rdly know itself under such admirable management."

"There is as big a house where you might do what you liked; yes, and
give away the cows as well as the milk, if you pleased, and none should
say you nay," said Lord Mallow in a low voice, full of unaffected
tenderness.

"Oh, please don't!" cried Vixen; "don't speak too kindly. I feel
sometimes as if one little kind word too much would make me cry like a
child. It's the last straw, you know, that crushes the camel; and I
hate myself for being so weak and foolish."

After this Vixen walked home as if she had been winning a match, and
Lord Mallow, for his life, dared not say another tender word.

This was their last _tete-a-tete_ for some time. Christmas came with
its festivities, all of a placid and eminently well-bred character, and
then came the last day of the year and the dinner at Ashbourne.

CHAPTER XII.

"Fading in Music."

"Mrs. Winstanley, on her marriage, by the Duchess of Dovedale."

That was the sentence that went on repeating itself like a cabalistic
formula in Pamela Winstanley's mind, as her carriage drove through the
dark silent woods to Ashbourne on the last night of the year.

A small idea had taken possession of her small mind. The Duchess was
the fittest person to present her to her gracious mistress, or her
gracious mistress's representative, at the first drawing-room of the
coming season. Mrs. Winstanley had old friends, friends who had known
her in her girlhood, who would have been happy to undertake the office.
Captain Winstanley had an ancient female relative, living in a fossil
state at Hampton Court, and vaguely spoken of as "a connection," who
would willingly emerge from her aristocratic hermitage to present her
kinsman's bride to her sovereign, and whom the Captain deemed the
proper sponsor for his wife on that solemn occasion. But what social
value had a fossilised Lady Susan Winstanley, of whom an outside world
knew nothing, when weighed in the balance with the Duchess of Dovedale?
No; Mrs. Winstanley felt that to be presented by the Duchess was the
one thing needful to her happiness.

It was a dinner of thirty people; quite a state dinner. The finest and
newest orchids had been brought out of their houses, and the
dinner-table looked like a tropical forest in little. Vixen went in to
dinner with Lord Ellangowan, which was an unappreciated honour, as that
nobleman had very little to say for himself, except under extreme
pres