She hated the Paragon, and she recoiled with shuddering from the idea of Patagonia.  But as for hating,—­she hated Lord Rufford most.  And what was there that she loved?  She tried to ask herself some question even as to that.  There certainly was no man for whom she cared a straw; nor had there been for the last six or eight years.  Even when he was kissing her she was thinking of her built-up hair, of her pearl powder, her paint, and of possible accidents and untoward revelations.  The loan of her lips had been for use only, and not for any pleasure which she had even in pleasing him.  In her very swoon she had felt the need of being careful at all points.  It was all labour, and all care,—­and, alas, alas, all disappointment!

But there was a future through which she must live.  How might she best avoid the misfortune of poverty for the twenty, thirty, or forty years which might be accorded to her?  What did it matter whom or what she hated?  The housemaid probably did not like cleaning grates; nor the butcher killing sheep; nor the sempstress stitching silks.  She must live.  And if she could only get away from her mother that in itself would be something.  Most people were distasteful to her, but no one so much as her mother.  Here in England she knew that she was despised among the people with whom she lived.  And now she would be more despised than ever.  Her uncle and aunt, though she disliked them, had been much to her.  It was something,—­that annual visit to Mistletoe, though she never enjoyed it when she was there.  But she could well understand that after such a failure as this, after such a game, played before their own eyes in their own house, her uncle and her aunt would drop her altogether.  She had played this game so boldly that there was no retreat.  Would it not therefore be better that she should fly altogether?

There were a time on that morning in which she had made up her mind that she would write a most affectionate letter to Morton, telling him that her people had now agreed to his propositions as to settlement, and assuring him that from henceforward she would be all his own.  She did think that were she to do so she might still go with him to Patagonia.  But, if so, she must do it at once.  The delay had already been almost too long.  In that case she would not say a word in reply to Lord Rufford, and would allow all that to be as though it had never been.  Then again there arose to her mind the remembrance of Rufford Hall, of all the glories, of the triumph over everybody.  Then again there was the idea of a “forlorn hope.”  She thought that she could have brought herself to do it, if only death would have been the alternative of success when she had resolved to make the rush.

It was nearly one when she went to her mother and even then she was undecided.  But the joint agony of the solitude and the doubts had been too much for her and she found herself constrained to seek a counsellor.  “He has thrown you over,” said Lady Augustus as soon as the door was closed.