"Your absence will humiliate and lower me in the sight of my friends. It will be a disgrace. And yet you take this course on purpose to wound and injure me. You are a wicked undutiful daughter." "Oh, mamma!" cried Vixen, with grave voice and reproachful eyes--eyes before whose steady gaze the tearful widow drooped and trembled, "is duty so one-sided? Do I owe all to you, and you nothing to me? My father left us together, mother and daughter, to be all the world to each other. He left us mistresses of the dear old home we had shared with him. Do you think he meant a stranger to come and sit in his place--to be master over all he loved? Do you think it ever entered his mind that in three little years his place would be filled by the first-comer--his daughter asked to call another man father?" "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. Nobody 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, Fanny?" "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."