“There is no reason why it should turn _you_ into one gigantic blush,” replies her friend, looking at her with a grave smile. “You have not the distinction of having been informed that a very successful General has no immediate use for you!” “Did you tell her what you thought of her?” asks the other, in a low voice, and giving a start of maidenly ire at the suggested possibility. “Why should I?” asks the clergyman’s wife, lifting her sensible, tolerant eyes to her companion’s still discoloured countenance. “Would that have undone it?” “And you let her brag about it? You allowed her to believe----?” Lavinia breaks off. “I do not think that she left me with the impression that I admired her,” replies the other in an exceedingly quiet key; and Miss Carew is at once appeased and silenced. “Yesterday was painful from start to finish,” resumes the girl, presently. “Some days _are_ like that, aren’t they? Yesterday”--with that respectful drop of the voice which is our tribute to the departed--“poor Bill’s things came back.” The news brings a lump into the throat of the person addressed, for, like most of his acquaintances, Mrs. Darcy had been fond of fine, plucky, upstanding Bill Campion. It is a minute or two before she can dress her sympathy in enough composure to say-- “And, of course, that upset _him_ very much?” “No; he was not upset,” replies Lavinia, a sort of hopeless pity in voice and look. “He is never upset; it would be much better for him if he were--and for _us_.” “Yes, poor fellow!” “I was afraid that we should have a dreadful dinner,” continues Lavinia, with the relieved expansiveness of perfect intimacy addressing perfect comprehension. “I was afraid he would have one of his attacks of hating us for being alive!” “He never hates _you_ for being alive.” “Well, ‘us’ means Rupert, and Rupert means ‘_us_;’ you know that.” There is more of loyalty than grammar in the creed expressed; but as to the staunchness of the believer’s faith there can be no two opinions. “Yes, I know.” If a faint wonder tempers the acquiescence of the hearer, it does not reach her companion’s ear. “He had called him ‘Rupert of the Rhine’ in the afternoon; that is always a very bad sign. Nothing makes Rupert wince so much as being called ‘Rupert of the Rhine.’” Mrs. Darcy’s neck turns a little aside, so as partially to avert a face on which a scarcely sketched smile that has not much real amusement in it is dimly visible. “But things turned out better than I expected,” pursues the girl, with a lilt of recovering spirits in her not very low but yet agreeable voice. “The dear old fellow put great constraint upon himself, and was quite civil to--_us_”--with a small challenging smile, as she lays an obstinate emphasis upon the plural pronoun--“and ‘we’ tried our best not to be offensive, and even asked one or two quite sporting questions, and did not make any very egregious mistakes.”