"Am I to go to him now?" said Arabella. Then the old lady explained the doctor's orders, and offered to take them to their rooms. "Perhaps I might say a word to you alone? I will stay here if you will go with mamma." And she did stay till Lady Ushant came down to her. "Do you mean to say it is certain," she asked,—"certain that he must—die?"
"No;—I do not say that."
"It is possible that he may recover?"
"Certainly it is possible. What is not possible with God?"
"Ah;—that means that he will die." Then she sat herself down and almost unconsciously took off her bonnet and laid it aside. Lady Ushant, then looking into her face for the first time, was at a loss to understand what she had heard of her beauty. Could it be the same girl of whom Mrs. Hopkins had spoken and of whose brilliant beauty Reginald had repeated what he had heard? She was haggard, almost old, with black lines round her eyes. There was nothing soft or gracious in the tresses of her hair. When Lady Ushant had been young men had liked hair such as was that of Mary Masters. Arabella's yellow locks,—whencesoever they might have come,—were rough and uncombed. But it was the look of age, and the almost masculine strength of the lower face which astonished Lady Ushant the most. "Has he spoken to you about me?" she said.
"Not to me." Then Lady Ushant went on to explain that though she was there now as the female representative of the family she had never been so intimate with John Morton as to admit of such confidence as that suggested.
"I wonder whether he can love me," said the girl.
"Assuredly he does, Miss Trefoil. Why else should he send for you?"
"Because he is an honest man. I hardly think that he can love me much. He was to have been my husband, but he will escape that. If I thought that he would live I would tell him that he was free."
"He would not want to be—free."