John Morton, as he returned home, could not help thinking that the
young farmer's condition was after all better than his own. There
was an honesty about both the persons concerned of which at any
rate they might be proud. There was real love,--and though that
love was not at present happy it was of a nature to inspire perfect
respect. But in his own case he was sure of nothing.
CHAPTER IX
Mistletoe
When Arabella Trefoil started from London for Mistletoe, with no
companion but her own maid, she had given more serious
consideration to her visit than she had probably ever paid to any
matter up to that time. She had often been much in earnest but
never so much in earnest as now. Those other men had perhaps been
worthy, worthy as far as her ideas went of worth, but none of them
so worthy as this man. Everything was there if she could only get
it;--money, rank, fashion, and an appetite for pleasure. And he was
handsome too, and good-humoured, though these qualities told less
with her than the others. And now she was to meet him in the house
of her great relations,--in a position in which her rank and her
fashion would seem to be equal to his own. And she would meet him
with the remembrance fresh in his mind as in her own of those
passages of love at Rufford. It would be impossible that he should
even seem to forget them.
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