“What do you suppose her mother can do?—a thoroughly vulgar woman. I never could live with her. As far as I can see wherever she goes everybody hates her.”
“My dear uncle!”
“Rufford will only laugh at her. If Mayfair would have gone himself, it is just possible that he might have done something.”
“My father is so unwilling to mix himself up in these things.”
“Of course he is. Everybody knows that. What the deuce was the good then of our going down there? I couldn’t do anything, and I knew he wouldn’t. The truth is, Mistletoe, a man nowadays may do just what he pleases. You ain’t in that line and it won’t do you any good knowing it, but since we did away with pistols everybody may do just what he likes.”
“I don’t like brute force,” said Lord Mistletoe.
“You may call it what you please:—but I don’t know that it was so brutal after all.” At the station they separated again, as Lord Augustus was panting for tobacco and Lord Mistletoe for parliamentary erudition.
LXI
The Success of Lady Augustus
Lady Augustus was still staying with the Connop Greens in Hampshire when she received the Duke’s letter and Arabella was with her. The story of Lord Rufford’s infidelity had been told to Mrs. Connop Green—and, of course through her to Mr. Connop Green. Both the mother and daughter affected to despise the Connop Greens;—but it is so hard to restrain oneself from confidences when difficulties arise! Arabella had by this time quite persuaded herself that there had been an absolute engagement, and did in truth believe that she had been most cruelly ill-used. She was headstrong, fickle, and beyond measure insolent to her mother. She had, as we know, at one time gone down to the house of her former lover, thereby indicating that she had abandoned all hope of catching Lord Rufford. But still the Connop Greens either felt or pretended to feel great sympathy with her, and she would still declare from time to time that Lord Rufford had not heard the last of her. It was now more than a month since she had seen that perjured lord at Mistletoe, and more than a week since her father had brought him so uselessly up to London. Though determined that Lord Rufford should hear more of her, she hardly knew how to go to work, and on these days spent most of her time in idle denunciations of her false lover. Then came her uncle’s letter, which was of course shown to her.
She was quite of opinion that they must do as the Duke directed. It was so great a thing to have the Duke interesting himself in the matter, that she would have assented to anything proposed by him. The suggestion even inspired some temporary respect, or at any rate observance, towards her mother. Hitherto her mother had been nobody to her in the matter, a person belonging to her whom she had to regard simply as a burden. She could not at all understand how the Duke had been guided in making such a choice of a new emissary;—but there it was under his own hand, and she must now in some measure submit herself to her mother unless she were prepared to repudiate altogether the Duke’s assistance. As to Lady Augustus herself, the suggestion gave to her quite a new life. She had no clear conception what she should say to Lord Rufford if the meeting were arranged, but it was gratifying to her to find herself brought back into authority over her daughter. She read the Duke’s letter to Mrs. Connop Green, with certain very slight additions—or innuendos as to additions—and was pleased to find that the letter was taken by Mrs. Connop Green as positive proof of the existence of the engagement. She wrote begging the Duke to allow her to have the meeting at the family house in Piccadilly, and to this prayer the Duke was obliged to assent. “It would,” she said, “give her so much assistance in speaking to Lord Rufford!” She named a day also, and then spent her time in preparing herself for the interview by counsel with Mrs. Green and by exacting explanations from her daughter.
This was a very bad time for Arabella—so bad, that had she known to what she would be driven, she would probably have repudiated the Duke and her mother altogether. “Now, my dear,” she began, “you must tell me everything that occurred first at Rufford, and then at Mistletoe.”
“You know very well what occurred, mamma.”
“I know nothing about it, and unless everything is told me I will not undertake this mission. Your uncle evidently thinks that by my interference the thing may be arranged. I have had the same idea all through myself, but as you have been so obstinate I have not liked to say so. Now, Arabella, begin from the beginning. When was it that he first suggested to you the idea of marriage?”
“Good heavens, mamma!”
“I must have it from the beginning to the end. Did he speak of marriage at Rufford? I suppose he did because you told me that you were engaged to him when you went to Mistletoe.”
“So I was.”
“What had he said?”
“What nonsense! How am I to remember what he said? As if a girl ever knows what a man says to her.”
“Did he kiss you?”
“Yes.”
“At Rufford?”
“I cannot stand this, mamma. If you like to go you may go. My uncle seems to think it is the best thing, and so I suppose it ought to be done. But I won’t answer such questions as you are asking for Lord Rufford and all that he possesses.”
“What am I to say then? How am I to call back to his recollection the fact that he committed himself, unless you will tell me how and when he did so?”
“Ask him if he did not assure me of his love
