It is to the Rectory that Lavinia is bound--the Rectory, where she gets her fresh eggs, and carries some of her troubles. She is dressed in black for her dead cousin; but the freshness of her cheeks and lips, and the sunshine that lives in her hair, make it always difficult for her to look in mourning. Her spirits are still tender from the emotion of last night, and her thoughts musing pityingly upon her men--the live one who is taking his punishment so deadly hard, and the dead who, though now so deified and enshrined in his father’s broken heart, had not, any more than herself, found his short life a bed of roses. Poor Bill! Never again would she have to insert the pad of her smoothing words between his sensitiveness and the sting of his father’s speech--that father who, though he would joyfully have died ten thousand deaths for him, yet could not resist venting the gibes born of adversity and constitutional ill humour upon the creature whom, “if Heaven had made him such another world of one entire and perfect chrysolite,” he would not have sold for it. Poor Bill! With a heartfelt sigh she fetches her egg-basket and sets off through the churchyard to her goal. It is a roundabout way, since the Rectory grounds actually touch the wall at the bottom of the Campion garden; and there had once, not so long ago, been a trellised door through which Rectory and Place ran in and out at will, but in an unexplained spurt of resentment or suspicion, Sir George had had it walled up. It has been a cause of great inconvenience to himself, and he has very much repented it ever since the spurt passed; but pride forbids him to undo his deed. The Rectory regrets it too, but with wise and understanding want of resentment. Its own front gate stands hospitably open, and the shortness of its drive soon brings the visitor to the hall-door--wide open too--for the Rectory is nothing if not airy; and, indeed, since the children could never remember to shut it after them, it may as well gape legally as illegally. “You are quite a stranger,” says the rectoress, turning with an air of relief from her pile of household books; for though she is a good woman and does her accounts, she is not of those who love them. “What became of you all yesterday?” “I was at the Princes’ most of the afternoon,” replies Lavinia, sitting down with the air of an _habitué_, her egg-basket on her knees. “They were in trouble--bad trouble, of a sort; but you must not ask me what.” Then, seeing a humorous sparkle in her friend’s eye, she adds, half-laughing, “Oh, I see that you are in the secret.” “Féodorovna has just been here to proclaim her heroic deed,” says Mrs. Darcy, drily. “Isn’t it inconceivable?” cries Lavinia, starting up with a revival of the passion of shame that had overcome her on first hearing of Miss Prince’s exploit, while the egg-basket, happily not yet laden, rolls on the floor.