Arabella sobbed out
what she had heard that day from Mr. Powys.

After the first stupor Adela proposed to go to her father instantly, and
then suggested that they should all go. She continued talking in random
suggestions, and with singular heat, as if she conceived that the
sensibility of her sisters required to be aroused. By moving and acting,
it seemed to her that the prospect of a vast misery might be expunged,
and that she might escape from showing any likeness to Arabella's
shamefully-discoloured face. It was impossible for her to realize grief
in her own bosom. She walked the room in a nervous tremour, shedding a
note of sympathy to one sister and to the other. At last Arabella got
fuller command of her voice. When she had related that her father's
positive wish, furthered by the doctor's special injunction to obey it
scrupulously, was that they were not to go to him in London, and not to
breathe a word of his illness, but to remain at Brookfield entertaining
friends, Adela stamped her foot, saying that it was more than human
nature could bear.

"If we go," said Arabella, "the London doctor assured Mr. Powys that he
would not answer for papa's life."

"But, good heavens! are we papa's enemies? And why may Mr. Powys see him
if we, his daughters, cannot? Tell me how Mr. Powys met him and knew of
it! Tell me--I am bewildered. I feel that we are cheated in some way.
Oh! tell me something clear."

Arabella said calmingly: "Emilia is with papa. She wrote to Mr. Powys.
Whether she did rightly or not we have not now to inquire. I believe
that she thought it right."

"Entertain friends!" interjected Adela. "But papa cannot possibly mean
that we are to go through--to--the fete on Besworth Lawn, Bella! It's in
two days from this dreadful day."

"Papa has mentioned it to Mr. Powys; he desires us not to postpone it.
We..." Arabella's voice broke piteously.

"Oh! but this is torture!" cried Adela, with a deplorable vision of
the looking-glass rising before her, as she felt the tears sting her
eyelids. "This cannot be! No father would...not loving us as dear papa
does! To be quiet! to sit and be gay! to flaunt at a fete! Oh, mercy!
mercy! Tell me--he left us quite well--no one could have guessed. I
remember he looked at me from the carriage window. Tell me--it must be
some moral shock--what do you attribute it to? Wilfrid cannot be the
guilty one. We have been only too compliant to papa's wishes about that
woman. Tel