Seven days are gone since Lavinia was called upon to exult over the nursery hangings, and there is no exultation, even feigned, in the tone with which she quotes to herself the words of Jacob, running over in her head what “these things” are. It is “against her” that the search for the missing baptismal entry, now complicated by doubt as to the whereabouts of the register in which it was made, has motived another absence on the part of her bridegroom and uncle. It is against her that this fact has come to Mrs. Prince’s ears, and has brought a hailstorm of invitations, entreaties, and reproaches about Miss Carew’s head. It is against her that Féodorovna, having with a headstrong insanity, even stronger than her vanity, insisted on visiting Binning, has succeeded in improving upon her original malady by an attack of pneumonia, and brought herself to death’s door. As she unquietly paces the garden at Campion Place, waiting for the Princes’ victoria to convey her to the Chestnuts, Lavinia, dolefully probing her conscience, asks it which of the causes that have added their weight to each other till their momentum has grown irresistible, can be, in any common fairness, laid at her door; and she can detect no unjust bias in her own favour in the “not one” that answers her inward inquisition. On the elms’ little leaves in the giant espaliered hedge that parts her from the churchyard is the glisten of that sunshine that has just been luring them into life; on the dazzling emerald grass “nice-eyed” wagtails are walking with balanced tails at the foot of the old grey wall which, on the left side of the demesne, drops down a matter of ten feet to the croquet lawn below. She, looking absently over, can see the large-flowered periwinkle staring up at her, and the heaven-shaming blue of the forget-me-not fringe. The sight of the latter blossoms causes her a twinge of discomfort. She had worn a little bunch of them in her white coat, and at his leave-taking, a quarter of an hour ago, Rupert had deliberately unpinned and annexed them. Could he have intended any rebuke or admonishment by an action unlike him in its something of cool ownership? Yet there was certainly nothing of overweening confidence or masterdom in the words with which he had answered her at the moment, sincerely meant and felt-- “This is really too bad.” “Has absence made the heart grow fonder?” he asks, with a light lip-raillery, which the restrained yet legible wistfulness of his eyes contradicts. “When I see a wave of hatred coming on, I shall know what remedy to apply.” She has taught him to be sparing of endearments. Yet even he must expect some trifling kindness at parting. It weighs upon her conscience after he is gone that she had deftly chosen a moment when the butler was passing through the hall to bid him her final good-bye. “All these things are against me!”