The apprehension expressed has certainly no novelty for Mrs. Darcy. It has rung ominously in her ears many times since her last sight of the friend whose short letters, dated from so long a succession of dreary health resorts, as to prove the dying restlessness which is upon the old man, tell her so little in their uncomplaining brevity. Perhaps it is the grafting of another’s crude, bald words upon her own scarcely permitted thought, which makes both seem unendurable. She turns hastily away, and all follow her from the grave, since, as far as the churchyard gate, their roads lie together. Twilight has come upon them as they stand; twilight passing in dim gallop into darkness--a darkness that will never be relieved by the little paltry moon, making its poor fight with the dominant vapours. Silence has fallen upon the two elder women; but the tongues of the children, following hard behind with Féodorovna, are loosed. “Mother heard from Captain Binning by last mail,” Susan hears Phillida say, in the tone of one communicating a piece of news of whose acceptability to its hearer there can be no doubt; and Miss Prince’s rather ostentatiously indifferent rejoinder. “Oh, did she?” “He told her the details of that fight near Snyman’s Post, which we saw the account of in the _Times_, when he was mentioned in despatches; not that he said a word about _that_, trust him,” in a tone of almost personal pride in the joint valour and reticence of the related fact. “The Boers had rushed a picket, which gave them good cover to pour in a heavy fire at close range upon us, but after two hours’ hard fighting we beat them off with heavy loss.” “Anyhow, we knocked the stuffing out of Commandant Reitz that time,” chimes in Christopher, taking up the chant of triumph. The young Darcys have never been fond of Miss Prince; but at least, upon the all-important subject of the war, they have imagined her views to be in absolute harmony with their own. What, then, is their stupefaction at her comment upon their pieces of intelligence? “How brutal! and how brutalizing!” she says with a delicate shudder of disgust. “They do not know: how should they?” says Mrs. Prince, lowering her voice. “But Féo has lost all interest in the war. She has got a new hobby. It is music. You heard what she said about the choir singing flat. There is a young organist at Shipstone who, according to her, is something quite out of the way. He won the F.R.C.O., whatever that may be, last year; and she goes every day to hear him play. Well,” with resigned appeal, “it is a nice taste, isn’t it? and her mind is so active, that she must have something to occupy it; but she _used_ not to know one note from another.” * * * * *