ndard of comparison. It was my first dinner at Ashbourne."

"What a remarkably clever girl Lady Mabel is. Mr. Vawdrey ought to
consider himself extremely fortunate."

"I have never heard him say that he does not so consider himself."

"Naturally. But I think he might be a little more enthusiastic. He is
the coolest lover I ever saw."

"Perhaps you judge him by comparison with Irish lovers. Your nation is
more demonstrative than ours."

"Oh, an Irish girl would cashier such a fellow as Mr. Vawdrey. But I
may possibly misjudge him. You ought to know more about him than I. You
have known him----"

"All my life," said Violet simply. "I know that he is good, and stanch
and true, that he honoured his mother, and that he will make Lady Mabel
Ashbourne a very good husband. Perhaps if she were a little less clever
and a little more human, he might be happier with her; but no doubt
that will all come right in time."

"Any way it will be all the same in a century or so," assented Lord
Mallow. "We are going to have lovely weather as long as this moon
lasts, I believe. Will you go for a long ride to-morrow--like that
first ride of ours?"

"When I took you all over the world for sport?" said Vixen laughing. "I
wonder you are inclined to trust me, after that. If Captain Winstanley
likes I don't mind being your guide again to-morrow."

"Captain Winstanley shall like. I'll answer for that. I would make his
life unendurable if he were to refuse."

CHAPTER XIII.

Crying for the moon.

Despite the glorious moonlight night which ushered in the new-born
year, the first day of that year was abominable; a day of hopeless,
incessant rain, falling from a leaden sky in which there was never a
break, not a stray gleam of sunshine from morn till eve.

"The new year is like Shakespeare's Richard," said Lord Mallow, when he
stood in the porch after breakfast, surveying the horizon. "'Tetchy and
wayward was his infancy.' I never experienced anything so provoking. I
was dreaming all night of our ride."

"Were you not afraid of being like that dreadful man in 'Locksley
Hall'?--

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams,"

asked Vixen mockingly.

She was standing on the threshold, playing with Argus, looking the
picture of healthful beauty, in her dark green cloth dress and plain
linen collar. All Vixen's morning costumes were of the simplest and
neatest; a compact style of dress which interfered with none of her
rural amusements. She