“It will not be worth while.” Even as she makes it Lavinia realizes the folly of her speech, opening up, as it does, the subject of their fast-approaching separation; but before her forces can come up to relieve it, the traitor within her has rushed the position, and once again the electric current runs perilously strong. * * * * * As the young Darcys have always been taught to say what they mean, and mean what they say, they credit their acquaintance with a like simplicity and veracity; and, having been invited by Captain Binning to come again soon, and bring the Siege Train, see no reason why they should not repeat their visit in compliance with a request, whose sincerity it never occurs to them to doubt, with the least possible delay. Thanks to the drag placed upon their ardour by a discreeter parent, a decent interval of three or four days is allowed to elapse before they reappear in triumph, equipped with all the munitions of war. “You will find him in the garden,” Mrs. Prince says to her young visitors, waving her _en tout cas_ in the direction indicated--“there among those lilacs. He is out for the first time in a wheeled chair--quite an event for him, poor lad!” Then, as they fly off in eager obedience to the direction given, she adds, _sotto voce_, to Mrs. Darcy, “If you could give them--Binning and Lavinia, I mean--a hint to stay within range of Féo’s windows. She likes to be able to watch them.” But the rector’s wife must have forgotten to fulfil the delicate commission entrusted to her, since when, an hour later, Mrs. Prince joins the party, ostensibly to see on her own account how they are getting on, but in reality irefully despatched by her daughter to investigate the causes of their being completely out of sight, she finds them all grouped in a fragrant close of blossoming shrubs round the wheeled chair, whence Binning is conducting the Relief of Ladysmith. That the carrying out of that operation has reduced all the forces engaged--male and female, grown-up people and children--to the same level of excited juvenility, is proved by the fact that, at the moment of Mrs. Prince’s advent, Captain Binning and Miss Carew are contesting, with raised voices and heightened colours, the possession of the one cannon that shoots silver _bonbons_. For the moment they have entirely lost sight of their own dangerously tender relations to each other, and are disputing in real anger about the possession of a ridiculous toy. “You have come just in time to prevent manslaughter,” says Mrs. Darcy, rising from her knees with a humorously shamefaced air. “We had to shelter here from the wind,” she adds in rather guilty explanation. “I think we are going to have another cold snap.” Either the “cold snap” alluded to, or one brought by Mrs. Prince herself, presently disperses the party, and the Darcys retreat with such precipitation as to leave the object of strife behind them on the grass.