We shall have to go
to his club and get him out. It must be done immediately; and then
I must see Lord Mistletoe, and I will write to the Duke."
"Would it not be better to write to your papa?" said Lady Augustus,
not liking the idea of being dragged away so quickly from
comfortable quarters.
"No; it wouldn't. If you won't go I shall, and you must give me
some money. I shall write to Lord Rufford too."
And so it was at last decided, the wretched old woman being dragged
away up to London on some excuse which the Connop Greens were not
sorry to accept. But on that same afternoon Arabella wrote to Lord
Rufford:
Your letter has amazed me. I cannot understand it. It seems to be
almost impossible that it should really have come from you. How can
you say that I have mistaken you? There has been no mistake. Surely
that letter cannot have been written by you.
Of course I have been obliged to tell my father everything.
Arabella.
On the following day at about four in the afternoon the mother and
daughter drove up to the door of Graham's Club in Bond Street, and
there they found Lord Augustus. With considerable difficulty he was
induced to come down from the whist room, and was forced into the
brougham. He was a handsome fat man, with a long grey beard, who
passed his whole life in eating, drinking, and playing whist, and
was troubled by no scruples and no principles.
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