



Produced by Daniel Fromont.  HTML version by Al Haines.








COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHORS


TAUCHNITZ EDITION.


VOL. 1811.

VIXEN BY M. E. BRADDON

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.




VIXEN


A NOVEL


BY

M.  E. BRADDON,

AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC. ETC.


_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.


IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.


LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1879.


_The Right of Translation is reserved_.



CONTENTS

OF VOLUME III.


CHAPTER I. Going into Exile

CHAPTER II. Chiefly Financial

CHAPTER III. "With weary Days thou shalt be clothed and fed"

CHAPTER IV. Love and AEsthetics

CHAPTER V. Crumpled Rose-Leaves

CHAPTER VI. A Fool's Paradise

CHAPTER VII. "It might have been"

CHAPTER VIII. Wedding Bells

CHAPTER IX. The nearest Way to Norway

CHAPTER X. "All the Rivers run into the Sea"

CHAPTER XI. The Bluebeard Chamber

Epilogue



VIXEN.



CHAPTER I.

Going into Exile.

After a long sleepless night of tossing to and fro, Vixen rose with the
first stir of life in the old house, and made herself ready to face the
bleak hard world. Her meditations of the night had brought no new light
to her mind. It was very clear to her that she must go away--as far as
possible--from her old home. Her banishment was necessary for
everybody's sake. For the sake of Rorie, who must behave like a man of
honour, and keep his engagement with Lady Mabel, and shut his old
playfellow out of his heart. For the sake of Mrs. Winstanley, who could
never be happy while there was discord in her home; and last of all,
for Violet herself, who felt that joy and peace had fled from the Abbey
House for ever, and that it would be better to be anywhere, in the
coldest strangest region of this wide earth, verily friendless and
alone among strange faces, than here among friends who were but friends
in name, and among scenes that were haunted with the ghosts