Volume II Part 3 (2/2)
”The first-comer!” whimpered Mrs. Tempest. ”Oh, this it too cruel!”
”Violet!” exclaimed Mrs. Scobel reprovingly, ”when you are calmer you will be sorry for having spoken so unkindly to your dear mamma.”
”I shall not be sorry for having spoken the truth,” said Violet. ”Mamma has heard the truth too seldom in her life. She will not hear it from Captain Winstanley--yet awhile.”
And after flinging this last poisoned dart, Vixen took up the muddy skirt of her habit and left the room.
”It was rather a pity that Arion and I did not go to the bottom of that bog and stay there,” she reflected. ”I don't think anybody wants us above ground.”
”Did you ever know anything so humiliating, so shameful, so undutiful?”
demanded Mrs. Tempest piteously, as the door closed on her rebellious daughter. ”What will people say if Violet is not at my wedding?”
”It would be awkward, certainly; unless there were some good reason for her absence.”
”People are so ill-natured. n.o.body would believe in any excuse that was made. That cruel girl will disgrace me.”
”She seems strongly prejudiced against Captain Winstanley. It is a great pity. But I daresay she will relent in time. If I were you, dear Mrs. Tempest, I should order the dress.”
”Would you really, f.a.n.n.y?”
”Yes; I should order the dress, and trust in Providence for the result.
You may be able to bring her round somehow between now and the wedding.”
”But I am not going to humiliate myself. I am not going to be trampled on by my daughter.”
”Of course not; but you must have her at your wedding.”
”If I were to tell Captain Winstanley what she has said this afternoon----”
”He would be very angry, no doubt. But I would not tell him if I were you.”
”No, I shall not say anything about it.”
Yet, before night, Captain Winstanley had heard every syllable that Vixen had said; with some trifling and unconscious exaggerations, hardly to be avoided by a woman of Mrs. Tempest's character, in the narration of her own wrongs.
CHAPTER III.
”I shall look like the wicked Fairy.”
Nothing in Captain Winstanley's manner during the sultry summer days which went before his marriage betrayed his knowledge of Violet Tempest's rebellious spirit. He would not see that he was obnoxious to her. He spoke to her and looked at her as sweetly as if there had been the friendliest understanding between them. In all his conduct, in any act of his which approached the a.s.sumption of authority, he went to work with supreme gentleness. Yet he had his grip upon everything already, and was extending his arms in every direction, like an octopus. There were alterations being made in the garden which Violet knew were his, although Mrs. Tempest was supposed to have originated them. He had, in some measure, a.s.sumed dominion over the stables. His two hunters were already quartered there. Vixen saw them when she went her morning round with a basket of bread. They were long-bodied, hungry-looking animals; and the grooms reported them ravenous and insatiable in their feeding.
”When they've eat their corn they eats their 'ay, and when they've eat their 'ay they eats their bed, and then they takes and gnaws the wooden part.i.tions. They'll eat up all the woodwork in the stable, before they've done. I never see such brutes,” complained Bates, the head-groom.
Vixen fancied these animals were in some wise typical of their owner.
One morning when Vixen was leaning upon the half-door of Arion's loose-box, giving herself up to a quarter of an hour's petting of that much-beloved animal, Captain Winstanley came into the stable.
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