hat was suddenly
emptied of all delight.

"What are you going to do, dear?" asked Roderick presently. "If you
shut yourself up in your room and abandon yourself to grief, you will
make yourself very ill. You ought to go away somewhere for a little
while."

"For ever!" exclaimed Vixen passionately. "Do you think I can ever
endure this dear home without papa? There is not a thing I look at that
doesn't speak to me of him. The dogs, the horses. I almost hate them
for reminding me so cruelly. Yea, we are going away at once, I believe.
Mamma said so when I saw her this morning."

"Your poor mamma! How does she bear her grief?"

"Oh, she cries, and cries, and cries," said Vixen, rather
contemptuously. "I think it comforts her to cry. I can't cry. I am like
the dogs. If I did not restrain myself with all my might I should howl.
I should like to lie on the ground outside his door--just as his dog
does--and to refuse to eat or drink till I died."

"But, dear Violet, you are not alone in the world. You have your poor
mamma to think of."

"Mamma--yes. I am sorry for her, of course. But she is only like a
lay-figure in my life. Papa was everything."

"Do you know where your mamma is going to take you?"

"No; I neither know nor care. It will be to a house with four walls and
a roof, I suppose. It will be all the same to me wherever it is."

What could Roderick say? It was too soon to talk about hope or comfort.
His heart was rent by this dull silent grief; but he could do nothing
except sit there silently by Vixen's side with her cold unresponsive
hands held in his.

Miss McCroke came back presently, followed by a maid carrying a pretty
little Japanese tea-tray.

"I have just been giving your poor mamma a cup of tea, Violet," said
the governess. "Mr. Clements has been telling her about the will, and
it has been quite too much for her. She was almost hysterical. But
she's better now, poor dear. And now we'll all have some tea. Bring the
table to the fire, Mr. Vawdrey, please, and let us make ourselves
comfortable," concluded Miss McCroke, with an assumption of mild
cheerfulness.

Perhaps there is not in all nature so cheerful a thing as a good
sea-coal fire, with a log of beechwood on the top of the coals. It will
be cheerful in the face of affliction. It sends out its gushes of
warmth and brightness, its gay little arrowy flames that appear and
disappear like elves dancing their midnight waltzes on a barren moor.
It