked round the room once when conversation was liveliest, with a
pale indignant face, resenting this forgetfulness.

"I wish papa's ghost would come in at that door and scare his
hollow-hearted friends," she said to herself; and she felt as if it
would hardly have been a surprise to her to see the door open slowly
and that familiar figure appear.

"Well, Violet," Mrs. Temple said sweetly, when the guests were gone,
"how do you think it all went off?"

"It," of course, meant the dinner-party.

"I suppose, according to the nature of such things, it was all right
and proper," Vixen answered coldly; "but I should think it must have
been intensely painful to you, mamma."

Mrs. Tempest sig