blazing logs, before which Nip the
pointer was stretched at ease, his muscular toes stiffening themselves
occasionally, as if he was standing at a bird in his dreams.

Vixen went on watching the rain. It was rather a lazy way of spending
the afternoon certainly, but Miss Tempest was out of humour with her
little world, and did not feel equal to groping out the difficulties,
the inexorable double sharps and odious double flats, in a waltz of
Chopin's. She watched the straight thin rain, and thought about
Rorie--chiefly to the effect that she hated him, and never could, by
any possibility, like him again.

Gradually the trickle of the rain from an overflowing waterpipe took
the sound of a tune. No _berceuse_ by Gounod was ever more
rest-compelling. The full white lids drooped over the big brown eyes,
the little locked hands loosened, the soft round chin fell forward on
the knees; Argus gave a snort of satisfaction, and laid his heavy head
on the velvet gown. Girl and dog were asleep. There was no sound in the
wide old hall except the soft falling of wood ashes, the gentle
breathing of girl and dogs.

Too pretty a picture assuredly to be lost to the eye of mankind.

Whose footstep was this sounding on the wet gravel half-an-hour later?
Too quick and light for the Squire's. Who was this coming in softly out
of the rain, all dripping like a water god? Who was this whose falcon
eye took in the picture at a glance, and who stole cat-like to the
window, and bending down his dark wet head, gave Violet's sleeping lips
the first lover's kiss that had ever saluted them?

Violet awoke with a faint shiver of surprise and joy. Instinct told her
from whom that kiss came, though it was the first time Roderick had
kissed her since he went to Eaton. The lovely brown eyes opened and
looked into the dark gray ones. The ruddy brown head rested on Rorie's
shoulder. The girl--half child, half woman, and all loving
trustfulness, looked up at him with a glad smile. His heart was stirred
with a new feeling as those softly bright eyes looked into his. It was
the early dawn of a passionate love. The head lying on his breast
seemed to him the fairest thing on earth.

"Rorie, how disgracefully you have behaved, and how utterly I detest
you!" exclaimed Vixen, giving him a vigorous push, and scrambling down
from the window-seat. "To be all this time in Hampshire and never come
near us."

A moment ago, in that first instant of a newly awakened