"It's the prettiest mouth I ever saw upon woman--bar one," said the Squire.

What was Vixen doing while the fond father was praising her?

She had locked her door, and thrown herself face downwards on the carpet, and was sobbing as if her heart would break.

Rorie was going to be married. Her little kingdom had been overturned by a revolution: her little world had crumbled all to pieces. Till to-night she had been a queen in her own mind; and her kingdom had been Rorie, her subjects had begun and ended in Rorie. All was over. He belonged to some one else. She could never tyrannise over him again--never scold him and abuse him and patronise him and ridicule him any more. He was her Rorie no longer.

Had she ever thought that a time might come when he would be something more to her than playfellow and friend? No, never. The young bright mind was too childishly simple for any such foresight or calculation.

She had only thought that he was in somewise her property, and would be so till the end of both their lives. He was hers, and he was very fond of her, and she thought him a rather absurd young fellow, and looked down upon him with airs of ineffable superiority from the alt.i.tude of her childish womanliness.

And now he was gone. The earth had opened all at once and swallowed him, like that prophetic gentleman in the Greek play, whose name Vixen could never remember--chariot and horses and all. He belonged henceforth to Lady Mabel Ashbourne. She could never be rude to him any more. She could not take such a liberty with another young lady's lover.

"And to think that he should never have told me he was going to be engaged to her," she said. "He must have been fond of her from the very beginning; and he never said a word; and he let me think he rather liked me--or at least tolerated me. And how could he like two people who are the very antipodes of each other? If he is fond of her, he must detest me. If he respects her, he must despise me."

The thought of such treachery rankled deep in the young warm heart.

Vixen started up to her feet, and stood in the midst of the firelit room, with clinched fists, like a young fury. The light chestnut tresses should have been Medusa's snakes to have harmonised with that set white face. G.o.d had given Violet Tempest a heart to feel deeply, too deeply for perfect peace, or that angelic softness which seems to us most worthy in woman--the power to suffer and be patient.

CHAPTER VII.

Rorie has Plans of his own.

Roderick Vawdrey's ideas of what was due to a young man who attains his majority were in no wise satisfied by his birthday dinner-party. It had been pleasant enough in its way, but far too much after the pattern of all other dinner-parties to please a young man who hated all common and hackneyed things, and all the beaten tracks of life--or who, at any rate, fancied he did, which comes to nearly the same thing.

"Mother," he began at breakfast next morning, in his loud cheery voice, "we must have something for the small tenants, and shopkeepers, and cottagers."

"What do you mean, Roderick?"

"Some kind of entertainment to celebrate my majority. The people will expect it. Last night polished off the swells very nicely. The whole thing did you credit, mother."

"Thank you," said Lady Jane, with a slight contraction of her thin lips.

This October morning, so pleasant for Rorie, was rather a bitter day for his mother. She had been reigning sovereign at Briarwood hitherto; henceforth she could only live there on sufferance. The house was Rorie's. Even the orchid-houses were his. He might take her to task if he pleased for having spent so much money on gla.s.s.

"But I must have my humble friends round me," continued Rorie. "The young people, too--the boys and girls. I'll tell you what, mother. We must have a lawn meet. The hounds have never met here since my grandfather's time--fifty years ago. The Duke's stud-groom was telling me about it last year. He's a Hampshire man, you know, born and bred in the Forest. We'll have a lawn meet and a hunting breakfast; and it shall be open house for everyone--high and low, rich and poor, gentle and simple. Don't be frightened, mother," interjected Rorie, seeing Lady Jane's look of horror; "we won't do any mischief. Your gardens shall be respected."

"They are your gardens now, Roderick. You are sole master here, and can do what you please."

"My dear mother, how can you talk like that? Do you suppose I shall ever forget who made the place what it is? The gardens have been your particular hobby, and they shall be your gardens to the end of time."

"That is very generous of you, my dear Roderick; but you are promising too much. When you marry, your wife will be mistress of Briarwood, and it will be necessary for me to find a new home."

"I am in no hurry to get married. It will be half-a-dozen years before I shall even think of anything so desperate."

"I hope not, Roderick. With your position and your responsibilities you ought to marry young. Marriage--a suitable marriage, that is to say--would give you an incentive to earnestness and ambition. I want to see you follow your father's footsteps; I want you to make a name by-and-by."

