Lady Curtis was completely innocent of this mission; perhaps she would not have disapproved of it, but certainly she herself would have gone more delicately to work. She was informed of it by a furious letter from Arthur, which cost her many tears.
“If it is your doing, mother, if you have thus insulted the girl who ought to be like your own daughter, then I can only say that you have lost your son,” he wrote; and the two ladies in Berkeley Square shed tears of anguish and indignation over this cruel letter.
“This is likely to endear the girl to me, is it not?” said Lady Curtis, when she could speak.
“Oh, he does not mean it, he cannot mean it!” cried Lucy, with sobs in her voice.
“No,” said the mother, unconsciously taking up Nancy’s argument, with that curious contempt of the men involved in such a quarrel which is so strangely characteristic of women; “no, it is not him, it is her; and this is the influence my boy, my only boy, is to be under all his life!”
What could Lucy say? There was nothing further to be said or done.
And it may be supposed that as the day approached, and they knew that he who had been the object of deepest concern and affection to both, the son who had been his mother’s favourite, the brother whom his sister had looked up to and regarded with a semi-worship so long as he would let her, was about to go through the most important act of his life without their presence or sympathy--excitement ran very high in the veins of the two ladies. Sir John called them home by every post, having in his mind a secret dread that they might do something or say something to compromise him, or at least themselves, in respect to Arthur; and Lady Curtis, without ever saying why, made excuses to remain, now a week, now a day longer. She did not even tell herself why; she would not allow the thought to form itself, that, perhaps, even at the last moment, Arthur might appear, at least to ask her forgiveness and blessing, if not to tell her that he had repented and abandoned this evil way. She stayed in Berkeley Square, trembling every time there was a knock at the door, gazing wistfully from the window at passing cabs and carriages. When Durant came in a Hansom, one wintry evening, he was received with open arms at the door; and the disappointment and impatience in Lady Curtis’s face at the sight of him, was very far from flattering.