Arabella did not utter a word
in reply, but put out her hand, secretly as it were, and grasped
that of the old lady to whom she had told the tale of her later
intrigues. The dinner did not keep them long, but it was very
grievous to them all. Lady Ushant might have made some effort to be
at least a complaisant hostess to Lady Augustus had she not heard
this story,--had she not been told that the woman, knowing her
daughter to be engaged to John Morton, had wanted her to marry Lord
Rufford. The story having come from the lips of the girl herself
had moved some pity in the old woman's breast in regard to her; but
for Lady Augustus she could feel nothing but horror.
In the evening Lady Augustus sat alone, not even pretending to open
a book or to employ her fingers. She seated herself on one side of
the fire with a screen in her hand, turning over such thoughts in
her mind as were perhaps customary to her. Would there ever come a
period to her misery, an hour of release in which she might be in
comfort ere she died? Hitherto from one year to another, from one
decade to the following, it had all been struggle and misery,
contumely and contempt. She thought that she had done her duty by
her child, and her child hated and despised her. It was but the
other day that Arabella had openly declared that in the event of
her marriage she would not have her mother as a guest in her own
house.
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