Vixen

"You are wiser than I, then," Vixen answered coldly; "for my feelings tell me nothing about the future--except"--and here her face beamed at him with a lovely smile--"except that you will be kind to Bullfinch."

"If I were an emperor I would make him a consul," answered the Irishman.

He had contrived to separate Roderick and Vixen. The young man had returned to his allegiance, and was escorting Lady Mabel back to the house. Everybody began to feel chilly, now that the bells were silent, and there was a general hurrying off to the carriages, which were standing in an oval ring round a group of deodoras in front of the porch on the other side of the house.

Rorie and Vixen met no more that night. Lord Mallow took her to her carriage, and sat opposite her and talked to her during the homewards drive. Captain Winstanley was smoking a cigar on the box. His wife slumbered peacefully.

"I think I may be satisfied with Theodore," she said, as she composed herself for sleep; "my dress was not quite the worst in the room, was it, Violet?"

"It was lovely, mamma. You can make yourself quite happy," answered Vixen truthfully; whereupon the matron breathed a gentle sigh of content, and lapsed into slumber.

They had the Boldrewood Road before them, a long hilly road cleaving the very heart of the Forest; a road full of ghosts at the best of times, but offering a Walpurgis revel of phantoms on such a night as this to the eye of the belated wanderer. How ghostly the deer were, as they skimmed across the road and flitted away into dim distances, mixing with and melting into the shadows of the trees. The little gray rabbits, sitting up on end, were like circles of hobgoblins that dispersed and vanished at the approach of mortals. The leafless old hawthorns, rugged and crooked, silvered by the moonlight, were most ghostlike of all. They took every form, from the most unearthly to the most grotesquely human.

Violet sat wrapped in her furred white mantle, watching the road as intently as if she had never seen it before. She never could grow tired of these things. She loved them with a love which was part of her nature.

"What a delightful evening, was it not?" asked Lord Mallow.

"I suppose it was very nice," answered Violet coolly; "but I have no standard of comparison. It was my first dinner at Ashbourne."

"What a remarkably clever girl Lady Mabel is. Mr. Vawdrey ought to consider himself extremely fortunate."

"I have never heard him say that he does not so consider himself."

"Naturally. But I think he might be a little more enthusiastic. He is the coolest lover I ever saw."

"Perhaps you judge him by comparison with Irish lovers. Your nation is more demonstrative than ours."

"Oh, an Irish girl would cas.h.i.+er such a fellow as Mr. Vawdrey. But I may possibly misjudge him. You ought to know more about him than I. You have known him----"

"All my life," said Violet simply. "I know that he is good, and stanch and true, that he honoured his mother, and that he will make Lady Mabel Ashbourne a very good husband. Perhaps if she were a little less clever and a little more human, he might be happier with her; but no doubt that will all come right in time."

"Any way it will be all the same in a century or so," a.s.sented Lord Mallow. "We are going to have lovely weather as long as this moon lasts, I believe. Will you go for a long ride to-morrow--like that first ride of ours?"

"When I took you all over the world for sport?" said Vixen laughing. "I wonder you are inclined to trust me, after that. If Captain Winstanley likes I don't mind being your

"Captain Winstanley shall like. I'll answer for that. I would make his life unendurable if he were to refuse."

CHAPTER XIII.

Crying for the moon.

Despite the glorious moonlight night which ushered in the new-born year, the first day of that year was abominable; a day of hopeless, incessant rain, falling from a leaden sky in which there was never a break, not a stray gleam of suns.h.i.+ne from morn till eve.

"The new year is like Shakespeare's Richard," said Lord Mallow, when he stood in the porch after breakfast, surveying the horizon. "'Tetchy and wayward was his infancy.' I never experienced anything so provoking. I was dreaming all night of our ride."

"Were you not afraid of being like that dreadful man in 'Locksley Hall'?--

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams,"

asked Vixen mockingly.

She was standing on the threshold, playing with Argus, looking the picture of healthful beauty, in her dark green cloth dress and plain linen collar. All Vixen's morning costumes were of the simplest and neatest; a compact style of dress which interfered with none of her rural amus.e.m.e.nts. She could romp with her dog, make her round of the stables, work in the garden, ramble in the Forest, without fear of dilapidated flounces or dishevelled laces and ribbons.

