ly
existence--a mere idiosyncrasy, like her love of fine dress and strong
tea. If at dinner she ate hardly enough for a bird, he concluded that
she had spoiled her appetite at luncheon, or by the consumption of
sweet biscuits and pound-cake at five o'clock. Her refusal of all
invitations to dinners and garden-parties he attributed to her folly
about dress, and to that alone. Those other reasons which she put
forward--of weakness, languor, low spirits--were to Captain
Winstanley's mind mere disguises for temper. She had not, in her heart
of hearts, forgiven him for closing Madame Theodore's account.

Thus, wilfully blind to a truth which was soon to become obvious to all
the world, he let the insidious foe steal across his threshold, and
guessed not how soon that dark and hidden enemy was to drive him from
the hearth by which he sat, secure in self-approval and sagacious
schemes for the future.

Once a week, through all the long year, there had come a dutiful letter
from Violet to her mother. The letters were often brief--what could the
girl find to tell in her desert island?--but they were always kind, and
they were a source of comfort to the mother's empty heart. Mrs.
Winstanley answered unfailingly, and her Jersey letter was one of the
chief events of each week. She was fonder of her daughter at a distance
than she had ever been when they were together. "That will be something
to tell Violet," she would say of any inane bit of gossip that was
whispered across the afternoon tea-cups.

CHAPTER VI.

A Fool's Paradise.

At Ashbourne preparations had already begun for the wedding in August.
It was to be a wedding worthy a duke's only daughter, the well-beloved
and cherished child of an adoring father and mother. Kinsfolk and old
friends were coming from far and wide to assist at the ceremony, for
whom temporary rooms were to be arranged in all manner of places. The
Duchess's exquisite dairy was to be transformed into a bachelor
dormitory. Lodges and gamekeepers' cottages were utilised. Every nook
and corner in the ducal mansion would be full.

"Why not rig up a few hammocks in the nearest pine plantation?" Rorie
asked, laughing, when he heard of all these doings. "One couldn't have
a better place to sleep on a sultry summer night."

There was to be a ball for the tenantry in the evening of the
wedding-day, in a marquee on the lawn. The gardens were to be
illuminated in a style worthy of the chateau of Vaux, wh