“You have been telling him of the event of the neighbourhood, I suppose?” answers Mrs. Darcy; her eye fixed rather intentionally upon her two elder daughters, who between them are lugging a large turkey-hen, who is not intended to sit, from a primrosy nest improvised in the Tugela bank--“the opening of Féodorovna Prince’s hospital?” “I am on my way to visit one of the patients,” replies Lavinia. “That reminds me I must be off! I wish it was over! I wonder why I dread it so much?” “It is never pleasant to have one’s old cuts torn open,” answers Mrs. Darcy. The explanation is rational, even to obviousness; but it is not satisfactory. Painful and tear-producing as the scene between herself and the man who was the innocent cause of poor Bill’s death must naturally be, the feeling that had existed between herself and her cousin, though warm and true, had not been of a nature to account for the state of trepidating dread with which she approaches the interview. And yet is it all dread? Is not there, too, a strong element of excited anticipation, that has no kinship with pain? Is it the spring, that incorrigible merry-maker, that is answerable for her elation? Is it the determined budding of everything about her, that makes her feel as if she were budding too? Is it because Rupert has returned? For a quarter of a mile she tries to persuade herself that this is the reason; but the negative that is given in her _for intérieur_ is so emphatic and persistent that she has to accept it. Passing the edge of the King’s Wood, she steps aside to pick one or two of the myriad wood anemones that, vanquishing the piled dead leaves more successfully than the primroses, floor it with their pensive poetic heads and graceful green collars. Rupert is always pleased when she presents him with a posy. They would be fresher if she waited to gather them on her way back; but some obscure instinct, which she does not in the least recognize, hints darkly to her that on her way back she will perhaps not remember to pay the little attention. As she looks at the drooped heads blushing pinkily in her hand, she tries idly to picture what her impression of Rupert would be were it he whom she were about to see for the first time. She tries to picture _his_ head lying in patient pain upon a pillow--yes; so far imagination obeys easily: Rupert would be patient enough; he has had a good apprenticeship, poor fellow!--his cheeks hollowed with suffering--yes; fancy runs along docilely enough still: they are not too plump already; no one can accuse Rupert of superfluous flesh--his chest swathed in bandages, where the Mauser bullet took its clean course through his body, so closely shaving his heart. No!