Yet what can she do for the stricken household? Can she lift the lids of Rupert’s shut eyes, and bring consciousness, recognition, forgiveness, into them? One agonized ejaculation from Lavinia has revealed to her that the knowledge of having something to forgive had come to him, before setting off on that last walk--a knowledge that had, perhaps, helped him to “lose his head.” “To _lose his head_!” Yes; that is the phrase which she must always employ, never quitting her hold upon it during the hundreds of times that she will have to repeat the tale. As she stands listening outside the shut door, Lavinia steals out, a ghastly noiseless shadow in the morning light. “They want more ice!” she says, looking at her friend with dead eyes that do not seem to see her. “I will order it for you. Is there any change?” “No, none; but”--an angry terror bringing life back into her face--“that does not mean anything bad?” “Oh no; not necessarily.” “They do not expect it yet?” “Of course not, of course not. While I fetch the ice, won’t you change your dress? it would freshen you, and I would call you in a moment if there was any change.” “No, no; he might speak. Just while you are calling me, he might say some one thing; he may be saying it now.” And she slips back into the darkness. But the days pass, fall into the ordered routine of habit, and Rupert does not speak, does not say the one thing for which Lavinia listens day and night--the one thing whose utterance can keep her sane. It is not her fault that there is any interruption day or night to her listening; and, while forced away for necessary food, there is but one thought in her mind--the thought that he may speak, and she not be by to hear! Daily she strains her ears to listen through the ordeal of the luncheon or dinner, to whose endurance she compels herself for his father’s sake, and through the worse ordeal of relating to Sir George over and over again--since he is never tired of hearing--how it happened. Oh the torture of that repetition! and the keener torture of that explanation which on the first relation has to be given, and has more than once to be repeated, as not quite clear! “You say that you were ahead! How did you come to be ahead?” “I caught sight of it first; that gave me a start.” “And you were within a hundred yards before he caught you up?” “About that, I think.” “And the whole distance was a quarter of a mile?” “I should think so.” “How was it that he did not overtake you sooner?” “He--he had a greater distance to cover; he had run on ahead of me before we saw it.” “How much ahead of you?” “I can’t say.” There is such a helpless anguish in her voice that he stops questioning her for that while; but the doubt and the explanation are sure to crop up again at the next of those dreadful meals, spent in hiding their own food, and compelling each other to swallow his or hers. “I can’t quite understand how you kept the lead so long!”