“We are thinking of August or September at latest,” continues the old man, looking round half suspiciously at the three faces about him, as if defying contradiction of his optimism.
Rupert has never contradicted his father. He does not now.
“If we make it September, we shall have the hop-pickers to grace it,” he answers, with another little smile.
“Can you never look at life except from the ridiculous point of view?” cries his father, in quite his old manner. Then, riddled with remorse, he falls to scolding Lavinia for having—as she has not, nor is ever likely to do—forgotten the moment for administering some potion or extract.
The girl smilingly rebuts the accusation, appealing quietly to the clock to defend her; but the curtain at the bed-head—it is an old-fashioned tester—which her hand is desperately clutching, could tell a less placid tale. She does not quite hear what next passes, and is aroused only by the sound of Sir George’s voice uttering a strident fiat.
“Time’s up!” he cries, with his watch in his hand, in slight to the clock which has proved him wrong; “and we do not allow a minute’s law.”
He marshals Mrs. Darcy relentlessly out of the room as he speaks, and the cousins are left tête-à-tête. Rupert’s fingers play a meditative tune on the bedclothes; and Lavinia, watching him, and vaguely trying to make out what is the air which they are intending to convey, is surprised by a criminal thought of what a much less virile hand it is than that which she had seen lying in the gauntness of its departed strength on the other man’s coverlet. The air continues, set to a slight sigh.
“It is odd to hear him beginning to harp on the old string,” says the man’s weak voice.
Lavinia gives a slight shiver. Is the theme to be taken up again, just where the striking of Rivers Sutton Church clock had broken it off five weeks ago?
“I do not think you ought to talk of anything agitating yet.”