for a hurried breakfast with Miss Skipwith, and then the fly from
St. Helier's would be at the gate to carry the exile on the first stage
of the journey home.

"Poor mamma!" sighed Vixen. "How wicked of me to feel go happy, when
she is ill."

And then Rorie comforted her with kindly-meant sophistries. Mrs.
Winstanley's indisposition was doubtless more an affair of the nerves
than a real illness. She would be cheered and revived immediately by
her daughter's return.

"How could she suppose she would be able to live without you!" cried
Rorie. "I know I found life hard to bear."

"Yet you bore it for more than a year with admirable patience,"
retorted Vixen, laughing at him; "and I do not find you particularly
altered or emaciated."

"Oh, I used to eat and drink," said Rorie, with a look of
self-contempt. "I'm afraid I'm a horribly low-minded brute. I used even
to enjoy my dinner, sometimes, after a long country ride; but I could
never make you understand what a bore life was to me all last year, how
the glory and enjoyment seemed to have gone out of existence. The
dismal monotony of my days weighed upon me like a nightmare. Life had
become a formula. I felt like a sick man who has to take so many doses
of medicine, so many pills, so many basins of broth, in the twenty-four
hours. There was no possible resistance. The sick-nurse was there, in
the shape of Fate, ready to use brute force if I rebelled. I never did
rebel. I assure you, Vixen, I was a model lover. Mabel and I had not a
single quarrel. I think that is a proof that we did not care a straw
for each other."

"You and I will have plenty of quarrels," said Vixen. "It will be so
nice to make friends again."

Now came the hurried breakfast--a cup of tea drunk, standing, not a
crumb eaten; agitated adieux to Miss Skipwith, who wept very womanly
tears over her departing charge, and uttered good wishes in a choking
voice. Even the Dodderys seemed to Vixen more human than usual, now
that she was going to leave them, in all likelihood for ever. Miss
Skipwith came to the gate to see the travellers off, and ascended the
pilgrim's bench in order to have the latest view of the fly. From this
eminence she waved her handkerchief as a farewell salutation.

"Poor soul!" sighed Vixen; "she has never been unkind to me; but oh!
what a dreary life I have led in that dismal old house!"

They had Argus in the fly with them, sitting up, with his mouth open,
and his tail flapp