he said; "but of
course having accepted hospitalities, we are bound to return them."

"Do you really think we ought to burst out into dinner-parties so soon,
mamma?"

"Yes, dear, as we accepted the dinners. If we had not gone it would
have been different."

"Ah," sighed Vixen, "I suppose it all began with that ball at Brighton,
like 'Man's first disobedience, and the fruit----'"

"I shall miss poor McCroke to fill in the invitation cards."

"Let me do it, mamma. I can write a decent hand. That is one of the few
ladylike accomplishments I have been able to master; and even that is
open to objection as being too masculine."

"If you would slope more, Violet, and make your up-strokes finer, and
not cross your T's so undeviatingly," Mrs. Tempest murmured amiably. "A
lady's T ought to be less pronounced. There is something too assertive
in your consonants."

Violet wrote the cards. The dinner was to be quite a grand affair,
three weeks' notice, and a French cook from The Dolphin at Southampton
to take the conduct of affairs in the kitchen; whereby the Abbey House
cook declared afterwards that there was nothing that Frenchman did
which she could not have done as well, and that his wastefulness was
enough to make a Christian woman's hair stand on end.

Three days before the dinner, Vixen riding Arion home through the
shrubbery, after a long morning in the Forest, was startled by the
vision of a dog-cart a few yards in front of her, a cart, which, at the
first glance, she concluded must belong to Roderick Vawdrey. The wheels
were red, the horse had a rakish air, the light vehicle swung from side
to side as it spun around the curve.

No, that slim figure, that neat waist, that military air did not belong
to Roderick Vawdrey.

"He here!" ejaculated Vixen inwardly, with infinite disgust. "I thought
we had seen the last of him."

She had been out for two hours and a half, and felt that Arion had done
quite enough, or she would have turned her horse's head and gone back
to the Forest, in order to avoid this unwelcome visitor.

"I only hope mamma won't encourage him to come here," she thought; "but
I'm afraid that smooth tongue of his has too much influence over her.
And I haven't even poor Crokey to stand by me. I shall feel like a bird
transfixed by the wicked green eyes of a velvet-pawed murdering cat."

"And I have not a friend in the world," she thought. "Plenty of
pleasant acquaintance, ready to simper at me and