for him, never have cared for him?"

"Never, never, never, never!" said Violet, with unmistakable emphasis.

"Then I have been the most consummate----"

He did not finish his sentence, and Violet did not ask him to finish
it. The ejaculation seemed involuntary. He sat staring at the palms,
and said nothing for the next minute and a half, while Vixen unfurled
her great black and gold fan, and looked at it admiringly, as if she
had never seen it before.

"Do you really think those palms will break through the roof again in
the present Lord Southminster's time?" Roderick inquired presently,
with intense interest.

Vixen did not feel herself called upon to reply to a question so purely
speculative.

"I think I had better go and look for mamma and Mrs. Scobel," she said;
"they must have come back from the supper-room by this time."

Roderick rose and offered her his arm. She was surprised to see how
pale he looked when they came out of the dusk into the brilliant light
of the gallery. But in a heated room, and between two and three o'clock
in the morning, a man may naturally be a little paler than usual.

Roderick took Violet straight to the end of the room, where his quick
eye had espied Mrs. Tempest in her striking black and scarlet costume.
He said nothing more about the Duchess or Lady Mabel; and, indeed, took
Violet past the elder lady, who was sitting in one of the deep-set
windows with Lady Southminster, without attempting to bring about any
interchange of civilities.

"Captain Winstanley has been kind enough to go and look for the
carriage, Violet," said Mrs. Tempest. "I told him we would join him in
the vestibule directly I could find you. Where have you been all this
time? You were not in the Lancers. Such a pretty set. Oh, here is Mrs.
Scobel!" as the Vicar's wife approached them on her partner's arm, in a
piteous state of dilapidation--not a bit of tulle putting left, and all
her rosebuds crushed as flat as dandelions.

"Such a delightful set!" she exclaimed gaspingly.

"I'm afraid your dress has suffered," said her partner.

"Not in the least." protested Mrs. Scobel, with the fortitude of that
ladylike martyr to a clumsy carver, celebrated by Sydney Smith, who,
splashed from head to foot, and with rills of brown gravy trickling
down her countenance, vowed that not a drop had reached her.

"This," says the reverend wit, "I esteem the highest triumph of
civilisation."

"Your carriage will be the