"I'm afraid it will be a distant by-and-by," said Rorie, with a yawn.

"I don't feel at all drawn towards the senate. I love the country, my dogs, my horses, the free fresh air, the stir and movement of life too well to pen myself up in a study and pore over blue-books, or to waste the summer evenings listening to the member for Little Peddlington laying down the law about combination drainage, or the proposed loop-line that is intended to connect his borough with the world in general. I'm afraid it isn't in me, mother, and that you'll be sorely disappointed if you set your heart upon my making a figure as a senator."

"I should like to see you worthy of your father's name," Lady Jane said, with a regretful sigh.

"Providence hasn't made me in the same pattern," answered Rorie. "Look at my grandfather's portrait over the mantelpiece, in pink and mahogany tops. What a glorious fellow he must have been. You should hear how the old people talk of him. I think I inherit his tastes, instead of my father's. Hereditary genius crops up in curious ways, you know.

Perhaps, if I have a son, he will be a heaven-born statesman, and you may have your ambition gratified by a grandson. And now about the hunting breakfast. Would this day week suit you?"

"This is your house, Roderick. It is for you to give your orders."

"Bosh!" exclaimed the son impatiently. "Don't I tell you that you are mistress here, and will be mistress----"

"My dear Roderick, let us look things straight in the face," said Lady Jane. "If I were sole mistress here there would be no hunting breakfast. It is just the very last kind of entertainment I should ever dream of giving. I am not complaining, mind. It is natural enough for you to like that kind of thing; and, as master of this house, it is your right to invite whomsoever you please. I am quite happy that it should be so, but let there be no more talk about my being mistress of this house. That is too absurd."

Rorie felt all his most generous impulses turned to a sense of constraint and bitterness. He could say no more.

"Will you give me a list of the people you would like to be asked?"

said his mother, after rather an uncomfortable silence.

"I'll go and talk it over with the Duke," answered Rorie. "He'll enter into the spirit of the thing."

Rorie found the Duke going the round of the loose-boxes, and uncle and nephew spent an hour together pleasantly, overhauling the fine stud of hunters which the Duke kept at Ashbourne, and going round the paddocks to look at the brood-mares and their foals; these latter being eccentric little animals, all head and legs, which nestled close to the mother's side for a minute, and then took fright at their own tails, and shot off across the field, like a skyrocket travelling horizontally, or suddenly stood up on end, and executed a wild waltz in mid air.

The Duke and Roderick decided which among these leggy little beasts possessed the elements of future excellence; and after an hour's perambulation of the paddocks they went to the house, where they found the d.u.c.h.ess and Lady Mabel in the morning-room; the d.u.c.h.ess busy making scarlet cloth cloaks for her school-children, Lady Mabel reading a German critic on Shakespeare.

Here the hunt breakfast was fully discussed. Everybody was to be asked.

The d.u.c.h.ess put in a plea for her school-children. It would be such a treat for the little things to see the hounds, and their red cloaks and hoods would look so pretty on the lawn.

"Let them come, by all means," said Roderick; "your school--half-a-dozen schools. I'll have three or four tents rigged up for refreshments. There shall be plenty to eat and drink for everybody.

And now I'm off to the Tempests' to arrange about the hounds. The Squire will be pleased, I know."

"Of course," said Lady Mabel, "and the Squire's daughter."

"Dear little thing!" exclaimed Rorie, with an elder brother's tenderness; "she'll be as pleased as Punch. You'll hunt, of course, Mabel?"

"I don't know. I don't shine in the field, as Miss Tempest does."

"Oh, but you must come, Mab. The Duke will find you a safe mount."

"She has a hunter I bred on purpose for her," said the Duke; "but she'll never be such a horsewoman as her mother."

"She looks lovely on Mazeppa," said Rorie; "and she must come to my hunting breakfast."

"Of course, Rorie, if you wish I shall come."

Rorie stayed to luncheon, and then went back to Briarwood to mount his horse to ride to the Abbey House.

The afternoon was drawing in when Rorie rode up to the old Tudor porch--a soft, sunless, gray afternoon. The door stood open, and he saw the glow of the logs on the wide hearth, and the Squire's stalwart figure sitting in the great arm-chair, leaning forward with a newspaper across his knee, and Vixen on a stool at his feet, the dogs grouped about them.

"Shall I send my horse round to the stables, Squire?" asked Rorie.