Letters from Adela kept the Brookfield public informed of the doings on
board the yacht. Before leaving home, Wilfrid with Arabella's
concurrence certainly--at her instigation, as he thought--had led his
father to imagine, on tolerably good grounds, that Mrs. Chump had quitted
Brookfield to make purchases for her excursion on lively waters, and was
then awaiting him at the appointed station. One of the old man's
intermittent nervous fits had frightened them into the quasi-fabrication
of this little innocent tale. The doctor's words were that Mr. Pole was
to be crossed in nothing--"Not even if it should appear to be of imminent
necessity that I should see him, and he refuses." The man of science
stated that the malady originated in some long continued pressure of
secret apprehension. Both Wilfrid and Arabella conceived that persuasion
alone was wanted to send Mrs. Chump flying to the yacht; so they had less
compunction in saying, "She is there."

And here began a terrible trial for the children of Nine Shades. To save
a father they had to lie grievously--to continue the lie from day to day-
-to turn it from a lie extensive and inappreciable to the lie minute and
absolute. Then, to get a particle of truth out of this monstrous lie,
they had to petition in utter humiliation the woman they had scorned,
that she would return among them and consider their house her own. No
answer came from Mrs. Chump; and as each day passed, the querulous
invalid, still painfully acting the man in health, had to be fed with
fresh lies; until at last, writing of one of the scenes in Brookfield,
Arabella put down the word in all its unblessed aboriginal bluntness, and
did not ask herself whether she shrank from it. "Lies!" she wrote.
"What has happened to Bella?" thought Adela, in pure wonder. Salt-air
and dazzling society kept all idea of penance from this vivacious young
person. It was queer that Sit Twickenham should be at the seaside,