Frequent administrations of wine arrested the tears of Mrs. Chump, until it is possible that the fulness of many a checked flow caused her to redden and talk slightly at random.  At the first mention of their father’s name, the ladies went out from the room.  It was foolish, for they might have watched the effect of certain vinous innuendoes addressed to Wilfrid’s apprehensiveness; but they were weakened and humbled, and everything they did was foolish.  From the fact that they offended their keen critical taste, moreover, they were targets to the shaft that wounds more fatally than all.  No ridicule knocks the strength out of us so thoroughly as our own.

Whether or not he guessed their condition favourable for his plans, Wilfrid did not give them time to call back their scattered powers.  At the hour of eleven he sent for Arabella to come to him in the library.  The council upstairs permitted Arabella to go, on the understanding that she was prepared for hostilities, and ready to tear the mask from Wilfrid’s face.

He commenced, without a shadow of circumlocution, and in a matter-of-fact way, as if all respect for the peculiar genius of the house of Pole had vanished:  “I sent for you to talk a word or two about this woman, who, I see, troubles you a little.  I’m sorry she’s in the house.”

“Indeed!” said Arabella.

“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.”