LAVINIA BY THE SAME AUTHOR =Foes in Law.= _Crown 8vo. 6s._ _Crown 8vo. 2s. each._ Goodbye, Sweetheart! Cometh up as a Flower Joan Belinda Dr. Cupid Not Wisely, but Too Well Red as a Rose is She Alas! Scylla or Charybdis? Mrs. Bligh Second Thoughts A Beginner Dear Faustina Nancy The Game and the Candle =Twilight Stories.= _Small Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._ LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. LAVINIA BY RHODA BROUGHTON London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1902 _All rights reserved_ PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. LAVINIA CHAPTER I “I shall never get over it.” This is a phrase that has issued from the same lips very often before; and in general Lavinia Carew listens to it silently, in the impatient confidence that at her next visit to Mrs. Prince, that lady will have got over “it” so completely as to have forgotten that “it” ever existed. She is silent now, but from an opposite reason to that which has hitherto tied her tongue. In her opinion neither Mrs. Prince nor any other Mrs. or Miss could ever get over the “it” in question. “And coming on this joyful day too--a day, I mean, that is so joyful to every one else in England--that would have been so joyful to us, but for _this_!” The speaker breaks off with a whimper. “The anniversary of Majuba Hill!” says Lavinia, with a fighting glint in a pair of uncommonly clear eyes, and uttering her ejaculation with none the less gusto for its being absolutely unoriginal, and shared by almost every pair of lips in Great and Greater Britain this triumphal day. “After the terrible gloom of the winter--never even in the Crimean War do I remember anything comparable to it!--just when the dead weight seemed to be lifting a little from all our hearts,” pursues Mrs. Prince, raising to heaven her bangled wrists with a despairing jangle. “The village is full of little Union Jacks,” interrupts the girl, with a good-natured effort to keep her afflicted friend on the safe track of the public rejoicing, and also because she cannot quite restrain the expression of her own jubilation. “I cannot think where they all came from.”