“It is enough to make any one break down!” she weeps in deprecation--“to think that only last evening Sir George took the trouble to ride over to thank us for the loan of the Bath chair, and to tell us what a world of good it had done the poor fellow! I told him we were only too glad! After all, what is the use of wealth if it isn’t----” Mrs. Darcy makes a restless movement. Its owner’s exposition of the philanthropic aspect of the Candle’s functions is more than she can quite stand at the moment. “And to think that it was not from the injury to the brain after all!” resumes the only momentarily interrupted lamenter; “that it should have been that scratch on the leg that none of us thought anything of! A _clot!_--that seems the last word of everything now! A _clot_, or suppressed gout--or cancer! To one of the three we must all come at last, it seems!” They remain heavily silent for a minute or two, the great master of joy and sorrow’s lines ringing in Mrs. Darcy’s head-- “Golden lads and lasses must, Like chimney-sweepers, turn to dust.” “I suppose that there is no doubt about it _this_ time?” Féodorovna asks in a tone of refined affliction, intended to contrast in the highest degree with her parent’s vulgar grief. “Once already he seems to have actually come back from the dead! But this time I suppose there is absolutely no----” “Absolutely none.” “Would you mind telling us exactly how it all happened?” inquires Mrs. Prince, with a sort of diffidence born of the recollection of how very much the rector’s wife had appeared to shrink from the narration of the original accident. “It seems a shame to trouble you; but really, trifling as the distance is from here to the Chestnuts, it is astonishing how things manage to get garbled in the mouths of the domestics.” Mrs. Prince always calls servants “domestics.” “Yes, I will tell you,” replies Mrs. Darcy, dabbing her eyes hastily with a pocket-handkerchief, which at once returns to her pocket, nor remains _en évidence_ like the other two. The sense of that former relation is strong on her memory also; but it is coupled with the feeling of how much less painful and difficult the present one is than its predecessor. Here there is nothing to wince at or glide over; no opening for implication or suspicion. “He had been talking to Lavinia while she gave him his tea; she had left him, thinking him a little tired, but quite naturally and healthily so after the unusual exertion of going out of doors for the first time; and about half an hour later he rang for the footman--you know that since the nurse went he has been waited on by the ordinary staff, and wonderfully little trouble he gave--and said he should like to go to bed. He undressed without any help, and was just going to get into bed when the servant, who had gone to the other side of the room to fetch something, heard him call out, ‘Quick! the brandy!’ He ran to him as fast as he could, but by the time he got to him he was----”