of my fawn-colour, I can but remember with satisfaction what
Theodore always says to me when she shows me one of her
_chef-d'oeuvres:_ 'Mrs. Tempest, it is a dress fit for a _lady_.' There
are ill-natured people who declare that Theodore began life as
kitchen-maid in an Irish inn, but I, for one, will never believe it.
Such taste as hers indicates a refined progeniture."

With such letters as these did Mrs. Winstanley comfort her absent
daughter. Vixen replied as best she might, with scraps of news about
the neighbours, rich and poor, the dogs, horses, and gardens. It was
hateful to her to have to direct her letters to Mrs. Winstanley.

The days went on. Vixen rode from early morning till noon, and rambled
in the Forest for the best part of the afternoon. She used to take her
books there, and sit for hours reading on a mossy bank under one of the
boughy beeches, with Argus at her feet. The dog was company enough for
her. She wanted no one better. At home the old servants were more or
less--their faces always pleasant to see. Some of them had lived with
her grandfather; most of them had served her father from the time he
had inherited his estate. The Squire had been the most conservative and
indulgent of masters; always liking to see the old faces. The butler
was old, and even on his underling's bullet-head the gray hairs were
beginning to show. Mrs. Trimmer was at least sixty, and had been
getting annually bulkier for the last twenty years. The kitchen-maid
was a comfortable-looking person of forty. There was an atmosphere of
domestic peace in the offices of the Abbey House which made everybody
fat. It was only by watchfulness and tight-lacing that Pauline
preserved to herself that grace of outline which she spoke of in a
general way as "figure."

"And what a mite of a waist I had when I first went out to service,"
she would say pathetically.

But Pauline was now in Scotland, harassed by unceasing cares about
travelling-bags, bonnet-boxes, and extra wraps, and under-valuing Ben
Nevis as not worth half the trouble that was taken to go and look at
him.

The gardeners were gray-headed, and remembered potting the first
fuchsia-slips that ever came to the Forest. They had no gusto for
new-fangled ideas about cordon fruit-trees or root-pruning. They liked
to go their own way, as their fathers and grandfathers had done before
them; and, with unlimited supplies of manure, they were able to produce
excellent cucumbers b