“I hope not.  You should think of it very seriously.  As for money, you know, you have none of your own, and I am told that he has a very nice property in Rufford.  There is a neighbour of his coming here to-morrow, and perhaps he knows him.”

“Who is the neighbour, aunt?” asked Arabella, innocently.

“Lord Rufford.  He is coming to shoot.  I will ask him about the property.”

“Pray don’t mention my name, aunt.  It would be so unpleasant if nothing were to come of it.  I know Lord Rufford very well.”

“Know Lord Rufford very well!”

“As one does know men that one meets about”

“I thought it might settle everything if we had Mr. Morton here.”

“I couldn’t meet him, aunt; I couldn’t indeed.  Mamma doesn’t think that he is behaving well.”  To the Duchess condemnation from Lady Augustus almost amounted to praise.  She felt sure that Mr. Morton was a worthy man who would not probably behave badly, and though she could not unravel the mystery, and certainly had no suspicion in regard to Lord Rufford, she was sure that there was something wrong.  But there was nothing more to be said at present.  After what Arabella had told her Mr. Morton could not be asked there to meet her niece.  But all the slight feeling of kindness to the girl which had been created by the tidings of so respectable an engagement were at once obliterated from the Duchess’s bosom.  Arabella, with many expressions of thanks and a good-humoured countenance, left the room, cursing the untowardness of her fate which would let nothing run smooth.

Lord Rufford was to come.  That at any rate was now almost certain.  Up to the present she had doubted, knowing the way in which such men will change their engagements at the least caprice.  But the Duchess expected him on the morrow.  She had prepared the way for meeting him as an old friend without causing surprise, and had gained that step.  But should she succeed, as she hoped, in exacting continued homage from the man, homage for the four or five days of his sojourn at Mistletoe,—­this must be carried on with the knowledge on the part of many in the house that she was engaged to that horrid Patagonian Minister!  Was ever a girl called upon to risk her entire fate under so many disadvantages?

When she went up to dress for dinner on the day of his expected arrival Lord Rufford had not come.  Since the interview in her aunt’s room she had not heard his name mentioned.  When she came into the drawing-room, a little late, he was not there.  “We won’t wait, Duchess,” said the Duke to his wife at three minutes past eight.  The Duke’s punctuality at dinner-time was well known, and everybody else was then assembled.  Within two minutes after the Duke’s word dinner was announced, and a party numbering about thirty walked away into the dinner-room.  Arabella, when they were all settled, found that there was a vacant seat next herself.  If the man were to come, fortune would have favoured her in that.