seems to say: "Look at me and be comforted! Look at me and hope! So
from the dull blackness of sorrow rise the many coloured lights of
new-born joy."

Vixen suffered her chair to be brought near that cheery fire, and just
then Argus crept into the room and nestled at her knee. Roderick seated
himself at the other side of the hearth--a bright little fire-place
with its border of high-art tiles, illuminated with the story of "Mary,
Mary, quite contrary," after quaintly mediaeval designs, by Mr. Stacey
Marks. Miss McCroke poured out the tea in the quaint old red and blue
Worcester cups, and valiantly sustained that assumption of
cheerfulness. She would not have permitted herself to smile yesterday;
but now the funeral was over, the blinds were drawn up, and a mild
cheerfulness was allowable.

"If you would condescend to tell me where you are going, Vixen, I might
contrive to come there too, by-and-by. We could have some rides
together. You'll take Arion, of course."

"I don't know that I shall ever ride again," answered Violet with a
shudder.

Could she ever forget that awful ride? Roderick hated himself for his
foolish speech.

"Violet will have to devote herself to her studies very assiduously for
the next two years," said Miss McCroke. "She is much more backwards
than I like a pupil of mine to be at sixteen."

"Yes, I am going to grind at three or four foreign grammars, and to
give my mind to latitude and longitude, and fractions, and decimals,"
said Vixen, with a bitter laugh. "Isn't that cheering?"

"Whatever you do, Vixen," cried Roderick earnestly, "don't be a
paradigm."

"What's that?"

"An example, a model, a paragon, a perfect woman nobly planned, &c. Be
anything but that, Vixen, if you love me."

"I don't think there is much fear of any of us being perfect," said
Miss McCroke severely. "Imperfection is more in the line of humanity."

"Do you think so?" interrogated Rorie. "I find there is a great deal
too much perfection in this world, too many faultless people--I hate
them."

"Isn't that a confession of faultiness on your side?" suggested Miss
McCroke.

"It may be. But it's the truth."

Vixen sat with dry hollow eyes staring at the fire. She had heard their
talk as if it had been the idle voices of strangers sounding in the
distance, ever so far away. Argus nestled closer and closer at her
knee, and she patted his big blunt head absently, with a dim sense of
comfort in this brute love, whic