When Rufford makes it unmistakably clear that he will not marry her Arabella realizes that neither family intervention nor her mother’s relentless pressure can secure the match, but news that the gravely ill John Morton is dying at Bragton draws her back to him and she confesses the full truth about her attempt to abandon him for Rufford, revealing an unexpected capacity for conscience and compassion beneath the calculation that has governed so much of her life, and although John cannot simply erase the betrayal he dies leaving Arabella five thousand pounds while bequeathing the rest of Bragton to his cousin Reginald, whose sudden inheritance transforms his position in the neighborhood and causes Mary to fear that the man she has long loved has now risen permanently beyond her reach, while Arabella’s exhausting campaign for marriage brings her relationship with Lady Augustus close to open destruction.
