The next morning neither Lady Augustus nor Miss Trefoil came down to breakfast, but at ten o'clock Arabella was ready, as appointed, to be taken into the sick man's bedroom. She was still dressed in black but had taken some trouble with her face and hair. She followed Lady Ushant in, and silently standing by the bedside put her hand upon that of John Morton which was laying outside on the bed. "I will leave you now, John," said Lady Ushant retiring, "and come again in half an hour."
"When I ring," he said.
"You mustn't let him talk for more than that," said the old lady to Arabella as she went.
It was more than an hour afterwards when Arabella crept into her mother's room, during which time Lady Ushant had twice knocked at her nephew's door and had twice been sent away. "It is all over, mamma!" she said.
Lady Augustus looked into her daughter's eyes and saw that she had really been weeping. "All over!"
"I mean for me,—and you. We have only got to go away."
"Will he—die?"
"It will make no matter though he should live for ever. I have told him everything. I did not mean to do it because I thought that he would be weak; but he has been strong enough for that."
"What have you told him?"
"Just everything—about you and Lord Rufford and myself,—and what an escape he had had not to marry me. He understands it all now."