h, Bullfinch, have you a memory? Will you be sorry to find yourself
in a strange stable?" she asked, looking into the animal's full soft
eyes with a pathetic earnestness in her own.

She dried her tears presently; she was not going to make herself a
spectacle for the scornful pity of stablemen. She came out of the
loose-box with a serene countenance, and went up to Lord Mallow's
groom. "Please be kind to him," she said, dropping a sovereign into the
man's ready hand.

"No fear of that, miss," he said; "there are very few Christians that
have as good a time of it as our hosses."

That sovereign, taken in conjunction with the donor's beauty, quite
vanquished Lord Mallow's stud-groom, and very nearly bought Violet
Tempest a coronet.

Bullfinch was led out presently, looking like a king; but Violet did
not stop to see him go away. She could hardly have borne that. She ran
back to the house, put on her hat and jacket, called Argus, and set out
for along ramble, to walk down, if possible, the angry devil within her.

No; this she would never forgive--this sale of her father's favourite
horse. It was as if some creature of her own flesh and blood had been
sold into slavery. Her mother was rich, would squander hundreds on fine
dresses, and would allow her dead husband's horse to be sold.

"Is Captain Winstanley such a tyrant that mamma can not prevent this
shameful thing?" she asked herself. "She talks about his attention, his
devotion, as if he were at her feet; and yet she suffers him to
disgrace her by this unparalleled meanness!"

CHAPTER VI.

At the Kennels.

It was a fresh sunny morning, a soft west wind blowing up all the
sweetness of the woods and leas. The cattle were grouped in lazy
stillness on the dewy grass; the year's pigs, grown to the hobbledehoy
stage of existence, were grubbing about contentedly among the
furze-bushes; by the roadside, a matronly sow lay stretched flat upon
her side in the sunshine, just where carriage-wheels must pass over her
were carriages frequent in those parts.

Even the brightness of the morning had no charm for Vixen. There was no
delight for her in the green solemnity of the forest glades, where the
beechen pillars led the eye away into innumerable vistas, each grandly
mysterious as a cathedral aisle. The sun shot golden arrows through
dark boughs, patching the moss with translucent lights, vivid and clear
as the lustre of emeralds. The gentle plash of the forest strea