"I believe a great deal is over. You can do many things that your mother and grandmother couldn't do; but absolute freedom,—what you may call universal suffrage,—hasn't come yet, I fear. It's twenty miles by road, and the Duchess would say something awful if I were to propose to take you in a postchaise."
"But the railway!"
"I'm afraid that would be worse. We couldn't ride back, you know, as we did at Rufford. At the best it would be rather a rough and tumble kind of arrangement. I'm afraid we must put it off. To tell you the truth I'm the least bit in the world afraid of the Duchess."
"I am not at all," said Arabella, angrily.
Then Lord Rufford ate his dinner and seemed to think that that matter was settled. Arabella knew that he might have hunted elsewhere,—that the Cottesmore would be out in their own county within twelve miles of them, and that the difficulty of that ride would be very much less. The Duke might have been persuaded to send a carriage that distance. But Lord Rufford cared more about the chance of a good run than her company! For a while she was sulky;—for a little while, till she remembered how ill she could afford to indulge in such a feeling. Then she said a demure word or two to the gentleman on the other side of her who happened to be a clergyman, and did not return to the hunting till Lord Rufford had eaten his cheese. "And is that to be the end of Jack as far as I'm concerned?"
"I have been thinking about it ever since. This is Thursday."
"Not a doubt about it."
"To-morrow will be Friday and the Duke has his great shooting on Saturday. There's nothing within a hundred miles of us on Saturday. I shall go with the Pytchley if I don't shoot, but I shall have to get up just when other people are going to bed. That wouldn't suit you."
"I wouldn't mind if I didn't go to bed at all."
"At any rate it wouldn't suit the Duchess. I had meant to go away on Sunday. I hate being anywhere on Sunday except in a railway carriage. But if I thought the Duke would keep me till Tuesday morning we might manage Peltry on Monday. I meant to have got back to Surbiton's on Sunday and have gone from there."