That evening was very long and very sad to the three ladies assembled in the drawing-room at Bragton Park, but it was probably more so to Lady Augustus than the other two.  She hardly spoke to either of them; nor did they to her; while a certain amount of conversation in a low tone was carried on between Lady Ushant and Miss Trefoil.  When Arabella came down to dinner she received a message from the sick man.  He sent his love, and would so willingly have seen her instantly,—­only that the doctor would not allow it.  But he was so glad,—­so very glad that she had come!  This Lady Ushant said to her in a whisper, and seemed to say it as though she had heard nothing of that frightful story which had been told to her not much more than an hour ago.  Arabella did not utter a word in reply, but put out her hand, secretly as it were, and grasped that of the old lady to whom she had told the tale of her later intrigues.  The dinner did not keep them long, but it was very grievous to them all.  Lady Ushant might have made some effort to be at least a complaisant hostess to Lady Augustus had she not heard this story,—­had she not been told that the woman, knowing her daughter to be engaged to John Morton, had wanted her to marry Lord Rufford.  The story having come from the lips of the girl herself had moved some pity in the old woman’s breast in regard to her; but for Lady Augustus she could feel nothing but horror.

In the evening Lady Augustus sat alone, not even pretending to open a book or to employ her fingers.  She seated herself on one side of the fire with a screen in her hand, turning over such thoughts in her mind as were perhaps customary to her.  Would there ever come a period to her misery, an hour of release in which she might be in comfort ere she died?  Hitherto from one year to another, from one decade to the following, it had all been struggle and misery, contumely and contempt.  She thought that she had done her duty by her child, and her child hated and despised her.  It was but the other day that Arabella had openly declared that in the event of her marriage she would not have her mother as a guest in her own house.  There could be no longer hope for triumph and glory;—­but how might she find peace so that she might no longer be driven hither and thither by this ungrateful tyrant child?  Oh, how hard she had worked in the world, and how little the world had given her in return!

Lady Ushant and Arabella sat at the other side of the fire, at some distance from it, on a sofa, and carried on a fitful conversation in whispers, of which a word would now and then reach the ears of the wretched mother.  It consisted chiefly of a description of the man’s illness, and of the different sayings which had come from the doctors who had attended him.  It was marvellous to Lady Augustus, as she sat there listening, that her daughter should condescend to take an interest in such details.  What could it be to her now how the fever had taken him, or why