They are pacing the Rectory garden, now on fire with the gaudy flowers of full summer, for July is well advanced. Mrs. Darcy makes her suggestion hesitatingly, since it hints at a subject that must be for ever closed between them, adding, in a lighter key, and with a touch of humour—
“He knows that Sir George can’t hale him to the altar in pyjamas; but that as soon as he has got one arm into a coat-sleeve his father will drag him up the aisle by it.”
“I feel sure,” continues the other, growing quite grave again, “that this is one more instance of that consummate tact of his, which is the outcome of his perfect unselfishness.”
Lavinia looks at her friend with a sort of distrust. “What a special pleader you have become! I never heard such a change of tone!”
Her companion’s thin white cheek grows faintly tinted.
“Did you ever hear of such things as remorse and reparation?” she asks in a low voice; and the tragic force of the response, “Did I?” silences them both.
Miss Carew feels that her occupation of buffer is already resumed, now that she has daily to parry her uncle’s attacks; the attacks which compunction and his late agony of fear prevent him from directing in their full force against his son himself; attacks that take the form of ever more impatient questions and astonishments as to why Rupert does not sit up, come downstairs, go out of doors, if it were even in a Bath chair? He alludes to the latter vehicle in a tone of such contemptuous concession, that his niece cannot help a furtive smile.
“You know, dear, that the doctor says he ought to keep his leg up a while longer,” she answers, pacifically.
“Pooh! What is the matter with his leg? It is as sound as yours or mine. It was a mere scratch to start with, and there is scarcely a cicatrice left now.”