nce having got it in his hearty grasp.

"Hail to the first new year we greet together," he said softly. "May it
not be the last. I feel that it must not, cannot be the last."

"You are wiser than I, then," Vixen answered coldly; "for my feelings
tell me nothing about the future--except"--and here her face beamed at
him with a lovely smile--"except that you will be kind to Bullfinch."

"If I were an emperor I would make him a consul," answered the Irishman.

He had contrived to separate Roderick and Vixen. The young man had
returned to his allegiance, and was escorting Lady Mabel back to the
house. Everybody began to feel chilly, now that the bells were silent,
and there was a general hurrying off to the carriages, which were
standing in an oval ring round a group of deodoras in front of the
porch on the other side of the house.

Rorie and Vixen met no more that night. Lord Mallow took her to her
carriage, and sat opposite her and talked to her during the homewards
drive. Captain Winstanley was smoking a cigar on the box. His wife
slumbered peacefully.

"I think I may be satisfied with Theodore," she said, as she composed
herself for sleep; "my dress was not quite the worst in the room, was
it, Violet?"

"It was lovely, mamma. You can make yourself quite happy," answered
Vixen truthfully; whereupon the matron breathed a gentle sigh of
content, and lapsed into slumber.

They had the Boldrewood Road before them, a long hilly road cleaving
the very heart of the Forest; a road full of ghosts at the best of
times, but offering a Walpurgis revel of phantoms on such a night as
this to the eye of the belated wanderer. How ghostly the deer were, as
they skimmed across the road and flitted away into dim distances,
mixing with and melting into the shadows of the trees. The little gray
rabbits, sitting up on end, were like circles of hobgoblins that
dispersed and vanished at the approach of mortals. The leafless old
hawthorns, rugged and crooked, silvered by the moonlight, were most
ghostlike of all. They took every form, from the most unearthly to the
most grotesquely human.

Violet sat wrapped in her furred white mantle, watching the road as
intently as if she had never seen it before. She never could grow tired
of these things. She loved them with a love which was part of her
nature.

"What a delightful evening, was it not?" asked Lord Mallow.

"I suppose it was very nice," answered Violet coolly; "but I have no
sta