And, meanwhile, gentle, courteous, and content, Rupert sails, if not fast, yet with a fair wind, upon the pleasant waters of convalescence. Visitors are daily admitted, and the Darcy children have, of course, been prompt to offer their congratulations. But the visit has been vaguely felt by all not to have been a complete success. Rupert has never been quite at his ease with the Rectory’s warlike brood, oppressed by a feeling of his own destitution of the muscular qualities which they set so much store by; and though they are far too honourable not to have admitted him unhesitatingly to their Valhalla, yet one and all have a hazily uncomfortable feeling that he has got there by accident. The introduction of Geist to lighten the situation, though well-meant, does not turn out a success, since the Dachs has a rooted belief that all persons lying flat and white in bed at wrong hours are murderers. Like a reversed Balaam, having been brought to bless Rupert, he curses him instead, and there is such ominous purpose in his stiffened and stuck-out four legs, and the free exhibition of the whites of his eyes, that a hasty removal from the bed upon which he has been confidingly lifted is found advisable. Lavinia accompanies her young friends to the door into the churchyard, as a sort of consolation stakes for the flatness of their visit. “I never saw Rupert in bed before!” says Daphne, with a sort of awed interest. “Do you think he looks _quite_ as nice as darling Captain Binning did?” lisps little Serena, stealing an insinuating hand into Lavinia’s palm. “Do not be silly!” cries Phillida, who of late has shown faint symptoms of a slightly inaccurate knowledge of good and evil. “Nobody looks nice in bed; they are not meant to!” * * * * * “He is doing it on purpose--to give you time,” Phillida’s mother says a day or two later to Lavinia, who has made a remark that indicates her wonder at Rupert’s indifference to recovery. They are pacing the Rectory garden, now on fire with the gaudy flowers of full summer, for July is well advanced. Mrs. Darcy makes her suggestion hesitatingly, since it hints at a subject that must be for ever closed between them, adding, in a lighter key, and with a touch of humour-- “He knows that Sir George can’t hale him to the altar in pyjamas; but that as soon as he has got one arm into a coat-sleeve his father will drag him up the aisle by it.” Lavinia laughs a little. “I feel sure,” continues the other, growing quite grave again, “that this is one more instance of that consummate tact of his, which is the outcome of his perfect unselfishness.” Lavinia looks at her friend with a sort of distrust. “What a special pleader you have become! I never heard such a change of tone!” Her companion’s thin white cheek grows faintly tinted. “Did you ever hear of such things as remorse and reparation?” she asks in a low voice; and the tragic force of the response, “_Did I?_” silences them both.