Lavinia picks it up and eyes it unseeingly, conscious only that the voluble chaperonage of the last hour is withdrawn, and that in the green privacy of their lilac-scented bower nothing is left to protect them from each other. It will be for only a minute or two that the delicious awkwardness of their first _tête-à-tête_ amid the glad May greenness of trees, and the erotic suggestions of wedded blackbirds will last--only till the servant who drew the chair to its present harbour can be recalled and instructed to drag it up and down along the broad terrace walk between the sundial and the fountain, in the bald publicity of all the house’s front windows, and within range of the still bedded Féodorovna’s eye. “I withdraw my claim,” Binning says magnanimously, with a half-laugh. “So do I!” rejoins she, relieved. “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it!” “And to think that we should have been within an inch of a serious quarrel over _such_ an object!” she cries, tossing the gem of the Rectory Siege Train disdainfully away. “Our first quarrel!” At that--the phrase seeming ill pitched on and suggestive, both lapse into awkwardness, out of which, and also out of their bird-haunted brake, a footman presently expels them, lugging the one and compelling the other, since she is still on duty, into the stare of the afternoon sun on the shadeless terrace, which, or Mrs. Darcy’s “cold snap,” soon tires the invalid so much that he asks to be taken indoors. He revives before long, however, when comfortably extended on his sofa, and removed from the heady influences of the lilac perfume and the blackbirds’ song--three amorous cocks apparently courting one hen--he and his companion have settled down into the at all events surface peacefulness of their normal relation of nurse and patient. She has proposed reading aloud to him, and, though he has not accepted the offer with much eagerness, being no great bookman, and, like most men, disliking having his reading done for him, she persists, contrary to her usual gentle habit of following his every suggestion, and guessing every unuttered wish. After all, the manœuvre has its advantages, and he lies resigned, exploring the chart of her dear face, and making several new and delightful little discoveries.