st; "Lady Jane never
gives friendly parties. There is nothing friendly in her nature, and I
don't think she likes us--much. But I daresay we shall be asked, and if
we go I must have a new dress," added the gentle lady with a sigh of
resignation. "It will be a dinner, no doubt; and the Duke and Duchess
will be there, of course."

The card of invitation came in due course, three weeks before the
birthday. It was to be a dinner, as Mrs. Tempest had opined. She wrote
off to her milliner at once, and there was a passage of letters and
fashion-plates and patterns of silk to and fro, and some of Mrs.
Tempest's finest lace came out of the perfumed chest in which she kept
her treasures, and was sent off to Madame Theodore.

Poor Vixen beheld these preparations with an aching heart. She did not
care about dinner-parties in the least, but she would have liked to be
with Roderick on his birthday. She would have liked it to have been a
hunting-day, and to have ridden for a wild scamper across the hills
with him--to have seen the rolling downs of the Wight blue in the
distance--to have felt the soft south wind blowing in her face, and to
have ridden by his side, neck and neck, all day long; and then to have
gone home to the Abbey House to dinner, to the snug round table in the
library, and the dogs, and papa in his happiest mood, expanding over
his port and walnuts. That would have been a happy birthday for all of
them, in Violet's opinion.

The Squire and his daughter had plenty of hunting in this merry month
of October, but there had been no sign of Rorie and his big raking
chestnut in the field, nor had anyone in the Forest heard of or seen
the young Oxonian.

"I daresay he is only coming home in time for the birthday," Mrs.
Tempest remarked placidly, and went on with her preparations for that
event.

She wanted to make a strong impression on the Duchess, who had not
behaved too well to her, only sending her invitations for
indiscriminate afternoon assemblies, which Mrs. Tempest had graciously
declined, pleading her feeble health as a reason for not going to
garden-parties.

Vixen was in a peculiar temper during those three weeks, and poor Miss
McCroke had hard work with her.

"_Der_, _die_, _das_," cried Vixen, throwing down her German grammar in
a rage one morning, when she had been making a muddle of the definite
article in her exercise, and the patient governess had declared that
they really must go back to the very