“I did not at first,” answers the girl, still looking straight before her, with eyes that yet feel dazzled; “I thought it ought to be part of my punishment; but,” faltering, “I had not resolution enough to keep to it. And, even if I had, it would have been no use. The children----” “Yes,” returns the mother, with a rather quivering pride in her voice; “it would be difficult to be long in the company of my progeny without hearing the name of _Binning_”--pronouncing it with a ringing clearness. “_They_, at least, are faithful to the one hero whom they can call friend!” At the thus audaciously syllabled name, whose utterance has been tacitly prohibited between them for over a year, Lavinia gives a low cry. But in the over-set face that she suddenly turns upon her friend there is no anger, only an immense mazed joy, fighting its way out of the Bastille of the long remorseful sorrow that has prisoned and gagged it; and her fair head falls forward on the shoulder of Binning’s advocate. Through the thin fabric of her gown Mrs. Darcy feels the glow of the hidden face, and it spurs her to fresh effort. “Are you not rather tired of being _dead_?” she whispers. “It is all very well for a time, but it must pall! Come back to life! Put off these hateful weeds, put on a white gown, and come back to life _to-day_! Believe me”--with an accent of exulting persuasiveness--“you could not choose a better moment!” * * * * * The party to the choir boys of St. Gengulpha’s is being put through with the thoroughness which, since Mrs. Darcy’s advent, fifteen years ago, has characterized all the Rectory functions; and, indeed, is drawing towards its close. For four sunshiny hours, twenty happy boys in flannels, with sharp towny faces, have been expatiating about the grounds, and have drunk to the full of the varied entertainments offered them--entertainments shared by half the neighbourhood, annually compelled by Mrs. Darcy to come in to her aid. The Vicar of St. Gengulpha’s and his curates--lean men with intellectual faces, supported by the gamest of their pale choir boys, have stretched muscles that yet remember the playing-fields and the Isis, in the best tug-of-war in the Campion records, against the rector and his inferior songsters. The smartest young ladies of the neighbourhood have not disdained, though hampered by long-tailed swishy gowns, to join in a game of rounders with the visitors, nor do the inelegance of their futile efforts to get their draperies out of the way, nor the potency of the sun’s beams at all reduce the good will and perseverance with which they arduously scamper. The “donkey” has repeatedly conquered and been conquered. The donkey is an apocryphal animal, with a wooden head; and, for body, a revolving barrel, mounted on whose elusive convexity the rider has to snatch a threepenny bit from its distant nose. Many are the ignominious falls given by him, many the glorious victories won over his treacherously