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.
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