a grand funeral. The thought of this general
homage gave a faint thrill of comfort to the widow's heart.

"My noble husband," she ejaculated. "Who could help loving you?"

It seemed to her only a little while ago that she had driven up to the
Tudor porch for the first time after her happy honeymoon, when she was
in the bloom of youth and beauty, and life was like a schoolgirl's
happy dream.

"How short life is," she sobbed; "how cruelly short for those who are
happy!"

With Violet grief was no less passionate; but it did not find its sole
vent in tears. The stronger soul was in rebellion against Providence.
She kept aloof from her mother in the time of sorrow. What could they
say to each other? They could only cry together. Violet shut herself in
her room, and refused to see anyone, except patient Miss McCroke, who
was always bringing her cups of tea, or basins of arrowroot, trying to
coax her to take some kind of nourishment, dabbing her hot forehead
with eau-de-Cologne--doing all those fussy little kindnesses which are
so acutely aggravating in a great sorrow.

"Let me lie on the ground alone, and think of him, and wail for him."

That is what Violet Tempest would have said, if she could have
expressed her desire clearly.

Roderick Vawdrey went back to the Abbey House after the funeral, and
contrived to see Miss McCroke, who was full of sympathy for everybody.

"Do let me see Violet, that's a dear creature," he said. "I can't tell
you how unhappy I am about her. I can't get her face out of my
thoughts, as I saw it that dreadful night when I led her horse
home--the wild sad eyes, the white lips."

"She is not fit to see anyone," said Miss McCroke; "but perhaps it
might rouse her a little to see you."

Miss McCroke had an idea that all mourners ought to be roused; that
much indulgence in grief for the dead was reprehensible.

"Yes," answered Rorie eagerly, "she would see me, I know. We are like
brother and sister."

"Come into the schoolroom," said the governess, "and I'll see what I
can do."

The schoolroom was Vixen's own particular den, and was not a bit like
the popular idea of a schoolroom.

It was a pretty little room, with a high wooden dado, painted olive
green, and a high-art paper of amazing ugliness, whereon brown and red
storks disported themselves on a dull green ground. The high-art paper
was enlivened with horsey caricatures by Leech, and a menagerie of
pottery animals on various bracket