Pavilion garden.

These days before her wedding were indeed a halcyon season for Mrs.
Tempest. She existed in an atmosphere of millinery and pretty speeches.
Her attention was called away from a ribbon by the sweet distraction of
a compliment, and oscillated between tender whispers and honiton lace.
Conrad Winstanley was a delightful lover. His enemies would have said
that he had done the same kind of thing so often, that it would have
been strange if he had not done it well. His was assuredly no 'prentice
hand in the art. Poor Mrs. Tempest lived in a state of mild
intoxication, as dreamily delicious as the effects of opium. She was
enchanted with her lover, and still better pleased with herself. At
nine-and-thirty it was very sweet to find herself exercising so potent
an influence over the Captain's strong nature. She could not help
comparing herself to Cleopatra, and her lover to Antony. If he had not
thrown away a world for her sake, he was at least ready to abandon the
busy career which a man loves, and to devote his future existence to
rural domesticity. He confessed that he had been hardened by much
contact with the world, that he did not love now for the first time;
but he told his betrothed that her influence had awakened feelings
which had never before been called into life, that this love which he
felt for her was to all intents and purposes a first love, the first
pure and perfect affection that had subjugated and elevated his soul.

After that night in Mrs. Tempest's boudoir, it was only by tacit
avoidance of her mother that Vixen showed the intensity of her
disapproval. If she could have done any good by reproof or entreaty, by
pleading or exhortation, she would assuredly have spoken; but she saw
the Captain and her mother together every day, and she knew that,
opposed to his influence, her words were like the idle wind which
bloweth where it listeth. So she held her peace, and looked on with an
aching angry heart, and hated the intruder who had come to steal her
dead father's place. To take her father's place; that in Violet's mind
was the unpardonable wrong. That any man should enter that house as
master, and sit in the Squire's seat, and rule the Squire's servants,
and ride the Squire's horses, was an outrage beyond endurance. She
might have looked more leniently on her mother's folly, had the widow
chosen a second husband with a house and home of his own, who would
have carried off his wife to reign ov