-time, had placed
Mr. Vawdrey and Miss Tempest side by side. There had been some
confusion in his mind as he finished his plan of the table; his
attention having been called away at the last moment, or this thing
could not have happened--for nothing was farther from Captain
Winstanley's intention than that Violet and her old playfellow should
be happy in each other's society. And there they sat, smiling and
sparkling at each other in the exuberance of youth and high spirits,
interchanging little confidential remarks that were doubtless to the
disparagement of some person or persons in the assembly. If dark
electric glances shot from the covert of bent brows could have slain
those two happy triflers, assuredly neither of them would have lived to
the end of that dinner.

"How do you like him?" asked Rorie, stooping to sniff at the big
Marechal Niel bud, in the specimen glass by his plate.

"Whom?"

"The man who has Bullfinch."

Lord Mallow was in the place of honour next his hostess. Involuntarily
Violet glanced in that direction, and was startled to find the
Irishman's good-humoured gaze meeting hers, just as if he had been
watching her for the last half-hour.

"How do I like him? Well, he seems very good-natured."

"Seems good-natured. You ought to be able to give me a more definite
answer by this time. You have lived in the same house with him--let me
see, is it three or four days since he came?"

"He has been here nearly a week."

"A week! Why then you must know him as well as if he were your brother.
There is no man living who could keep himself dark for a week. No; I
don't believe the most inscrutable of men, born and bred in diplomatic
circles, could keep the secret of a solitary failing from the eyes of
those who live under the same roof with him for seven days. It would
leak out somehow--if not at breakfast, at dinner. Man is a
communicative animal, and so loves talking of himself that if he has
committed murder he must tell somebody about it sooner or later. And as
to that man," continued Rorie, with a contemptuous glance at the
single-minded Lord Mallow, "he is a creature whom the merest beginner
in the study of humanity would know by heart in half-an-hour."

"What do you know about him?" asked Vixen laughing. "You have had more
than half-an-hour for the study of his character."

"I know ever so much more than I want to know."

"Answered like a Greek oracle."

"What, have you taken to reading Gr