"Violet's morning-dresses are so dreadfully strong-minded," complained Mrs. Winstanley. "To look at her, one would almost think that she was the kind of girl to go round the country lecturing upon woman's rights."

"No ride this morning," said Captain Winstanley, coming into the hall, with a bundle of letters in his hand. "I shall go to my den, and do a morning's letter-writing and accountancy--unless you want me for a shy at the pheasants, Mallow?"

"Let the pheasants be at rest for the first day of the year," answered Lord Mallow. "I am sure you would rather be fetching up your arrears of correspondence than shooting at dejected birds in a damp plantation; and I am luxurious enough to prefer staying indoors, if the ladies will have me. I can help Miss Tempest to wind her wools."

"Thanks, but I never do any wool-work. Mamma is the artist in that line."

"Then I place myself unreservedly at Mrs. Winstanley's feet."

"You are too good," sighed the fair matron, from her arm-chair by the hearth; "but I shall not touch my crewels to-day. I have one of my nervous headaches. It is a penalty I too often have to pay for the pleasures of society. I'm afraid I shall have to lie down for an hour or two."

And with a languid sigh Mrs. Winstanley wrapped her China c.r.a.pe shawl round her, and went slowly upstairs, leaving Violet and Lord Mallow in sole possession of the great oak-panelled hall; the lady looking at the rain from her favourite perch in the deep window-seat, the gentleman contemplating the same prospect from the open door. It was one of those mild winter mornings when a huge wood fire is a cheerful feature in the scene, but hardly essential to comfort.

Vixen thought of that long rainy day, years ago, the day on which Roderick Vawdrey came of age. How well she remembered sitting in that very window, watching the ceaseless rain, with a chilly sense of having been forgotten and neglected by her old companion. And then, in the gloaming, just when she had lost all hope of seeing him, he had come leaping in out of the wet night, like a lion from his lair, and had taken her in his arms and kissed her before she knew what he was doing.

Her cheeks crimsoned even to-day at the memory of that kiss. It had seemed a small thing then. Now it seemed awful--a burning spot of shame upon the whiteness of her youth.

"He must have thought I was very fond of him, or he would not have dared to treat me so," she told herself. "But then we had been playfellows so long. I had teased him, and he had plagued me; and we had been really like brother and sister. Poor Rorie! If we could have always been young we should have been better friends."

"How thoughtful you seem this morning, Miss Tempest," said a voice behind Vixen's shoulder.

"Do I?" she asked, turning quickly round. "New Year's Day is a time to make one thoughtful. It is like beginning a new chapter in the volume of life, and one cannot help speculating as to what the chapter is to be about."

"For you it ought to be a story full of happiness."

"Ah, but you don't know my history. I had such a happy childhood. I drained my cup of bliss before I was a woman, and there is nothing left for me but the dregs, and they--they are dust and ashes."

There was an intensity of bitterness in her tone that moved him beyond his power of self-control. That she--so fair, so lovely, so deeply dear to him already; she for whom life should be one summer-day of unclouded gladness--that she should give expression to a rooted sorrow was more than his patience could bear.

"Violet, you must not speak thus; you wound me to the heart. Oh, my love, my love, you were born to be the giver of gladness, the centre of joy and delight. Grief should never touch you; sorrow and pain should never come near you. You are a creature of happiness and light."

"Don't!" cried Vixen vehemently. "Oh, pray don't. It is all vain--useless. My life is marked out for me. No one can alter it. Pray do not lower yourself by one word more. You will be sorry--angry with yourself and me--afterwards."

"Violet, I must speak."

"To what end? My fate is as fixed as the stars. No one can change it."

"No mortal perhaps, Violet. But Love can. Love is a G.o.d. Oh, my darling, I have learnt to love you dearly and fondly in this little while, and I mean to win you. It shall go hard with me if I do not succeed. Dear love, if truth and constancy can conquer fate, I ought to be able to win you. There is no one else, is there, Violet?" he asked falteringly, with his eyes upon her downcast face.

A burning spot glowed and faded on her cheek before she answered him.

"Can you not see how empty my life is?" she asked with a bitter laugh.

"No; there is no one else. I stand quite alone. Death took my father from me; your friend has robbed me of my mother. My old playfellow, Roderick Vawdrey, belongs to his cousin. I belong to n.o.body."