Mrs. Tempest went to her room to lie down directly after luncheon. She wanted to keep herself fresh for the evening. She made quite a solemn business of this particular dinner-party. At five precisely, Pauline was to bring her a cup of tea. At half-past five she was to begin to dress. This would give her an hour and a half for her toilet, as Briarwood was only half-an-hour's drive from the Abbey House. So for the rest of that day--until she burst upon their astonished view in her new gown--Mrs. Tempest would be invisible to her family.

"What a disgusting birthday!" cried Vixen, sitting in the deep embrasure of the hall window, with Argus at her side, dog and girl looking out at the glistening shrubbery.

Miss McCroke had gone to her room to write letters, or Vixen would have hardly been allowed to remain peacefully in such an inelegant position, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms embracing her legs, her back against the stout oak shutter. Yet the girl and dog made rather a pretty picture, despite the inelegance of Vixen's att.i.tude. The tawny hair, black velvet frock, and careless amber sash, amber stockings, and broad-toed Cromwell shoes; the tawny mastiff curled in the opposite corner of the deep recess; the old armorial bearings, sending pale shafts of parti-coloured light across Vixen's young head;--these things made a picture full framed of light and colour, in the dark brown oak.

"What an abominable birthday!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Vixen; "if it were such weather as this on my twenty-first birthday, I should think Nature had taken a dislike to me. But I don't suppose Rorie cares. He is playing billiards with a lot of his friends, and smoking, and making a horror of himself, I daresay, and hardly knows whether it rains or shines."

Drip, drip, drip, came the rain on the glistening leaves, berberis and laurel, bay and holly, American oaks of richest red and bronze, copper beeches, tall rhododendrons, cypress of every kind, and behind them a dense black screen of yew. The late roses looked miserable. Vixen would have liked to have brought them in and put them by the hall fire--the good old hearth with its pile of blazing logs, before which Nip the pointer was stretched at ease, his muscular toes stiffening themselves occasionally, as if he was standing at a bird in his dreams.

Vixen went on watching the rain. It was rather a lazy way of spending the afternoon certainly, but Miss Tempest was out of humour with her little world, and did not feel equal to groping out the difficulties, the inexorable double sharps and odious double flats, in a waltz of Chopin's. She watched the straight thin rain, and thought about Rorie--chiefly to the effect that she hated him, and never could, by any possibility, like him again.

Gradually the trickle of the rain from an overflowing waterpipe took the sound of a tune. No _berceuse_ by Gounod was ever more rest-compelling. The full white lids drooped over the big brown eyes, the little locked hands loosened, the soft round chin fell forward on the knees; Argus gave a snort of satisfaction, and laid his heavy head on the velvet gown. Girl and dog were asleep. There was no sound in the wide old hall except the soft falling of wood ashes, the gentle breathing of girl and dogs.

Too pretty a picture a.s.suredly to be lost to the eye of mankind.

Whose footstep was this sounding on the wet gravel half-an-hour later?

Too quick and light for the Squire's. Who was this coming in softly out of the rain, all dripping like a water G.o.d? Who was this whose falcon eye took in the picture at a glance, and who stole cat-like to the window, and bending down his dark wet head, gave Violet's sleeping lips the first lover's kiss that had ever saluted them?

Violet awoke with a faint shiver of surprise and joy. Instinct told her from whom that kiss came, though it was the first time Roderick had kissed her since he went to Eaton. The lovely brown eyes opened and looked into the dark gray ones. The ruddy brown head rested on Rorie's shoulder. The girl--half child, half woman, and all loving trustfulness, looked up at him with a glad smile. His heart was stirred with a new feeling as those softly bright eyes looked into his. It was the early dawn of a pa.s.sionate love. The head lying on his breast seemed to him the fairest thing on earth.

"Rorie, how disgracefully you have behaved, and how utterly I detest you!" exclaimed Vixen, giving him a vigorous push, and scrambling down from the window-seat. "To be all this time in Hampshire and never come near us."

A moment ago, in that first instant of a newly awakened delight, she was almost betrayed into telling him that she loved him dearly, and had found life empty without him. But having had just time enough to recover herself, she drew herself up as straight as a dart, and looked at him as Kate may have looked at Petruchio during their first unpleasant interview in which they made each other's acquaintance.

"All this time!" cried Rorie. "Do you know how long I have been in Hampshire?"

"Haven't the least idea," retorted Vixen haughtily.

"Just half-an-hour--or, at least it is exactly half-an-hour since I was deposited with all my goods and chattels at the Lyndhurst Road Station."

"You are only just home from Switzerland?"

"Within this hour!"

"And you have not even been to Briarwood?"

"My honoured mother still awaits my duteous greetings."

"And this is your twenty-first birthday, and you came here first of all."

And, almost uninvited, the tawny head dropped on to his shoulder again, and the sweet childish lips allowed themselves to be kissed.

"Rorie, how brown you have grown.'"

"Have I!"

The gray eyes were looking into the brown ones admiringly, and the conversation was getting a trifle desultory.

Swift as a flash Violet recollected herself. It dawned upon her that it was not quite the right thing for a young lady "rising sixteen" to let herself be kissed so tamely. Besides, Rorie never used to do it. The thing was a new development, a curious outcome of his Swiss tour.

Perhaps people did it in Switzerland, and Rorie had acquired the habit.

"How dare you do such a thing?" exclaimed Vixen, shaking herself free from the traveller's encircling arm.

"I didn't think you minded," said Rorie innocently; "and when a fellow comes home from a long journey he expects a warm welcome!"

"And I am glad to see you," cried Vixen, giving him both her hands with a glorious frankness; "but you don't know how I have been hating you lately."

"Why, Vixen?"

"For being always away. I thought you had forgotten us all--that you did not care a jot for any of us."

"I had not forgotten any of you, and I did care--very much--for some of you."

This, though vague, was consoling.

The brown became Roderick. Dark of visage always, he was now tanned to a bronze as of one born under southern skies. Those deep gray eyes of his looked black under their black lashes. His black hair was cut close to his well-shaped head. An incipient moustache shaded his upper lip, and gave manhood to the strong, firm mouth. A manly face altogether, Roderick's, and handsome withal. Vixen's short life had shown her none handsomer.

He was tall and strongly built, with a frame that had been developed by many an athletic exercise--from throwing the hammer to pugilism. Vixen thought him the image of Richard Coeur de Lion. She had been reading "The Talisman" lately, and the Plantagenet was her ideal of manly excellence.

"Many happy returns of the day, Rorie," she said softly. "To think that you are of age to-day. Your own master."

"Yes, my infancy ceased and determined at the last stroke of midnight yesterday. I wonder whether my anxious mother will recognise that fact?"

"Of course you know what is going to happen at Briarwood. There is to be a grand dinner-party."

"And you are coming? How jolly!"

"Oh, no, Rorie. I am not out yet, you know. I shan't be for two years.

Papa means to give me a season in town. He calls it having me broken to harness. He'll take a furnished house, and we shall have the horses up, and I shall ride in the Row, You'll be with us part of the time, won't you, Rorie?"

"_Ca se peut_. If papa will invite me."

"Oh, he will, if I wish it. It's to be my first season, you know, and I'm to have everything my own way."

"Will that be a novelty?" demanded Roderick, with intention.

"I don't know. I haven't had my own way in anything lately."

"How is that?"

"You have been away."

At this nave flattery, Roderick almost blushed.

"How you've grown. Vixen," he remarked presently.

"Have I really? Yes, I suppose I do grow. My frocks are always getting too short."

"Like the sleeves of my dress-coats a year or two ago."