“But he is not nursed by her!” exclaims the other, almost angrily. “Mrs. Prince herself told me that Mr. Prince had forbidden it, because he knew she would kill him!” Mrs. Darcy shakes her head. “As long as it was a question of his life, Mr. Prince interfered; now that it is merely a matter of shaking his reason and indefinitely retarding his recovery, Féo is at liberty to work her inhuman will upon him. Only yesterday, Nurse Blandy said to me that if things were not altered, she should tell Dr. Roots that she must throw up the case.” “And do you expect me to undertake it?” asks Lavinia, in a voice so unlike her own, so unfeeling and grating, that Susan starts. “Rupert went to see him on Tuesday,” continues the girl, not waiting for an answer to her rather brutal question. “Rupert and you are not quite one yet, though you soon will be,” rejoins Mrs. Darcy, drily. “My uncle has been twice, and you went yesterday. It cannot be good for a moribund to receive such a shoal of visitors!” Her voice is still hard, and there is neither compassion nor sympathy detectable in it. “He catches at any reprieve from Féo’s importunities, poor fellow! I told him about the children and their martial ardour, and he asked me to bring them with me next time, if I was good enough to let him hope that there would be a next time--he looked at me like a lost dog, as he said it; and then Féo came in with something in a cup, and forced it down his throat, pouring half of it over the sheet. I fully expected her to hold his nose, to make him open his mouth, as Mrs. Gamp did with her patient at the Bull Inn!” Lavinia is sitting up on her heels, the implements of her infuriated industry dropped in her lap, and listening in a silent horror that gives the lie to the callousness of her utterances of a minute ago. Mrs. Darcy turns to go. “So I must say that you cannot spare time--that you do not see your way to it? Which sounds best?” she asks with affected carelessness. The answer comes in the voice of Daphne, flying dishevelled, torn, and red-rosy up the walk. “Oh, Lavy, we have had such a battle! It was between the turkey-cocks and the _hen_-cocks.” * * * * * “I will go and see,” says Féodorovna, whom, to her surprise, Lavinia finds lying on the sofa in her own luxuriously fantastic den; when, on the afternoon of the same day, a pair of hesitatingly hurrying feet carry her past the King’s Wood, through the Princes’ escutcheoned lodge, to and through their hall-door. Miss Prince’s voice has its _ex-cathedrâ_ importance, and her cap-strings their official wave and float, as she adds-- “It is quite likely that I may have to send you away. Half an hour ago, he said he felt inclined to sleep; I think it was partly a ruse to induce me to take a little rest; but he looked rather exhausted, and Nurse Blandy advised me to lie down till he wanted me again.”