Phoebe, Miss Tempest's fresh-faced Hampshire maid, appeared at this
moment.

"Oh, if you please, miss, your ma says would you go to the
drawing-room? Mr. Scobel is with her, and would like to see you."

Violet rose with a sigh.

"Is my hair awfully untidy, Phoebe?"

"I think I had better arrange the plaits, miss."

"That means that I'm an object. It's four o'clock; I may as well change
my dress for dinner. I suppose I must go down to dinner?"

"Lor' yes, miss; it will never do to shut yourself up in your own room
and fret. You're as pale as them there Christmas roses already."

Ten minutes later Vixen went down to the drawing-room, looking very
stately in her black Irish poplin, whose heavy folds became the tall
full figure, and whose dense blackness set off the ivory skin and warm
auburn hair. She had given just one passing glance at herself in the
cheval-glass, and Vanity had whispered:

"Perhaps Rorie would have thought me improved; but he has not taken the
trouble to come and see. I might be honeycombed by the small-pox, or
bald from the effects of typhus, for aught he cares."

The drawing-room was all aglow with blazing logs, and the sky outside
the windows looking pale and gray, when Violet went in. Mrs. Tempest
was in her favourite arm-chair by the fire, Tennyson's latest poem on
the velvet-coloured gipsy table at her side, in company with a large
black fan and a smelling-bottle. Mr. Scobel was sitting in a low chair
on the other side of the hearth, with his knees almost up to his chin
and his trousers wrinkled up ever so far above his stout Oxford shoes,
leaving a considerable interval of gray stocking. He was a man of about
thirty, pale, and unpretending of aspect, who fortified his native
modesty with a pair of large binoculars, which interposed a kind of
barrier between himself and the outer world.

He rose as Violet came towards him, and turned the binoculars upon her,
glittering in the glow of the fire.

"How tall you have grown," he cried, when they had shaken hands. "And
how----" here he stopped, with a little nervous laugh; "I really don't
think I should have known you if we had met elsewhere."

"Perhaps Rorie would hardly know me," thought Vixen.

"How are all the poor people?" she asked, when Mr. Scobel had resumed
his seat, and was placidly caressing his knees, and blinking, or
seeming to blink, at the fire with his binoculars.

"Oh, poor souls!" he sighed. "There has been a great de