As usual, Arabella had all the practical labour—a fact that was noticed from the observant heights. “One sees mere de famille written on that young woman,” was the eulogy she won from Lady Gosstre. How much would the great dame have marvelled to behold the ambition beneath the bustling surface! Arabella was feverish, and Freshfield Sumner reported brilliant things uttered by her. He became after a time her attendant, aide, and occasional wit-foil. They had some sharp exchanges: and he could not but reflect on the pleasure her keen zest of appreciation gave him compared with Cornelia's grave smile, which had often kindled in him profane doubts of the positive brightness, or rapidity of her intelligence.
“Besworth at sunset! What a glorious picture to have living before you every day!” said Lady Charlotte to her companion.
Wilfrid flushed. She read his look; and said, when they were out of hearing, “What a place for old people to sit here near the end of life! The idea of it makes one almost forgive the necessity for getting old—doesn't it? Tracy Runningbrook might make a poem about silver heads and sunset—something, you know! Very easy cantering then—no hunting! I suppose one wouldn't have even a desire to go fast—a sort of cock-horse, just as we began with. The stables, let me tell you, are too near the scullery. One is bound to devise measures for the protection of the morals of the household.”
While she was speaking, Wilfrid's thoughts ran: “My time has come to strike for liberty.”
This too she perceived, and was prepared for him.
He said: “Lady Charlotte, I feel that I must tell you...I fear that I have been calculating rather more hopefully...” Here the pitfall of sentiment yawned before him on a sudden. “I mean” (he struggled to avoid it, but was at the brink in the next sentence) “—I mean, dear lady, that I had hopes...Besworth pleased you... to offer you this...”
“With yourself?” she relieved him. A different manner in a protesting male would have charmed her better. She excused him, knowing what stood in his way.
“That I scarcely dared to hope,” said Wilfrid, bewildered to see the loose chain he had striven to cast off gather tightly round him.
“You do hope it?”
“I have.”