"My mother has gone to bed, I suppose?" inquired Vixen.
"She has gone to her room, but I fear she is too much agitated to get any rest. I would not allow her to wait here any longer for you."
"Is it so very late?" asked Vixen, with the most innocent air.
Her heart was beating violently, and her temper was not at its best. She stood looking at the Captain, with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, and her whip tightly clenched.
She was thinking of that speech of Rorie's about the "sweetest horsewhipping." She wondered whether Captain Winstanley had ever been horsewhipped; whether that kind of chastisement was numbered in the sum of his experiences. She opined not. The Captain was too astute a man to bring himself in the way of such punishment. He would do things that deserved horsewhipping, and get off scot free.
"It is a quarter-past eleven. I don't know whether you think that a respectable hour for a young lady's evening ride. May I ask the motive of this nocturnal expedition?"
"Certainly. You deprived Bates of a comfortable place—he has only been in the situation forty years—and I went to get him another. I am happy to say that I succeeded."
"And pray who is the chivalrous employer willing to receive my dismissed servant without a character?"
"A very old friend of my father's—Mr. Vawdrey."
"I thought as much," retorted the Captain. "And it is to Mr. Vawdrey you have been, late at night, unattended?"