Miss Carew feels that her occupation of buffer is already resumed, now that she has daily to parry her uncle’s attacks; the attacks which compunction and his late agony of fear prevent him from directing in their full force against his son himself; attacks that take the form of ever more impatient questions and astonishments as to why Rupert does not sit up, come downstairs, go out of doors, if it were even in a Bath chair? He alludes to the latter vehicle in a tone of such contemptuous concession, that his niece cannot help a furtive smile. “You know, dear, that the doctor says he ought to keep his leg up a while longer,” she answers, pacifically. “Pooh! What is the matter with his leg? It is as sound as yours or mine. It was a mere scratch to start with, and there is scarcely a cicatrice left now.” “But it is swollen still,” she urges, quietly but firmly. “Dr. Wilson thought it was more swollen this morning than it was at his last visit.” “Fiddlesticks! He says it to oblige Rupert! That boy has got round you all!” and he flings away in a pet. He has resumed his complacence in the afternoon, not from having conquered his ill humour--a victory which, save for the period of his son’s imminent peril, he has, as far as his family are aware, never attempted; but because he has got his wish. Rupert, at his own express desire, has been taken out in a superb Bath chair borrowed from the Chestnuts; a Bath chair consecrated to Mr. Prince’s gout; and to make the offer of which to Lavinia that great inventor has himself driven over to Campion Place, prefacing his proposal with his usual prefix, “I do not wish to be intrusive!” Rupert has been out for an hour; gently pushed along under the shade of the lime trees, of which one or two belated ones still throw down a remnant of the ineffable sweetness of their yellow-green blossoms upon him. His father and his betrothed are on either hand. Sir George’s jokes are never very good; and it is to-day harder than usual to Lavinia to laugh at his stupid pleasantry as to their being like the lion and the unicorn that support the Royal Arms. Rupert does not attempt to laugh; but he smiles with kind serenity. At even a better jest Lavinia would be too busy to laugh--too busy stamping down the outrageous thoughts, regrets, revolts, that keep swarming up in her heart, vipers warmed into life by the very sun of her cousin’s restoration. Oh if he were _only_ her cousin! only dear Rupert, her brother-friend! Oh if he were a woman--the woman he has always sighed to be! Oh if he were always in a Bath chair! The monstrosity of this last aspiration conducts her to the hall-door; and it and its brother evil spirits are but ill laid as she pours out tea for Rupert, as he lies sighing with satisfaction at having regained it, upon the sofa at his bed-foot. “I may now hope for twenty-four hours of blessed supineness,” he says, throwing his head back on the piled cushions with an epicurean air.