“Nobody will hear it unless you tell them.”

“I shall tell my uncle and my aunt and Mistletoe, in order that they may know how it is that Lord Rufford has been allowed to escape.  I say that you have ruined me.  If it had not been for your vulgar bargain with him, he must have been brought to keep his word at last.  Oh, that he should have ever thought it was possible that I was to be bought off for a sum of money!”

Later on in the evening the mother again implored her daughter to speak to her.  “What’s the use, mamma, when you know what we think of each other.  What’s the good of pretending?  There is nobody here to hear us.”  Later on still she herself began.  “I don’t know how much you’ve got, mamma; but whatever it is, we’d better divide it.  After what you did in Piccadilly we shall never get on together again.”

“There is not enough to divide,” said Lady Augustus.

“If I had not you to go about with me I could get taken in pretty nearly all the year round.”

“Who’d take you?”

“Leave that to me.  I would manage it, and you could join with some other old person.”

“We shall kill each other if we stay like this,” said Arabella as she took up her candle.

“You have pretty nearly killed me as it is,” said the old woman as the other shut the door.

CHAPTER IX

Changes at Bragton

Day after day old Mrs. Morton urged her purpose with her grandson at Bragton, not quite directly as she had done at first, but by gradual approaches and little soft attempts made in the midst of all the tenderness which, as a nurse, she was able to display.  It soon came to pass that the intruders were banished from the house, or almost banished.  Mary’s daily visits were discontinued immediately after that last walk home with Reginald Morton which has been described.  Twice in the course of the next week she went over, but on both occasions she did so early in the day, and returned alone just as he was reaching the house.  And then, before a week was over, early in March, Lady Ushant told the invalid that she would be better away.  “Mrs. Morton doesn’t like me,” she said, “and I had better go.  But I shall stay for a while at Hoppet Hall; and come in and see you from time to time till you get better.”  John Morton replied that he should never get better; but though he said so then, there was at times evidence that he did not yet quite despond as to himself.  He could still talk to Mrs. Morton of buying Chowton Farm, and was very anxious that he should not be forgotten at the Foreign Office.