"
"You will do no such thing. Arabella, do not make a fool of
yourself. Do you know what 8,000 pounds will do for you? It is to
be your own,--absolutely beyond my reach or your father's."
"I would sooner go into the Thames off Waterloo Bridge than touch a
farthing of his money," said Arabella with a spirit which the other
woman did not at all understand. Hitherto in all these little dirty
ways they had run with equal steps. The pretences, the subterfuges,
the lies of the one had always been open to the other. Arabella,
earnest in supplying herself with gloves from the pockets of her
male acquaintances, had endured her mother's tricks with
complacency. She had condescended when living in humble lodgings to
date her letters from a well-known hotel, and had not feared to
declare that she had done so in their family conversations.
Together they had fished in turbid waters for marital nibbles and
had told mutual falsehoods to unbelieving tradesmen. And yet the
younger woman, when tempted with a bribe worth lies and tricks as
deep and as black as Acheron, now stood on her dignity and her
purity and stamped her foot with honest indignation!
"I don't think you can understand it," said Lady Augustus.
"I can understand this,--that you have betrayed me; and that I
shall tell him so in the plainest words that I can use.
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