She thought much about it before she could resolve on what she would do.  She could not ask old Mrs. Green to help her.  Mrs. Green was a kind old woman, who had lived much in the world, and would wish to see much of it still, had age allowed her.  Arabella Trefoil was at any rate the niece of a Duke, and the Duke, in this affair with Lord Rufford, had taken his niece’s part.  She opened her house and as much of her heart as was left to Arabella, and was ready to mourn with her over the wicked lord.  She could sympathise with her too, as to the iniquities of her mother, whom none of the Greens loved.  But she would have been frightened by any proposition as to Medean vengeance.

In these days,—­still winter days, and not open to much feminine gaiety in London, even if, in the present constitution of her circumstances, gaiety would have come in her way,—­in these days the hours in her life which interested her most, were those in which Mr. Mounser Green was dutifully respectful to his aunt.  Patagonia had not yet presented itself to him.  Some four or five hundred a year, which the old lady had at her own disposal, had for years past contributed to Mounser’s ideas of duty.  And now Arabella’s presence at the small house in Portugal Street certainly added a new zest to those ideas.  The niece of the Duke of Mayfair, and the rejected of Lord Rufford, was at the present moment an interesting young woman in Mounser Green’s world.  There were many who thought that she had been ill-used.  Had she succeeded, all the world would have pitied Lord Rufford; but as he had escaped, there was a strong party for the lady.  And gradually Mounser Green, who some weeks ago had not thought very much of her, became one of the party.  She had brought her maid with her; and when she found that Mounser Green came to the house every evening, either before or after dinner, she had recourse to her accustomed lures.  She would sit quiet, dejected, almost broken-hearted in the corner of a sofa; but when he spoke to her she would come to life and raise her eyes,—­not ignoring the recognised dejection of her jilted position, not pretending to this minor stag of six tines that she was a sprightly unwooed young fawn, fresh out of the forest,—­ almost asking him to weep with her, and playing her accustomed lures, though in a part which she had not hitherto filled.

But still she was resolved that her Jason should not as yet be quit of his Medea.  So she made her plot.  She would herself go down to Rufford and force her way into her late lover’s presence in spite of all obstacles.  It was possible that she should do this and get back to London the same day,—­but, to do so, she must leave London by an early train at 7 A.M., stay seven or eight hours at Rufford, and reach the London station at 10 P.M.  For such a journey there must be some valid excuse made to Mrs. Green.  There must be some necessity shown for such a journey.  She would declare that a meeting was necessary with her mother, and that