“I’m sorry she’s in the house, not for my sake, but for yours, since the proximity does not seem to...  I needn’t explain.  It comes of your eternal consultations.  You are the eldest.  Why not act according to your judgement, which is generally sound?  You listen to Adela, young as she is; or a look of Cornelia’s leads you.  The result is the sort of scene I saw this afternoon.  I confess it has changed my opinion of you; it has, I grieve to say it.  This woman is your father’s guest; you can’t hurt her so much as you hurt him, if you misbehave to her.  You can’t openly object to her and not cast a slur upon him.  There is the whole case.  He has insisted, and you must submit.  You should have fought the battle before she came.”

“She is here, owing to a miserable misconception,” said Arabella.

“Ah! she is here, however.  That is the essential, as your old governess Madame Timpan would have said.”

“Nor can a protest against coarseness be sweepingly interpreted as a piece of unfilial behaviour,” said Arabella.

“She is coarse,” Wilfrid nodded his head.  “There are some forms of coarseness which dowagers would call it coarseness to notice.

“Not if you find it locked up in the house with you—­not if you suffer under a constant repulsion.  Pray, do not use these phrases to me, Wilfrid.  An accusation of coarseness cannot touch us.”

“No, certainly,” assented Wilfrid.  “And you have a right to protest.  I disapprove the form of your protest nothing more.  A schoolgirl’s...but you complain of the use of comparisons.”

“I complain, Wilfrid, of your want of sympathy.”

“That for two or three weeks you must hear a brogue at your elbow?  The poor creature is not so bad; she is good-hearted.  It’s hard that you should have to bear with her for that time and receive nothing better than Besworth as your reward.”

“Very; seeing that we endure the evil and decline the sop with it.”

“How?”

“We have renounced Besworth.”

“Have you!  And did this renunciation make you all sit on the edge of your chairs, this afternoon, as if Edward Buxley had arranged you?  You give up Besworth?  I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“Oh, Wilfrid! can you be ignorant that something more is involved in the purchase of Besworth?”

Arabella gazed at him with distressful eagerness, as one who believes in the lingering of a vestige of candour.

“Do you mean that my father may wish to give this woman his name?” said Wilfrid coolly.  “You have sense enough to know that if you make his home disagreeable, you are taking the right method to drive him into such a course.  Ha!  I don’t think it’s to be feared, unless you pursue these consultations.  And let me say, for my part, we have gone too far about Besworth, and can’t recede.”

“I have given out everywhere that the place is ours.  I did so almost at your instigation.  Besworth was nothing to me till you cried it up.  And now I won’t detain you.  I know I can rely on your sense, if you will rely on it.  Good night, Bella.”