John Morton got up and left the room without making any reply.  He was thoroughly unhappy.  What was he to do for a week with such a houseful of people?  And then, what was he to do for all his life if the presiding spirit of the house was to be such a one as this?  She was very beautiful—­certainly.  So he told himself; and yet as he walked round the park he almost repented of what he had done.  But after twenty minutes fast walking he was able to convince himself that all the fault on this occasion lay with the mother.  Lady Augustus had been fatigued with her journey and had therefore made everybody near her miserable.

CHAPTER XIII

At Bragton

When the ladies went up-stairs the afternoon was not half over and they did not dine till past seven.  As Morton returned to the house in the dusk he thought that perhaps Arabella might make some attempt to throw herself in his way.  She had often done so when they were not engaged, and surely she might do so now.  There was nothing to prevent her coming down to the library when she had got rid of her travelling clothes, and in this hope he looked into the room.  As soon as the door was open the Senator, who was preparing his lecture in his mind, at once asked whether no one in England had an apparatus for warming rooms such as was to be found in every well-built house in the States.  The Paragon hardly vouchsafed him a word of reply, but escaped up-stairs trusting that he might meet Miss Trefoil on the way.  He was a bold man and even ventured to knock at her door;—­but there was no reply, and, fearing the Senator, he had to betake himself to his own privacy.  Miss Trefoil had migrated to her mother’s room, and there, over the fire, was holding a little domestic conversation.  “I never saw such a barrack in my life,” said Lady Augustus.

“Of course, mamma, we knew that we should find the house such as it was left a hundred years ago.  He told us that himself.”

“He should have put something in it to make it at any rate decent before we came in.”

“What’s the use if he’s to live always at foreign courts?”

“He intends to come home sometimes, I suppose, and, if he didn’t, you would.”  Lady Augustus was not going to let her daughter marry a man who could not give her a home for at any rate a part of the year.  “Of course he must furnish the place and have an immense deal done before he can marry.  I think it is a piece of impudence to bring one to such a place as this.”

“That’s nonsense, mamma, because he told us all about it”

“The more I see of it all, Arabella, the more sure I am that it won’t do.”

“It must do, mamma.”

“Twelve hundred a year is all that he offers, and his lawyer says that he will make no stipulation whatever as to an allowance.”

“Really, mamma, you might leave that to me.”

“I like to have everything fixed, my dear,—­and certain.”