"
"I haven't got any pastors and masters."
"The Duchess!" suggested Lord Rufford.
"I thought all that kind of nonsense was over," said Arabella.
"I believe a great deal is over. You can do many things that your
mother and grandmother couldn't do; but absolute freedom,--what you
may call universal suffrage,--hasn't come yet, I fear. It's twenty
miles by road, and the Duchess would say something awful if I were
to propose to take you in a post chaise."
"But the railway!"
"I'm afraid that would be worse. We couldn't ride back, you know,
as we did at Rufford. At the best it would be rather a rough and
tumble kind of arrangement. I'm afraid we must put it off. To tell
you the truth I'm the least bit in the world afraid of the
Duchess."
"I am not at all," said Arabella angrily.
Then Lord Rufford ate his dinner and seemed to think that that
matter was settled. Arabella knew that he might have hunted
elsewhere,--that the Cottesmore would be out in their own county
within twelve miles of them, and that the difficulty of that ride
would be very much less. The Duke might have been persuaded to send
a carriage that distance. But Lord Rufford cared more about the
chance of a good run than her company! For a while she was sulky;--
for a little while, till she remembered how ill she could afford to
indulge in such a feeling.
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