"Violet, are you mystifying me? are you trying to drive me crazy? or is this the simple truth?"
"It is the simple truth."
"You are not engaged to this man?—you never have been?—you don't care for him, never have cared for him?"
"Never, never, never, never!" said Violet, with unmistakable emphasis.
"Then I have been the most consummate——"
He did not finish his sentence, and Violet did not ask him to finish it. The ejaculation seemed involuntary. He sat staring at the palms, and said nothing for the next minute and a half, while Vixen unfurled her great black and gold fan, and looked at it admiringly, as if she had never seen it before.
"Do you really think those palms will break through the roof again in the present Lord Southminster's time?" Roderick inquired presently, with intense interest.
Vixen did not feel herself called upon to reply to a question so purely speculative.
"I think I had better go and look for mamma and Mrs. Scobel," she said; "they must have come back from the supper-room by this time."
Roderick rose and offered her his arm. She was surprised to see how pale he looked when they came out of the dusk into the brilliant light of the gallery. But in a heated room, and between two and three o'clock in the morning, a man may naturally be a little paler than usual.