She was still dressed in
black but had taken some trouble with her face and hair. She
followed Lady Ushant in, and silently standing by the bedside put
her hand upon that of John Morton which was laying outside on the
bed. "I will leave you now, John," said Lady Ushant retiring, "and
come again in half an hour,"
"When I ring," he said.
"You mustn't let him talk for more than that," said the old lady to
Arabella as she went.
It was more than an hour afterwards when Arabella crept into her
mother's room, during which time Lady Ushant had twice knocked at
her nephew's door and had twice been sent away. "It is all over,
mamma!" she said.
Lady Augustus looked into her daughter's eyes and saw that she had
really been weeping. "All over!"
"I mean for me,--and you. We have only got to go away."
"Will he die?"
"It will make no matter though he should live for ever. I have told
him everything. I did not mean to do it because I thought that he
would be weak; but he has been strong enough for that"
"What have you told him?"
"Just everything--about you and Lord Rufford and myself,--and what
an escape he had had not to marry me. He understands it all now."
"It is a great deal more than I do."
"He knows that Lord Rufford has been engaged to me." She clung to
this statement so vehemently that she had really taught herself to
believe that it was so.
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