Their steps have led them to a clearing in the low wood, and over the ground bared by the woodman’s axe the old man’s eye, mournful and yearning, wanders, embracing the pleasant swelling hills, the strawberry gardens, and cherry orchards, upon which his sire’s eyes, nay, his own boyish ones, had rested possessively. A Jew broker’s improved ploughs are furrowing yon hillside; a Half-penny Comic Journal sends the strawberries to Covent Garden; but to his own sad heart, pasture and copse and red roof-tree, are Campion’s still. Lavinia’s eye follows the direction her uncle’s has taken. The Kentish landscape, with its rustic smile is nearly as dear, though not as melancholy, to her as to him. The idea of living in any other surroundings is as unfamiliar to her as the wish. “The thing that hath been shall be.” To go on living and doing for her men--since there are now only two left, she must make the most of them--what other fate has ever occurred to her as possible? For as long as she can remember the thought of what she herself would like has been always subordinated to the wishes, divined or expressed, of her menkind. In so small a thing as the ordering of dinner, has her own palate ever in half a score of years, been asked to give an assent or a veto? To marry Rupert! To bear and bring up his children--a transient wonder crosses her mind as to whether there is any likelihood of their being as amusing and original as the young Darcys!--for what other end was she created? There is no sting or thrill in her feeling for him; but is it the worse for that? There are women incapable of thrilling for any man--a large, cool, comfortable class, to which she does and must belong. Has her pulse ever paid any man the tribute of one quickened beat? Proudly to herself she can answer No. She is not of that kind. With Féodorovna Prince as an object-lesson, there is not much fear of her erring in the direction of passion or sentimentality. She involuntarily lifts her head a little above its usual level--though it is always handsomely carried--and, since the thought-current that has run through her brain has done so with lightning’s own speed, there is to her hearer’s ear scarcely any delay in her answer. “I am ready to marry Rupert whenever you and he wish me to.” Her voice is steady and serene; at least so she intends and believes it to be. Yet Sir George looks at her askance. “_Ready!_” he repeats distrustfully. “A man, if he has any pluck, may be _ready_ to go to the gallows!” Lavinia makes a face between a laugh and a frown. “Choose your own words,” she says, the habit of a lifetime controlling and smoothing away any outward expression of impatience. But he will not let her off. “Are you _glad_ to marry him? Do you feel that it is essential to your happiness?” he asks, pressing home his inquiries with a persistency that he imagines to be conscientious, but which she feels to be cruel and perverse.