On the Monday Lord Augustus and Lord Mistletoe were driven to the station in the same carriage, and on this occasion the uncle said a few strong words to his nephew on the subject.  Lord Augustus, though perhaps a coward in the presence of his brother, was not so with other members of the family.  “It may be very well you know, but it’s all d—­ nonsense.”

“I’m sorry that you should think so, uncle.”

“What do you suppose her mother can do?—­a thoroughly vulgar woman.  I never could live with her.  As far as I can see wherever she goes everybody hates her.”

“My dear uncle!”

“Rufford will only laugh at her.  If Mayfair would have gone himself, it is just possible that he might have done something.”

“My father is so unwilling to mix himself up in these things.”

“Of course he is.  Everybody knows that.  What the deuce was the good then of our going down here?  I couldn’t do anything, and I knew he wouldn’t.  The truth is, Mistletoe, a man now-a-days may do just what he pleases.  You ain’t in that line and it won’t do you any good knowing it, but since we did away with pistols everybody may do just what he likes.”

“I don’t like brute force,” said Lord Mistletoe.  “You may call it what you please:—­but I don’t know that it was so brutal after all.”  At the station they separated again, as Lord Augustus was panting for tobacco and Lord Mistletoe for parliamentary erudition.

CHAPTER VII

The Success of Lady Augustus

Lady Augustus was still staying with the Connop Greens in Hampshire when she received the Duke’s letter and Arabella was with her.  The story of Lord Rufford’s infidelity had been told to Mrs. Connop Green,—­and of course through her to Mr. Connop Green.  Both the mother and daughter affected to despise the Connop Greens;—­but it is so hard to restrain oneself from confidences when difficulties arise!  Arabella had by this time quite persuaded herself that there had been an absolute engagement, and did in truth believe that she had been most cruelly ill-used.  She was headstrong, fickle, and beyond measure insolent to her mother.  She had, as we know, at one time gone down to the house of her former lover, thereby indicating that she had abandoned all hope of catching Lord Rufford.  But still the Connop Greens either felt or pretended to feel great sympathy with her, and she would still declare from time to time that Lord Rufford had not heard the last of her.  It was now more than a month since she had seen that perjured lord at Mistletoe, and more than a week since her father had brought him so uselessly up to London.  Though determined that Lord Rufford should hear more of her, she hardly knew how to go to work, and on these days spent most of her time in idle denunciations of her false lover.  Then came her uncle’s letter, which was of course shown to her.