nd just as it was getting
dark started a stag up on the high ground this side of Pickett's Post,
and ran him nearly into Ringwood. Go in and fetch my wife, Rorie. Oh,
here she is"--as the _portiere_ was lifted by a white hand, all
a-glitter with diamonds--"you must excuse me sitting down in pink
to-day, Pamela; I only got in as the gong began to sound, and I'm as
hungry as the proverbial hunter."

"You know I always think you handsomest in your scarlet coat, Edward,"
replied the submissive wife, "but I hope you're not very muddy."

"I won't answer for myself; but I haven't been actually up to my neck
in a bog."

Rorie offered his arm to Mrs. Tempest, and they all went in to dinner,
the squire still playing with his daughter's hair, and Miss McCroke
solemnly bringing up the rear.

The dining-room at the Abbey House was the ancient refectory, large
enough for a mess-room; so, when there were no visitors, the Tempests
dined in the library--a handsome square room, in which old family
portraits looked down from the oak panelling above the bookcases, and
where the literary element was not obtrusively conspicuous. You felt
that it was a room quite as well adapted for conviviality as for study.
There was a cottage piano in a snug corner by the fireplace. The
Squire's capacious arm-chair stood on the other side of the hearth,
Mrs. Tempest's low chair and gipsy table facing it. The old oak buffet
opposite the chimney-piece was a splendid specimen of Elizabethan
carving, and made a rich background for the Squire's racing-cups, and a
pair of Oliver Cromwell tankards, plain and unornamental as that
illustrious Roundhead himself.

It was a delightful room on a chill October evening like this: the logs
roaring up the wide chimney, a pair of bronze candelabra lighting
buffet and table, Mrs. Tempest smiling pleasantly at her unbidden
guest, and the squire stooping, red-faced and plethoric, over his
mulligatawny; while Vixen, who was at an age when dinner is a secondary
consideration, was amusing herself with the dogs, gentlemanly animals,
too wellbred to be importunate in their demands for an occasional
tid-bit, and content to lie in superb attitudes, looking up at the
eaters patiently, with supplication in their great pathetic brown eyes.

"Rorie is going up to-morrow--not in a balloon, but to Magdalen
College, Oxford--so, as this was his last night, I made him come to
dinner," explained Vixen presently. "I hope I didn't do wron