Lavinia by Rhoda Broughton — Read

So it is settled. Her prayers are answered; her vows are fulfilled. Everything is, or will be upon Rupert's recovery, as it was. _As it was? When? _ Before Binning's coming? Her soul, half-lightened of its burden of remorse, awaking to new pain, cries out in bitter protest, "My God! -- _no! _" And yet to all appearance it will be so. To all appearance she will take up the thread of life where she had dropped it on the day of her uncle's and Rupert's return from London. There is no hurry about her question now. She will have countless hours of married intimacy in which to put it.

During these weeks of reprieve -- she gives an inward dread start at the reappearance of such a word in her vocabulary in such a connection -- besides the new armour that must be forged for her on the anvil of endurance, there is not one of the old pieces which she will not need. Even her lifelong _rôle_ of buffer will have to be reassumed, since, as time passes and confidence strengthens, Sir George's angelic qualities retire a little into the background. The wearing tempers and frets of sixty-five years, that have been driven to their holes by the scourge of a great affliction, begin to show their ugly heads again. Once again with pseudo-patient irritability he turns over his food at luncheon, and sends messages of ironical compliment to the cook; once or twice he even snubs Rupert, though, in these cases, repentance follows so hard upon his sin as almost to overrun it. It is always for not being in enough haste to be well, that the father chides his son. Rupert has never been one to hurry, and he does not hurry now.