"You have studied too long," she said. "This must not occur again. I feel myself responsible to your parents for your health."
"To my parents," echoed Vixen, with a sudden sigh; "I have only one, and she is happier in my absence than when I was with her. You need not be uneasy about me if I fall ill. No one will care. If I were to die, no one would be sorry. I have no place in the world. No one would miss me."
"My dear, it is absolutely wicked to talk in this strain; just as you are developing new powers, an intellect which may make you a pillar and a landmark in your age."
"I don't want to be a pillar or a landmark," said Vixen impatiently. "I don't want to have my name associated with 'movements,' or to write letters to The Times. I should like to have been happy my own way."
She turned her back upon Miss Skipwith, and lay so still that the excellent lady supposed she was dropping off to sleep.
"A good night's rest will restore her, and she will awake with renewed appetite for knowledge," she murmured benevolently as she went back to her Swedenborgian studies.
CHAPTER IX.
The nearest Way to Norway.
No such blessing as a good night's rest was in store for Violet Tempest on that night of the first of August. She lay in a state of half-consciousness that was near akin to delirium. When she closed her eyes for a little while the demon of evil dreams took hold of her. She was in the old familiar home-scenes with her dear dead father. She acted over again that awful tragedy of sudden death. She was upbraiding her mother about Captain Winstanley. Bitter words were on her lips; words more bitter than even she had ever spoken in all her intensity of adverse feeling. She was in the woody hollow by Rufus's stone, blindfold, with arms stretched helplessly out, seeking for Rorie among the smooth beech-boles, with a dreadful sense of loneliness, and a fear that he was far away, and that she would perish, lost and alone, in that dismal wood.