“I think not. After all, there is no harm in supposing! _Supposing_ breaks no bones, and I have often noticed that clauses in wills providing for contingencies which seemed almost impossible yet not seldom take effect!” Since Lavinia makes no comment, he goes on with resolute courtesy, “So that, if you do not mind, I will repeat ‘Supposing I _do not_ get well----’” “Yes?” she answers, sullenly acquiescent. “I want it to be clearly understood that I have no wish that you should play at being my widow--that you should offer up your good solid flesh-and-blood happiness” (is there the faintest tinge of sarcasm in this description of her conjectural felicity?) “with some Quixotic idea of expiation, as a sacrifice to my manes!” She cannot speak. Is it the scent of the great old heliotrope that climbs the trellis up to the very window-edge, that makes her feel faint? “It is even a moot point whether I shall have any manes!” Rupert goes on half dreamily; “but even if consciousness survives the grave, which, of course, I am far too advanced to believe----” He pauses with a slight ironic smile, and she listens in a bewilderment of distress, oppressed by the old thought of how little she really knows of him. She cannot even be sure whether his confession of unbelief is made in jest or earnest. She knows not whether, or with what numb agnosticism, with what grey creed of nothingness, or with what faint flickering cresset of faith, Rupert has met the sorrows of life, will, when his hour strikes, confront the sharpness of death? His voice goes on evenly-- “Even if consciousness does survive, it will not give me the slightest satisfaction to know that you have cut your heart out to throw it as a complimentary tribute on my funeral pyre! I have always liked your bonny locks, dear, and I should fret like the blessed damosel whom I have always wished to be, if I saw them pining and dwining away into skinny unsightliness! You have no talent for hairdressing, and I hope and believe that St. Catherine will go _uncoiffed_ by you!” He pauses a minute, and then resumes, as composedly as before, but with a more entire gravity, “You will be very lonely!” “How _dare_ you say _will_?” she interjects, dashing her hand across her smarting eyes. “You _would_ be very lonely,” he corrects himself at once. “The old man will not hold out long. This spurt is wonderful, but it will not last!” Then the smarting eyes have their way, and let loose their tears. They are drawn forth from their springs, almost more by the calm aloofness with which the prophecy is uttered, than by the prophecy itself. What a long long way from her--from them all--Rupert seems to have got! Her tears do not appear at all to affect him.