ut it's very good of its kind."

They went far afield that day; as far as the yews of Sloden; and the
sun was low in the west when Vixen wished her knight good-bye, and
walked her horse down the last long glade that led to the Abbey House.
She was very serious now, and felt that she had transgressed a little
by the length of her ride. Poor Bates had gone without his dinner, and
that dismal yawn of his just now doubtless indicated a painful vacuity
of the inner man. Rorie and she were able to live upon air and
sunshine, the scent of the clover, and the freshness of the earth; but
Bates was of the lower type of humanity, which requires to be sustained
by beef and beer; and for Bates this day of sylvan bliss had been
perhaps a period of deprivation and suffering.

Violet had been accustomed to be at home, and freshly dressed, in time
for Mrs. Winstanley's afternoon tea. She had to listen to the
accumulated gossip of the day--complaints about the servants, praises
of Conrad, speculations upon impending changes of fashion, which
threatened to convulse the world over which Theodore presided; for the
world of fashion seems ever on the verge of a crisis awful as that
which periodically disrupts the French Chamber.

To have been absent from afternoon tea was a breach of filial duty
which the mild Pamela would assuredly resent. Violet felt herself
doomed to one of those gentle lectures, which were worrying as the
perpetual dropping of rain. She was very late--dreadfully late--the
dressing-bell rang as she rode into the stable-yard. Not caring to show
herself at the porch, lest her mother and the Captain should be sitting
in the hall, ready to pronounce judgment upon her misconduct, she ran
quickly up to her dressing-room, plunged her face into cold water,
shook out her bright hair, brushed and plaited the long tresses with
deft swift fingers, put on her pretty dinner-dress of pale blue muslin,
fluttering all over with pale blue bows, and went smiling down to the
drawing-room like a new Hebe, dressed in an azure cloud.

Mrs. Winstanley was sitting by an open window, while the Captain stood
outside and talked to her in a low confidential voice. His face had a
dark look which Vixen knew and hated, and his wife was listening with
trouble in her air and countenance. Vixen, who meant to have marched
straight up to her mother and made her apologies, drew back
involuntarily at the sight of those two faces.

Just at this moment the d