"I can never resist it. And perhaps after tea you will be so good as to give me the treat you talked about just now."
"To show you the house?" said Mrs. Tempest. "Do you think we shall have light enough?"
"Abundance. An old house like this is seen at its best in the twilight. Don't you think so, Mrs. Scobel?"
"Oh, yes," exclaimed Mrs. Scobel, with a lively recollection of her album. "'They who would see Melrose aright, should see it'—I think, by-the-bye, Sir Walter Scott says, 'by moonlight.'"
"Yes, for an ancient Gothic abbey; but twilight is better for a Tudor manor-house. Are you sure it will not fatigue you?" inquired the Captain, with an air of solicitude, as Mrs. Tempest rose languidly.
"No; I shall be very pleased to show you the dear old place. It is full of sad associations, of course, but I do not allow my mind to dwell upon them more than I can help."
"No," cried Vixen bitterly. "We go to dinner-parties and kettledrums, and go into raptures about orchids and old china, and try to cure our broken hearts that way."
"Are you coming, Violet?" asked her mother sweetly.
"No, thanks, mamma. I am tired after my ride. Mrs. Scobel will help you to play cicerone."
Captain Winstanley left the room without so much as a look at Violet Tempest. Yet her rude reception had galled him more than any cross that fate had lately inflicted upon him. He had fancied that time would have softened her feeling towards him, that rural seclusion and the society of rustic nobodies would have made him appear at an advantage, that she would have welcomed the brightness and culture of metropolitan life in his person. He had hoped a great deal from the lapse of time since their last meeting. But this sullen reception, this silent expression of dislike, told him that Violet Tempest's aversion was a plant of deep root.