“‘Quick! the brandy’!” she hears Féodorovna’s voice repeating from the sofa with a species of shocked reluctance. “One could have wished that his last words had not been quite those!”
“Oh, what does it matter what his last words were? What does it matter what any one’s last words are? We may all be thankful if we get off at the last, saying nothing worse than that!” cries Mrs. Darcy, turning round upon the speaker in a frenzy of nervous exasperation.
It is not often that the rector’s wife allows herself the dear indulgence of lashing out at Féodorovna; probably because she knows with what a right good will her heels, if given free scope, would flourish figuratively in Miss Prince’s silly face. The unaccustomed rebuff sends its object toque forwards again into the sofa cushion, from which, however, she emerges rather hurriedly, expelled by a toy rabbit hidden beneath it by Serena on her last visit to the drawing-room, and which squeaks when pressed.
“It seems so dreadful to have it all to do over again, as you may say,” ejaculates the elder visitor, presently. “How do they take it this time?”
“The old man is completely broken down,” comes the response in a key of quivering pity. “But Lavinia is very brave.” The moment that the phrase is out of her mouth, Susan dislikes and regrets it. How redolent it is of mock-grief! What a decent euphemism for the exultation that dares not yet awhile show its face! How often has she heard it applied to a widow for whom the lover—kept in comparative obscurity during many impatient years—is waiting round the corner to pounce upon when the grudged twelvemonth is out! Fortunately, the expression seems to have no such association for her auditors.
“Poor girl! she will break down later!” is Mrs. Prince’s compassionate comment, uttered with a sort of satisfaction at the certainty of Lavinia’s ultimate collapse.
“It is so impossible to realize that only this time yesterday they sent us back the leg-rest. I believe they had never used it.”
“There had been no need for it.”
“‘In the midst of life we are in death!’ Oh how true that is!”