“Of course he has,” said Arabella walking up the room, and again playing her part even before her mother.

“I knew it would be so.”

“You knew nothing of the kind, mamma, your saying so is simply an untruth.  It was you who put me up to it.”

“Arabella, that is false.”

“It wasn’t you, I suppose, who made me throw over Mr. Morton and Bragton.”

“Certainly not.”

“That is so like you, mamma.  There isn’t a single thing that you do or say that you don’t deny afterwards.”  These little compliments were so usual among them that at the present moment they excited no great danger.  “There’s his letter.  I suppose you had better read it.”  And she chucked the document to her mother.

“It is very decided,” said Lady Augustus.

“It is the falsest, the most impudent, and the most scandalous letter that a man ever wrote to a woman.  I could horsewhip him for it myself if I could get near him.”

“Is it all over, Arabella?”

“All over!  What questions you do ask, mamma!  No.  It is not all over.  I’ll stick to him like a leech.  He proposed to me as plainly as any man ever did to any woman.  I don’t care what people may say or think.  He hasn’t heard the last of me; and so he’ll find.”  And thus in her passion she made up her mind that she would not yet abandon the hunt.

“What will you do, my dear?”

“What will I do?  How am I to say what I will do?  If I were standing near him with a knife in my hand I would stick it into his heart.  I would!  Mistaken him!  Liar!  They talk of girls lying; but what girl would lie like that?”

“But something must be done”

“If papa were not such a fool as he is, he could manage it all for me,” said Arabella dutifully.  “I must see my father and I must dictate a letter for him.  Where is papa?”

“In London, I suppose.”

“You must come up to London with me tomorrow.  We shall have to go to his club and get him out.  It must be done immediately; and then I must see Lord Mistletoe, and I will write to the Duke.”

“Would it not be better to write to your papa?” said Lady Augustus, not liking the idea of being dragged away so quickly from comfortable quarters.

“No; it wouldn’t.  If you won’t go I shall, and you must give me some money.  I shall write to Lord Rufford too.”

And so it was at last decided, the wretched old woman being dragged away up to London on some excuse which the Connop Greens were not sorry to accept.  But on that same afternoon Arabella wrote to Lord Rufford: 

Your letter has amazed me.  I cannot understand it.  It seems to be almost impossible that it should really have come from you.  How can you say that I have mistaken you?  There has been no mistake.  Surely that letter cannot have been written by you.

Of course I have been obliged to tell my father everything. 
                               Arabella.