al later than she had
supposed. Time goes quickly when one is talking over a new grievance
with an old friend. She was a long way from the Abbey House.

"I must go home," she said; "mamma and Captain Winstanley may arrive at
any moment. There is no time named in mamma's last telegram; she said
only that they are moving gently homewards."

"Let us go then," said Rorie, rising from his rugged seat.

"But I am not going to take you out of your way. Every step of my
journey home takes you further from Briarwood."

"Never mind if it does. I mean to walk to the Abbey House with you. I
daresay, if I were very tired, Bates would lend me a mount home."

"You can have Arion, if you like."

"No, thanks. Arion shall not have my thirteen stone; I want a little
more timber under me."

"You ought to have had Bullfinch," said Vixen regretfully.

"I would have had him, if I had known he was in the market. The writing
of a figure or so more or less on a cheque should not have hindered me."

CHAPTER VII.

A Bad Beginning.

That walk through the Forest was very pleasant to Violet. It was a day
on which mere existence was a privilege; and now that her spirits had
been soothed by her confidential talk with Rorie, Vixen could enjoy
those sights and sounds and sweet wild scents of the woodland that had
ever been a rapture to her.

This Forest-born girl loved her native woods as Wordsworth loved his
lakes and mountains, as Byron loved the bleak bare landscape round the
city of Aberdeen. Their poetry and beauty filled her heart with a deep
contentment. To walk or ride alone through pathless forest glades, or
in the scented darkness of fir plantations, was enough for happiness.
But it was comforting to-day--on this day when her heart had been so
cruelly wounded--to have Roderick Vawdrey by her side. It was like a
leaf out of the closed volume of the past.

They talked freely and happily during that long homewards walk, and
their conversation was chiefly of bygone days. Almost every speech
began with "Do you remember?" Vixen was gayer than she had been for a
long time, save once or twice, when a pang shot through her heart at
the idea that Bullfinch was being shaken about in a railway-box,
oscillating helplessly with every vibration of the train, and
panic-stricken in every tunnel.

The sun had declined from his meridian; he had put on his sober
afternoon glory, and was sending shafts of mellower gold along the
green forest a