“If you were in earnest about it he would be—afraid of you.”
“I don’t think he would in the least. If I were to make a noise about it, it would only do you harm. You wouldn’t wish all the world to know that he had—”
“Jilted me! I don’t care what the world knows. Am I to put up with such treatment as that and do nothing? Do you like to see your cousin treated in that way?”
“I don’t like it at all. Lord Rufford is a good sort of man in his way, and has a large property. I wish with all my heart that it had come off all right; but in these days one can’t make a man marry. There used to be the alternative of going out and being shot at; but that is over now.”
“And a man is to do just as he pleases?”
“I am afraid so. If a man is known to have behaved badly to a girl, public opinion will condemn him.”
“Can anything be worse than this treatment of me?” Lord Mistletoe could not tell her that he had alluded to absolute knowledge and that at present he had no more than her version of the story;—or that the world would require more than that before the general condemnation of which he had spoken would come. So he sat in silence and shook his head. “And you think that I should put up with it quietly!”
“I think that your father should see the man.” Arabella shook her head contemptuously. “If you wish it I will write to my mother.”
“I would rather trust to my uncle.”
“I don’t know what he could do;—but I will write to him if you please.”
“And you won’t see Lord Rufford?”
He sat silent for a minute or two during which she pressed him over and over again to have an interview with her recreant lover, bringing up all the arguments that she knew, reminding him of their former affection for each other, telling him that she had no brother of her own, and that her own father was worse than useless in such a matter. A word or two she said of the nature of the prize to be gained, and many words as to her absolute right to regard that prize as her own. But at last he refused. “I am not the person to do it,” he said. “Even if I were your brother I should not be so—unless with the view of punishing him for his conduct;—in which place the punishment to you would be worse than any I could inflict on him. It cannot be good that any young lady should have her name in the mouths of all the lovers of gossip in the country.”
She was going to burst out at him in her anger, but before the words were out of her mouth she remembered herself. She could not afford to make enemies and certainly not an enemy of him. “Perhaps, then,” she said, “you had better tell your mother all that I have told you. I will write to the Duke myself.”
And so she left him, and as she returned to Orchard Street in the brougham, she applied to him every term of reproach she could bring to mind. He was selfish, and a coward, and utterly devoid of all feeling of family honour. He was a prig, and unmanly, and false. A real cousin would have burst out into a passion and have declared himself ready to seize Lord Rufford by the throat and shake him into instant matrimony. But this man, through whose veins water was running instead of blood, had no feeling, no heart, no capability for anger! Oh, what a vile world it was! A little help—so very little—would have made everything straight for her! If her aunt had only behaved at Mistletoe as aunts should behave, there would have been no difficulty. In her misery she thought that the world was more cruel to her than to any other person in it.
On her arrival at home, she was astounded by a letter that she found there—a letter of such a nature that it altogether drove out of her head the purpose which she had of writing to the Duke on that evening. The letter was from John Morton and now reached her through the lawyer to whom it had been sent by private hand for immediate delivery. It ran as follows:
Dearest Arabella,
I am very ill—so ill that Dr. Fanning who has come down from London, has, I think, but a poor opinion of my case. He does not say that it is hopeless—and that is all. I think it right to tell you this, as my affection for you is what it always has been. If you wish to see me, you and your mother had better come to Bragton at once. You can telegraph. I am too weak to write more.
“John Morton is dying,” she almost screamed out to her mother.
“Dying!”
“So he says. Oh, what an unfortunate wretch I am! Everything that touches me comes to grief.” Then she burst out into a flood of true unfeigned tears.
“It won’t matter so much,” said Lady Augustus, “if you mean to write to the Duke, and go on with this other—affair.”
“Oh, mamma, how can you talk in that way?”
“Well; my dear; you know—”
“I am heartless. I know that. But you are ten times worse. Think how I have treated him!”
“I don’t want him to die, my dear; but what can I say? I can’t do him any good. It is all in God’s hands, and if he must die—why, it won’t make so much difference
