About the time of the pairing of the birds, and subsequent to the Brookfield explosion, Cornelia received a letter from her lover, bearing the tone of a summons.  She was to meet him by the decayed sallow—­the ‘fruitless tree,’ as he termed it.  Startled by this abruptness, her difficulties made her take counsel of her dignity.  “He knows that these clandestine meetings degrade me.  He is wanting in faith, to require constant assurances.  He will not understand my position!” She remembered the day at Besworth, of which Adela (somewhat needlessly, perhaps) had told her; that it had revealed two of the family, in situations censurable before a gossiping world, however intrinsically blameless.  That day had been to the ladies a lesson of deference to opinion.  It was true that Cornelia had met her lover since, but she was then unembarrassed.  She had now to share in the duties of the household--duties abnormal, hideous, incredible.  Her incomprehensible father was absent in town.  Daily Wilfrid conducted Adela thither on mysterious business, and then Mrs. Chump was left to Arabella and herself in the lonely house.  Numberless things had to be said for the quieting of this creature, who every morning came downstairs with the exclamation that she could no longer endure her state of uncertainty, and was “off to a lawyer.”  It was useless to attempt the posture of a reply.  Words, and energetic words, the woman demanded, not expostulations—­petitions that she would be respectful to the house before the household.  Yes, occasionally (so gross was she!) she had to be fed with lies.  Arabella and Cornelia heard one another mouthing these dreadful things, with a wretched feeling of contemptuous compassion.  The trial was renewed daily, and it was a task, almost a physical task, to hold the woman back from London, till the hour of lunch came.  If they kept her away from her bonnet till then they were safe.

At this meal they had to drink champagne with her.  Diplomatic Wilfrid had issued the order, with the object, first, of dazzling her vision; and secondly, to set the wheels of her brain in swift motion.  The effect was marvellous; and, had it not been for her determination never to drink alone, the miserable ladies might have applauded it.  Adela, on the rare days when she was fortunate enough to reach Brookfield in time for dinner, was surprised to hear her sisters exclaim, “Oh, the hatefulness of that champagne!” She enjoyed it extremely.  She, poor thing, had again to go through a round of cabs and confectioners’ shops in London.  “If they had said, ’Oh, the hatefulness of those buns and cold chickens!’” she thought to herself.  Not objecting to champagne at lunch with any particular vehemence, she was the less unwilling to tell her sisters what she had to do for Wilfrid daily.