"I dare say not, mamma."
"I have been brought here, at a terrible sacrifice--"
"Sacrifice! What sacrifice? You are as well here as anywhere else."
"I say I have been brought here at a terrible sacrifice for no purpose whatever. What use is it to be? And then you pretend to care what this poor man is eating and drinking and what physic he is taking when, the last time you were in his company, you wouldn"t so much as look at him for fear you should make another man jealous."
"He was not dying then."
"Psha!"
"Oh yes. I know all that. I do feel a little ashamed of myself when I am almost crying for him."
"As if you loved him!"
"Dear mamma, I do own that it is foolish. Having listened to you on these subjects for a dozen years at least I ought to have got rid of all that. I don"t suppose I do love him. Two or three weeks ago I almost thought I loved Lord Rufford, and now I am quite sure that I hate him. But if I heard to-morrow that he had broken his neck out hunting, I ain"t sure but what I should feel something. But he would not send for me as this man has done."
"It was very impertinent."
"Perhaps it was ill-bred, as he must have suspected something as to Lord Rufford. However we are here now."
"I will never allow you to drag me anywhere again."
"It will be for yourself to judge of that. If I want to go anywhere, I shall go. What"s the good of quarrelling? You know that I mean to have my way."
The next morning neither Lady Augustus nor Miss Trefoil came down to breakfast, but at ten o"clock Arabella was ready, as appointed, to be taken into the sick man"s bedroom. She was still dressed in black but had taken some trouble with her face and hair. She followed Lady Ushant in, and silently standing by the bedside put her hand upon that of John Morton which was laying outside on the bed. "I will leave you now, John," said Lady Ushant retiring, "and come again in half an hour."
"When I ring," he said.
"You mustn"t let him talk for more than that," said the old lady to Arabella as she went.
It was more than an hour afterwards when Arabella crept into her mother"s room, during which time Lady Ushant had twice knocked at her nephew"s door and had twice been sent away. "It is all over, mamma!"
she said.
Lady Augustus looked into her daughter"s eyes and saw that she had really been weeping. "All over!"
"I mean for me,--and you. We have only got to go away."
"Will he--die?"
"It will make no matter though he should live for ever. I have told him everything. I did not mean to do it because I thought that he would be weak; but he has been strong enough for that."
"What have you told him?"
"Just everything--about you and Lord Rufford and myself,--and what an escape he had had not to marry me. He understands it all now."
"It is a great deal more than I do."
"He knows that Lord Rufford has been engaged to me." She clung to this statement so vehemently that she had really taught herself to believe that it was so.
"Well!"
"And he knows also how his lordship is behaving to me. Of course he thinks that I have deserved it. Of course I have deserved it. We have nothing to do now but to go back to London."
"You have brought me here all the way for that."
"Only for that! As the man was dying I thought that I would be honest just for once. Now that I have told him I don"t believe that he will die. He does not look to be so very ill."
"And you have thrown away that chance!"
"Altogether. You didn"t like Bragton you know, and therefore it can"t matter to you."
"Like it!"
"To be sure you would have got rid of me had I gone to Patagonia. But he will not go to Patagonia now even if he gets well; and so there was nothing to be gained. The carriage is to be here at two to take us to the station and you may as well let Judith come and put the things up."
Just before they took their departure Lady Ushant came to Arabella saying that Mr. Morton wanted to speak one other word to her before she went. So she returned to the room and was again left alone at the man"s bedside. "Arabella," he said, "I thought that I would tell you that I have forgiven everything."
"How can you have forgiven me? There are things which a man cannot forgive."
"Give me your hand," he said,--and she gave him her hand. "I do forgive it all. Even should I live it would be impossible that we should be man and wife."
"Oh yes."
"But nevertheless I love you. Try,--try to be true to some one."
"There is no truth left in me, Mr. Morton. I should not dishonour my husband if I had one, but still I should be a curse to him. I shall marry some day I suppose, and I know it will be so. I wish I could change with you,--and die."
"You are unhappy now."
"Indeed I am. I am always unhappy. I do not think you can tell what it is to be so wretched. But I am glad that you have forgiven me."
Then she stooped down and kissed his hand. As she did so he touched her brow with his hot lips, and then she left him again. Lady Ushant was waiting outside the door. "He knows it all," said Arabella. "You need not trouble yourself with the message I gave you. The carriage is at the door. Good-bye. You need not come down. Mamma will not expect it." Lady Ushant, hardly knowing how she ought to behave, did not go down. Lady Augustus and her daughter got into Mr. Runciman"s carriage without any farewells, and were driven back from the park to the Dillsborough Station. To poor Lady Ushant the whole thing had been very terrible. She sat silent and unoccupied the whole of that evening wondering at the horror of such a history. This girl had absolutely dared to tell the dying man all her own disgrace,--and had travelled down from London to Bragton with the purpose of doing so!
When next she crept into the sick-room she almost expected that her nephew would speak to her on the subject;--but he only asked whether that sound of wheels which he heard beneath his window had come from the carriage which had taken them away, and then did not say a further word of either Lady Augustus or her daughter.
"And what do you mean to do now?" said Lady Augustus as the train approached the London terminus.
"Nothing."
"You have given up Lord Rufford?"
"Indeed I have not."
"Your journey to Bragton will hardly help you much with him."
"I don"t want it to help me at all. What have I done that Lord Rufford can complain of? I have not abandoned Lord Rufford for the sake of Mr. Morton. Lord Rufford ought only to be too proud if he knew it all."
"Of course he could make use of such an escapade as this?"
"Let him try. I have not done with Lord Rufford yet, and so I can tell him. I shall be at the Duke"s in Piccadilly to-morrow morning."