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Updated: June 9, 2025
Hanbury-Green, with whom she kept up a brisk correspondence. Very well, then! she would go to Brudenstein; she would not martyrize herself by being with a man on crutches! So half of her August passed in a most agreeable manner, and towards the end of the month she summoned her fiancé to Florence.
Hanbury-Green, read it with wild emotion when he received it in his rooms in London and immediately made arrangements to set off to Florence at once. "I'll beat him yet!" he said to himself, and he romantically kissed the pink paper. For, "You may come" was what he had read.
She knew she would get desperately tired of having to live up to John Derringham's standard, and a divorce in England would not be so easily obtained or so free from scandal, as her original one in America had been. But she must think well, and weigh the matter before plunging in. Mr. Hanbury-Green saw her hesitation and instantly applied another forceful note.
Hanbury-Green was going to sit upon her left hand at dinner and would afford new flint for her steel. He was a recent acquisition, and of undoubted coming value. His views were in reality nearer her heart politically than those of John Derringham. Deep down in her being was a strong class hatred undreamed of, and which would have been vigorously denied.
John Derringham meanwhile had gone with his hostess and some of the rest of the party, Mr. Hanbury-Green among them, to inspect the small golf links Mrs. Cricklander was having constructed in the park. Her country-house must be complete with suitable amusements. She had taken all the Wendover shooting, too, and what she could get of Lord Graceworth's beyond. "You cannot drag people into the wilds and then bore them to death," she said. What she most enjoyed was to scintillate to a company of two or three, and fascinate them all into a desire for a tête-
Where was the harm, in broad daylight! and with Arabella to accompany them as far as the last steps, and then to be dropped? Cecilia felt like a school-girl on a forbidden treat. When they were well out of sight of all observation, Mr. Hanbury-Green began.
No one could say a word Arabella's discretion could always be counted upon; and pleasure was secured. She looked, perhaps, more beautiful than she had ever done in her life as they started. Mr. Hanbury-Green had hired a special gondola, not the one they were accustomed to float about in, and off they went.
Hanbury-Green, however, had not the slightest intention of giving up his place, in spite of several well-directed hints, and sat on like one belonging to the spot.
She had been exquisitely discreet in public forcing Arabella always to talk to Mr. Hanbury-Green, and devoting herself to Lady Maulevrier, or any other lady or old gentleman who happened to be present. And then she felt free to spend long hours alone with Mr. Hanbury-Green in her sitting-room, whose balcony hung over the beautiful canal.
"Of course not," said Mr. Hanbury-Green gravely. "You will have to share with less fortunate people." And then he drew himself up ready for battle, and began. "Why, because a man or woman is born in the gutter, should not he or she be given by the State the same chance as though born in a palace?
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