the hall, watching the slim figure as
it ascended, aerial and elegant in its palely-tinted drapery.

"It might have been," he repeated to himself: and then he lighted his
candle and went slowly up the staircase. He was in no humour for
billiards, cigars, or noisy masculine talk to-night. Still less was he
inclined to be at ease and to make merry with Roderick Vawdrey.

CHAPTER VIII.

Wedding Bells.

Vixen had been more than a year in the island of Jersey. She had lived
her lonely and monotonous existence, and made no moan. It was a dreary
exile; but it seemed to her that there was little else for her to do in
life but dawdle through the long slow days, and bear the burden of
living; at least until she came of age, and was independent, and could
go where she pleased. Then there would be the wide world for her to
wander over, instead of this sea-girdled garden of Jersey. She had
reasons of her own for so quietly submitting to this joyless life. Mrs.
Winstanley kept her informed of all that was doing in Hampshire, and
even at the Queen Anne house at Kensington. She knew that Roderick
Vawdrey's wedding-day was fixed for the first of August. Was it not
better that she should be far away, hidden from her small world; while
those marriage bells were ringing across the darkening beech-woods?

Her sacrifice had not been in vain. Her lover had speedily forgotten
that brief madness of last midsummer, and had returned to his
allegiance. There had been no cloud upon the loves of the plighted
cousins--no passing gust of dissension. If there had been, Mrs.
Winstanley would have known all about it. Her letters told only of
harmonious feeling and perpetual sunshine.

"Lady Mabel is looking prettier than ever," she wrote, in the last week
of July, "that ethereal loveliness which I so much admire. Her waist
cannot be more than eighteen inches. I cannot find out who makes her
dresses, but they are exquisitely becoming to her; though, for my own
part, I do not think the style equal to Theodore's. But then I always
supplemented Theodore's ideas with my own suggestions.

"I hear that the _trousseau_ is something wonderful. The _lingerie_ is
in quite a new style; a special make of linen has been introduced at
Bruges on purpose for the occasion, and I have heard that the loom is
to be broken and no more made. But this is perhaps exaggeration. The
lace has all been made in Buckinghamshire, from patterns a hundred
years old--very qu