am of liquid fire
that ran, and ran, quicker than thought, towards the open window.

Before she could speak or move, the flame had run up the lace curtain,
like a living thing, swift as the flight of a bird or the gliding
motion of a lizard. The wide casement was wreathed with light. They
two--Vixen and her foe--seemed to be standing in an atmosphere of fire.

Captain Winstanley was confounded by the suddenness of the catastrophe.
While he stood dumb, bewildered, Vixen sprang through the narrow space
between the flaming curtains, as if she had plunged into a gulf of
fire. He heard her strong clear voice calling to the stablemen and
gardeners. It rang like a clarion in the still summer night.

There was not a moment lost. The stablemen rushed with pails of water,
and directly after them the Scotch gardener with his garden-engine,
which held several gallons. His hose did some damage to the
drawing-room carpet and upholstery, but the strong jet of water
speedily quenched the flames. In ten minutes the window stood blank,
and black, and bare, with Vixen standing on the lawn outside,
contemplating the damage she had done.

Mrs. Winstanley rushed in at the drawing-room door, ghostlike, in her
white _peignoir_, pale and scared.

"Oh, Conrad, what has happened?" she cried distractedly, just able to
distinguish her husband's figure standing in the midst of the
disordered room.

"Your beautiful daughter has been trying to set the house on fire," he
answered. "That is all."

CHAPTER XVI.

"That must end at once."

A quarter of an hour later, when all the confusion was over, Violet was
kneeling by her mother's chair, trying to restore tranquillity to Mrs.
Winstanley's fluttered spirits. Mother and daughter were alone together
in the elder lady's dressing-room, the disconsolate Pamela sitting,
like Niobe, amidst her scattered fineries, her pomade-pots and
powder-boxes, fan-cases and jewel-caskets, and all the arsenal of
waning beauty.

"Dear mother," pleaded Violet, with unusual gentleness, "pray don't
give way to this unnecessary grief. You cannot surely believe that I
tried to set this dear old home on fire--that I could be so
foolish--granting even that I were wicked enough to do it--as to
destroy a place I love--the house in which my father was born! You
can't believe such a thing, mother."

"I know that you are making my life miserable," sobbed Mrs. Winstanley,
feebly dabbing her forehead with a flimsy Valenc