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Updated: May 2, 2025
Violet had telegraphed to her old governess directly after Mrs. Winstanley's death; and that good and homely person arrived on the day after the funeral, to take up her abode with her old pupil, as companion and chaperon, until Miss Tempest should have become Mrs. Vawdrey, and would have but one companion henceforward in all the journey of life. Rorie and Vixen were to be married in six months.
I used sometimes to fancy that childish friendship of yours would lead to a lasting attachment." "Did you? That was a great mistake. I am not half good enough for Mr. Vawdrey. I was well enough for a playfellow, but he wants something much nearer perfection in a wife." "But your tastes are so similar." "The very reason we should not care for each other."
Lady Mabel was polishing her poems with serious thoughts of publication, but with strictest secrecy. No one but her parents and Roderick Vawdrey had been told of these poetic flights. The book would be given to the world under a nom de plume.
I cannot understand this rage for orchids old china, or silver, or lace, I can understand, but orchids things that require no end of trouble to keep them alive, and which I daresay are as common as buttercups and daisies in the savage places where they grow. There is Lady Jane Vawdrey now, a perfect slave to the orchid-houses." Violet's face flamed crimson at this mention of Lady Jane.
And with this Parthian shot, Vixen made a pirouette on her neat little morocco-shod toes, and whisked herself out of the room; leaving Roderick Vawdrey to make the best of his existence for the next twenty minutes with the two women he always found it most difficult to get on with, Mrs. Tempest and Miss McCroke.
"He is like my brother; and a brother would not hide his love affairs from his sister. It was rather mean of Rorie." The business of the day began presently. Neither Vixen nor the Squire dismounted. They had breakfasted at home; and Vixen, who did not care much for Lady Jane Vawdrey, was glad to escape with no further communication than a smile and a bow.
But now I am back in the Forest my good manners may go hang. 'My foot's on my native heath, and my name is McGregor." Somehow in all her thoughts of home after that burst of grief for her dead father Roderick Vawdrey was the central figure. He filled the gap cruel death had made. Would Rorie come soon to see her? Would he be very glad to have her at home again? What would he think of her?
He had an Advent service at seven o'clock that evening, and would but just have time to tramp home through the winter dark, and take a hurried meal, before he ran across to his neat little vestry and shuffled on his surplice, while Mrs. Scobel played her plaintive voluntary on the twenty-guinea harmonium. "And where is young Vawdrey now?" inquired Mrs. Tempest blandly.
"Poor Rorie," sighed the girl; "I think we might have been happy together." And then she remembered the days of old, when Mr. Vawdrey was free, and when it had never dawned upon his slow intelligence that his old playfellow, Violet Tempest, was the one woman in all this wide world who had the power to make his life happy.
"Only half-an-hour for Rorie," she thought. The minute-hand crept slowly to the half-hour, the luncheon-gong sounded below, and there had been no announcement of Mr. Vawdrey. "He may be downstairs with mamma all this time," thought Vixen. "Forbes would not tell me, unless he were sent." She went downstairs and met Forbes in the hall. "Oh, if you please, ma'am, Mrs.
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