“I do not know what object you propose to yourself by putting me to this torture!” she says. “I think a person should be fully in possession of the facts of a case before she ventures to give an opinion upon it.” “That is quite true,” replies the other, gently, too full of deep compassion for the writhing soul before her to resent either the tone or the words used; “but does it apply to me?” “Yes,” replies Lavinia, her insensibility seeming to give way to a far more distressing and unnatural access of wild discourtesy; “yes, a hundred times yes! You have undertaken the management of my affairs without in the least understanding them. If I were to take your advice, if I were to jilt Rupert as you so shamefully suggest to me, how much the better should I be? how much the nearer----?” She stops dead short, unable to name that never-to-be-reached goal. “What do you mean?” “What do I mean?” speaking very slowly. “I should have thought that it did not need a conjurer to discover that! I mean that _I_ am not the only person you would have to convince!” “_What?_” “Has it never occurred to you that there may be an obstacle on _his_ side too?” (It is plain that the possessive pronoun here does not refer to Rupert.) “No,” breathlessly. “Don’t you think----?” In the determination to master a tongue restive to such utterance, Lavinia pronounces her words with a clear incisiveness that, even at this crucial moment, makes Mrs. Darcy gauge apprehensively the distance that parts the tragedy in which she is taking part from the tranquil prose of the gardener potting cuttings under a shed. “Don’t you think it might strike Captain Binning that he has done them almost enough harm already?” “Don’t speak quite so loud!” in quick-breathing entreaty. “You mean about Bill?” “Mightn’t it occur to him that, having robbed them of Bill, it would not be behaving very handsomely to rob them of me too?” The rector’s wife shakes her head mournfully. “Isn’t it a little late to think of that? He has done that already!” “What has he done?” asks Lavinia, standing at bay, with a fierce white face of dogged championship. “What do you lay to his charge? Once he kissed my hand,--it was _this_ one,” smiting it with the fore finger of the other; “but it was only to thank me for nursing him. That was his one crime! That was all he has ever done--all he ever will do!” In her breaking voice, in her passion-pinched face, there is but little attempt to disguise the poignancy of the smart that the belief in that reticence brings with it. “Not even if he comes to bid you good-bye?” Lavinia’s eyes, awhile ago so dead, light up ominously. “You think that I ought not to let him come?” she asks between two panting breaths. “I do.” “That it would be wiser in me not to see him again?” “Yes.” Lavinia throws out her hands with a gesture of reckless defiance. “Then I will be _un_wise!” CHAPTER XVI