t of the matter more
lightly: but filial duty was involved in Rorie's fidelity to his
betrothed. He had promised his mother on her death-bed. That was a
promise not to be broken.

One day--a day for ever to be remembered by Vixen and Rorie--a day that
stood out in the foreground of memory's picture awfully distinct from
the dreamy happiness that went before it, these two old friends
prolonged their ride even later than usual. The weather was the
loveliest that had ever blessed their journeyings--the sky Italian, the
west wind just fresh enough to fan their cheeks, and faintly stir the
green feathers of the ferns that grew breast-high on each side of the
narrow track. The earth gave forth her subtlest perfumes under the fire
of the midsummer sun. From Boldrewood the distant heights and valleys
had an Alpine look in the clear bright air, the woods rising line above
line in the far distance, in every shade of colour, from deepest umber
to emerald green, from the darkest purple to translucent azure, yonder,
where the farthest line of verdure met the sunlit sky. From Stony Cross
the vast stretch of wood and moor lay basking in the warm vivid light,
the yellow of the dwarf furze flashing in golden patches amidst the
first bloom of the crimson heather. This southern corner of Hampshire
was a glorious world to live in on such a day as this. Violet and her
cavalier thought so, as their horses cantered up and down the smooth
stretch of turf in front of The Forester's Inn.

"I don't know what has come to Arion," said Vixen, as she checked her
eager horse in his endeavour to break into a mad gallop. "I think he
must be what Scotch people call 'fey.'"

"And pray what may that mean?" asked Rorie, who was like the young lady
made famous by Sydney Smith: what he did not know would have made a big
book.

"Why, I believe it means that in certain moments of life, just before
the coming of a great sorrow, people are wildly gay. Sometimes a man
who is doomed to die breaks out into uproarious mirth, till his friends
wonder at him. Haven't you noticed that sometimes in the accounts of
suicides, the suicide's friends declare that he was in excellent
spirits the night before he blew out his brains?"

"Then I hope I'm not 'fey,'" said Rorie, "for I feel uncommonly jolly."

"It's only the earth and sky that make us feel happy," sighed Violet,
with a sudden touch of seriousness. "It is but an outside happiness
after all."

"Perhaps not; b