Viola insisted on displaying all the curiosities--the
puzzle-cup that could not be used, the horrid frog that sprang to your
lips in the tankard, the rolling-pin covered with sentimental poetry,
and her extraordinary French pictures on the walls. Dermot kept us
full of merriment, and we laughed on till the sound of the
dressing-bell sent us racing up to the castle in joyous guilt. That
kettledrum at the lodge is one of the brightest spots in my memory.

We were very merry all the evening in a suppressed way over the piano,
Viola, Dermot, and I singing, Harold looking on, and Eustace being left
a willing victim to the good counsel lavished by my lord and my lady,
who advised him nearly out of his senses and into their own best graces.

But we had not yet done with the amenities of the Stympsons. The
morning's post brought letters to Lady Diana and Lord Erymanth, which
were swallowed by the lady with only a flush on her brow, but which
provoked from the gentleman a sharp interjection.

"Scandalous, libellous hags!"

"The rara Avis?" inquired Dermot.

And in spite of Lady Diana's warning, "Not now," Lord Erymanth
declared, "Avice, yes! A bird whose quills are quills of iron dipped
in venom, and her beak a brazen one, distilling gall on all around. I
shall inform her that she has made herself liable to an action for
libel. A very fit lesson to her."

"What steps shall I take, my lord?" said Eustace, with much importance.
"I shall be most happy to be guided by you."

"It is not you," said Lord Erymanth.

"Oh! if it is only _he_, it does not signify so much."

"Certainly not," observed Dermot. "What sinks some floats others."

Lady Diana here succeeded in hushing up the subject, Harold having said
nothing all the time; but, after we broke up from breakfast, I had a
private view of Lady Diana's letter, which was spiteful beyond
description as far as we were concerned; making all manner of
accusations on the authority of the Australian relations; the old
stories exaggerated into horrible blackness, besides others for which I
could by no means account. Gambling among the gold-diggers, horrid
frays in Victoria, and even cattle-stealing, were so impossible in a
man who had always been a rich sheep farmer, that I laughed; yet they
were told by the cousins with strange circumstantiality. Then came
later tales--about our ways at Arghouse--all as a warning against
permitting any intercourse of the sweet child's, w