The Rectory children are all more or less bunged with tears, against which they bravely contend, and have eluded Miss Brine, and the inadequate consolation offered by her, that after all Captain Binning is no blood relation, and that six weeks ago they had never seen him, to seek the more perfect sympathy of “Lavy.” But “Lavy” is not so nice as usual; and though they find her wandering about her garden with no apparent occupation, she shows so little desire to hear or reciprocate their lamentations that they leave her in puzzled disappointment. Their mother, presently missing them, divining and disapproving their design, hastens after them; and finding them hanging, with only very partially recovered spirits, over that unexpected tit’s nest in the disused watering-can, which their jealous care has watched over since earliest eggdom, gravely dismisses them, and joins her friend. Without speaking, the rector’s wife directs her own steps and those of a companion who seems scarcely to know, and not at all to care, where she is or what is being done with her, to the walled seclusion of the kitchen garden, as being less open to observation than the sloping lawn before the house. Yet at first the precaution seems unnecessary. There is nothing for any prying eye to see, nor ear to hear. “Sir George and Rupert come back to-day?” “No; to-morrow.” “Will the workmen be out of the house?” “Not quite.” Silence; apparently numb on the one side; certainly self-reproachful on the other. “What could have possessed me,” Mrs. Darcy asks herself, “to allude to the papering and painting of the nurseries?” Lavinia remains absolutely dumb. A despair so lifeless and inarticulate frightens the elder woman; and, after a minute or two of anxious cogitation, she tries the effect of a douche of cold water on her companion’s apparently swooned soul. “I did not think you would have collapsed like this!” It is partially successful. “I have not collapsed. Since you _know_, having dragged it out of me, there is no need to pretend before you; but when it matters, I shall not collapse.” “He is coming to bid you good-bye to-day?” “Yes.” “Is--is that wise?” “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” There is such a dull doggedness in the tone, such a clutch upon the interview referred to implied in it, that Mrs. Darcy gives a gasp. “It won’t be good-bye!” she says presently, in a low tone of conviction--“it _cannot_ be!” Lavinia does not answer; not in the least, as her friend is distressfully aware, because she is acquiescent; but simply because the statement is not worth contradicting. “I can’t stand by and see a crime committed!” Susan says, talking low and very quickly, and trying not to let her agitation get the better of her. “If you feel that it is a task beyond your strength, _I_ will speak to Rupert for you; at the least hint, the least suggestion--heroically unselfish as he is.” “You used not to admire him so much!” puts in the other with a bitter dryness.