There could be no longer hope for triumph and glory;--but
how might she find peace so that she might no longer be driven
hither and thither by this ungrateful tyrant child? Oh, how hard
she had worked in the world, and how little the world had given her
in return!
Lady Ushant and Arabella sat at the other side of the fire, at some
distance from it, on a sofa, and carried on a fitful conversation
in whispers, of which a word would now and then reach the ears of
the wretched mother. It consisted chiefly of a description of the
man's illness, and of the different sayings which had come from the
doctors who had attended him. It was marvellous to Lady Augustus,
as she sat there listening, that her daughter should condescend to
take an interest in such details. What could it be to her now how
the fever had taken him, or why or when? On the very next day, the
very morning on which she would go and sit,---ah so uselessly,--by
the dying man's bedside, her father was to meet Lord Rufford at the
ducal mansion in Piccadilly to see if anything could be dome in
that quarter! It was impossible that she should really care whether
John Morton's lease of life was to be computed at a week's purchase
or at that of a month! And yet Arabella sat there asking sick-room
questions and listening to sickroom replies as though her very
nature had been changed.
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