After all, Lavinia is not unrecognizable. Scarcely has she left Mrs. Prince, whose brow is still creased by the thought of an imminent son-in-law, when one and another claim greetings from her, and in half an hour she has shaken hands with three parts of the gathering; has been presented to the strange clergy--St. Gengulpha’s has a new vicar since last year--and been cordially pressed by Christopher to feel the biceps of one of the East End curate’s arms, which has shown its merits in the just-ended tug-of-war. In the eyes of all them to whom she was already known, has been welcome, a little hesitating surprise, and a not unkindly curiosity. They know that she has passed through deep waters since last in her bloom and bonniness they had looked upon her, though they little guess the awful Dead Sea bitterness of taste of the waters that have gone over her. Is she recovered enough to be treated like any one else? Will it be better to allude to her long absence, rejoicing in its having ended; or to take her reappearance for granted? Some answer the question in one way and some in the other, as tact or insight diversely guides them; and she responds quietly to all, with a gravely grateful look from under the frills of her white muslin hat, and that overpowering sense that the acquaintances that accost her are no more real than she herself. But she is not unrecognizable! Through the haze that enwraps her sensations pierces a throb of joyful reassurance, proportioned to the apprehension that had forerun it--an apprehension not formulated to herself, that if she has so changed as to be unknowable by persons, many of whom have been acquainted with her from childhood, she may, in the dim and distant possibility of their ever meeting again, be passed unrecognized by one whose whole knowledge of her had only covered six weeks. She has come back from the grave! Is it any wonder that at first she walks in a maze--as one suddenly awakened from a century of sleep, doubtfully re-entering the kingdom of life? Glad voices are in the air around her; glad movement on the pleasant earth about her; a misty gladness, dim and vast, somewhere deep, deep down in her own being; and through it all a bewildering misgiving that this feast of life cannot be spread for _her_; that she does but dream, and will presently awake to the black gown, and the manuscript on the bureau, and the long treadmill of remorse and expiation.