Yet her life has scarcely been a bed of roses, though love has not been lacking; and her three men have had that immense opinion of her which makes up to most of her sex for any amount of bodily or mental char-ing. Of women in her home, save servants, there have, within her recollection, been none. Marriage is not an institution that seems to thrive in the Campion family, and so early in Lavinia’s history that only the faintest blur of memory of something kind and connected with cakes remains to the girl, her uncle’s wife had slipped inoffensively away to the churchyard, conveniently close to the pink-faced house. Often since she has grown up into sense and thoughtfulness, Lavinia has speculated about that dim lady, of whom no one now ever speaks--all others because they have forgotten her, and one concerning whom no one knows wherefore he is silent--speculated whether in her lifetime she had had as much buffer-work to do as has fallen to Lavinia herself, and whether, not being of so robust a constitution of mind or body, it had ended by killing her. For Lavinia is, and for several years past has been, before all things, a buffer. Has there ever been a day for so long as she can remember, when she has not been called upon to use her characteristic gifts to deaden and smooth and blunt the jars and bumps that her perpetually colliding men are always inflicting upon each other? The fault has nearly always lain with the father, gifted with that most infallible double endowment for ensuring unhappiness in life--a deep heart and an impossible temper. She is thinking of him with tender ruth next morning as she stands under the verandah, looking across the downward slope of garden, grass, sun-dial, and snowdrop borders, to the spacious view over the Weald of Kent, Hastingswards. On her right, a towering hedge of espaliered elms parts her--it alone and a few unseen green hillocks--from the little red-roofed thirteenth-century church and its emerald God’s acre. From the top of the church tower, it is said that on a clear day you can discern the masts of ships, though not the very sea. To this kind of seeing there goes usually more of imagination than eyesight; but the belief has, since the days of King John, heightened the village’s opinion of itself. To the left the prospect is bounded by the great group of horse-chestnuts, leafless now and purple, in the Rectory garden.