The Trefoils did not start for an hour after this, during which Arabella could hardly find an opportunity for a word in private.  She could not quite appeal to him to walk with her in the grounds, or even to take a turn with her round the empty ballroom.  She came down dressed for walking, thinking that so she might have the best chance of getting him for a quarter of an hour to herself, but he was either too wary or else the habits of his life prevented it.  And in what she had to do it was so easy to go beyond the proper line!  She would wish him to understand that she would like to be alone with him after what had passed between them on the previous evening, but she must be careful not to let him imagine that she was too anxious.  And then whatever she did she had to do with so many eyes upon her!  And when she went, as she would do now in so short a time, so many hostile tongues would attack her!  He had everything to protect him; and she had nothing, absolutely nothing, to help her!  It was thus that she looked at it; and yet she had courage for the battle.  Almost at the last moment she did get a word with him in the hall.  “How is he?”

“Oh, better, decidedly.”

“I am so glad.  If I could only think that he could live!  Well, my Lord, we have to say good-bye.”

“I suppose so.”

“You’ll write me a line,—­about him.”

“Certainly.”

“I shall be so glad to have a line from Rufford.  Maddox Hall, you know; Stafford.”

“I will remember.”

“And dear old Jack.  Tell me when you write what Jack has been doing.”  Then she put out her hand and he held it.  “I wonder whether you will ever remember—­” But she did not quite know what to bid him remember, and therefore turned away her face and wiped away a tear, and then smiled as she turned her back on him.  The carriage was at the door, and the ladies flocked into the hall, and then not another word could be said.

“That’s what I call a really nice country house,” said Lady Augustus as she was driven away.  Arabella sat back in the phaeton lost in thought and said nothing.  “Everything so well done, and yet none of all that fuss that there is at Mistletoe.”  She paused but still her daughter did not speak.  “If I were beginning the world again I would not wish for a better establishment than that.  Why can’t you answer me a word when I speak to you?”

“Of course it’s all very nice.  What’s the good of going on in that way?  What a shame it is that a man like that should have so much and that a girl like me should have nothing at all.  I know twice as much as he does, and am twice as clever, and yet I’ve got to treat him as though he were a god.  He’s all very well, but what would anybody think of him if he were a younger brother with 300 pounds a year.”  This was a kind of philosophy which Lady Angustus hated.  She threw herself back therefore in the phaeton and pretended to go to sleep.