when she comes
of age. As Violet's husband, your position would be infinitely better
than it could be as her stepfather. Unhappily, the cantankerous minx
has taken it into her head to dislike you."

"Stay," interjected the bland voice of Vanity; "may not this dislike be
only an assumption, a mask for some deeper feeling? There are girls who
show their love in that way. Do not be in a hurry to commit yourself to
the mother until you have made yourself quite sure about the daughter."

Mrs. Tempest's dinner-party was a success. It introduced Captain
Winstanley to all that was best in the surrounding society; for
although in Switzerland he had seemed very familiar with the best
people in the Forest, in Hampshire he appeared almost a stranger to
them. It was generally admitted, however, that the Captain was an
acquisition, and a person to be cultivated. He sang a French comic song
almost as well as Monsieur de Roseau, recited a short Yankee poem,
which none of his audience had ever heard before, with telling force.
He was at home upon every subject, from orchids to steam-ploughs, from
ordnance to light literature. A man who sang so well, talked so well,
looked so well, and behaved so well, could not be otherwise than
welcome in county society. Before the evening was over, Captain
Winstanley had been offered three hunters for the next day's run, and
had been asked to write in four birthday-books.

Violet did not honour him with so much as a look, after her one cold
recognition of his first appearance in the drawing-room. It was a party
of more than twenty people, and she was able to keep out of his way
without obvious avoidance of him. He was stung, but had no right to be
offended.

He took Mrs. Scobel in to dinner, and Mrs. Scobel played the
accompaniment of his song, being a clever little woman, able to turn
her hand to any thing. He would have preferred to be told off to some
more important matron, but was not sorry to be taken under Mrs.
Scobel's wing. She could give him the carte du pays, and would be
useful to him, no doubt, in the future; a social Iris, to fetch and
carry for him between Beechdale and the Abbey House.

"Do you know that I am quite in love with your Forest?" he said to Mrs.
Tempest, standing in front of the ottoman where that lady sat with two
of her particular friends; "so much so, that I am actually in treaty
for Captain Hawbuck's cottage, and mean to stay here till the end of
the hunting."