There was every prospect of such a calamity. A confluence of vehicles had poured into a narrow lane bounded on one side by a treacherous water-meadow, on the other by a garden-wall. They all came to a standstill, as Mrs. Scobel had prophesied. For a quarter of an hour there was no progress whatever, and a good deal of recrimination among coachmen, and then the rest of the journey had to be done at a walking pace.
The reward was worth the labour when, at the end of a long winding drive, the carriage drew up before the Italian front of Southminster House; a white marble portico, long rows of tall windows brilliantly lighted, a vista of flowers, and statues, and lamps, and pictures, and velvet hangings, seen through the open doorway.
"Oh, it is too lovely!" cried Violet, fresh as a schoolgirl in this new delight; "first the dark forest and then a house like this—it is like Fairyland."
"And you are to be the queen of it—my queen," said Conrad Winstanley in a low voice. "I am to have the first waltz, remember that. If the Prince of Wales were my rival I would not give way."
He detained her hand in his as she alighted from the carriage. She snatched it from him angrily.
"I have a good mind not to dance at all," she said.
"Why not?"
"It is paying too dearly for the pleasure to be obliged to dance with you."
"In what school did you learn politeness, Miss Tempest?"
"If politeness means civility to people I despise, I have never learned it," answered Vixen.