Volume I Part 16 (1/2)

”She's very handsome, you know, and all that,” they said deprecatingly, ”and her figure is quite splendid; but she's on such a very large scale. She ought to be painted in fresco, you know, on a high cornice.

As Autumn, or Plenty, or Ceres, or something of that kind, carrying a cornucopia. But in a drawing-room she looks so very ma.s.sive.”

The amber-haired women--palpably indebted to auricomous fluids for the colour of their tresses--objected to the dark burnished gold of Violet Tempest's hair. There was too much red in the gold, they said, and a colour so obviously natural was very unfas.h.i.+onable. That cream-white skin of hers, too, found objectors, on the score of a slight powdering of freckles; spots which the kindly sun leaves on the fruit he best loves. In fact, there were many reservations made by Miss Tempest's pretended admirers when they summed up her good looks; but when she rode her pretty bay horse along the King's Road, strangers turned to look at her admiringly; when she entered a crowded room she threw all paler beauties in the shade. The cabbage-rose is a vulgar flower perhaps, but she is queen of the garden notwithstanding.

Lest it should be supposed, after this, that Vixen was a giantess, it may be as well to state that her height was five feet six, her waist twenty-two inches at most, her shoulders broad but finely sloping, her arms full and somewhat muscular, her hands not small, but exquisitely tapering, her foot long and narrow, her instep arched like an Arab's, and all her movements instinct with an untutored grace and dignity. She held her head higher than is common to women, and on that score was found guilty of pride.

”I think we ought to go back before Christmas, Violet,” said Mrs.

Tempest, continuing a discussion that had been dragging itself slowly along for the last half-hour.

”I am ready, mamma,” answered Vixen submissively. ”It will break our hearts afresh when we go home, but I suppose we must go home some day.”

”But you would like to see the dear old house again, surely, Violet?”

”Like to see the frame without the picture? No, no, no, mamma. The frame was very dear while the picture was in it--but--yes,” cried Vixen pa.s.sionately, ”I should like to go back. I should like to see papa's grave, and carry fresh flowers there every day. It has been too much neglected.”

”Neglected, Violet! How can you say such thing? When Manotti's bill for the monument was over nine hundred pounds.”

”Oh, mamma, there is more love in a bunch of primroses that my own hand gathers and carries to the grave than in all the marble or granite in Westminster Abbey.”

”My dear, for poor people wild flowers are very nice, and show good feeling--but the rich must have monuments. There could be nothing too splendid for your dear papa,” added the widow tearfully.

She was always tearful when she spoke of her dear Edward, even now; though she was beginning to find that life had some savour without him.

”No,” said Vixen, ”but I think papa will like the flowers best.”

”Then if all is well, Miss McCroke,” pursued Mrs. Tempest, ”we will go back at the end of November. It would be a pity to lose the season here.”

Vixen yawned despondently.

”What do we care about the season, mamma?” she exclaimed. ”Can it matter to us whether there are two or three thousand extra people in the place? It only makes the King's Road a little more uncomfortable.”

”My dear Violet, at your age gaiety is good for you,” said Mrs. Tempest.

”Yes, and, like most other things that are good, it's very disagreeable,” retorted Vixen.

”And now, about this ball,” pursued Mrs. Tempest, taking up a dropped st.i.tch in the previous argument; ”I really think we ought to go, if it were only on Violet's account. Don't you, Maria?”

Mrs. Tempest always called her governess Maria when she was anxious to conciliate her.

”Violet is old enough to enter society, certainly,” said Miss McCroke, with some deliberation; ”but whether a public ball----”

”If it's on my account, mamma, pray don't think of going,” protested Vixen earnestly. ”I hate the idea of a ball--I hate----”

”Captain Winstanley,” announced Forbes, in the dusky end of the drawing-room by the door.

”He has saved me the trouble of finis.h.i.+ng my sentence,” muttered Vixen.

The visitor came smiling though the dusk into the friendly glow of the fire. He shook hands with Mrs. Tempest with the air of an old friend, went over to the window to shake hands with Miss McCroke, and then came back to Vixen, who gave him a limp cold hand, with an indifference that was almost insolent, while Argus lifted his head an inch or so from the carpet and saluted him with a suppressed growl. Whether this arose from a wise instinct in the animal, or from a knowledge that his mistress disliked the gentleman, would be too nice a point to decide.

”I was that moment thinking of you, Captain Winstanley,” said the widow.