The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon (page 3)

sudden yearning for the perfect peace, the calm eventless days of her old life at Mill Cottage, had taken possession of her. In a moment, as if by some magical change, the glory and delight of that brilliant existence at the Castle seemed to have vanished away. There were the same pleasures, the same people; but the very atmosphere was different, and she began to feel like those other girls whose dulness of soul she had wondered at a little while ago.

“I suppose I enjoyed myself too much when first I came here,” she thought, perplexed by this change in herself. “I gave myself up too entirely to the novelty of this gay life, and have used up my capacity for enjoyment, almost like those girls who have gone through half-a-dozen London seasons.”

When Lady Geraldine and George Fairfax were gone, it seemed to Clarissa that the Castle had a vacant air without them. The play still went on, but the chief actors had vanished from the scene. Miss Lovel had allowed herself to feel an almost morbid interest in Mr. Fairfax’s betrothed. She had watched Lady Geraldine from day to day, half unconsciously, almost in spite of herself, wondering whether she really loved her future husband, or whether this alliance were only the dreary simulacrum she had read of in fashionable novels–a marriage of convenience. Lady Laura; certainly declared that her sister was much attached to Mr. Fairfax; but then, in an artificial world, where such a mode of marrying and giving in marriage obtained, it would obviously be the business of the bride’s relatives to affect a warm belief in her affection for the chosen victim. In all her watching Clarissa had never surprised one outward sign of Geraldine Challoner’s love. It was very difficult for a warm-hearted impulsive girl to believe in the possibility of any depth of feeling beneath that coldly placid manner. Nor did she perceive in Mr. Fairfax himself many of those evidences of affection which she would have expected from a man in his position. It was quite true that as the time of his marriage drew near he devoted himself more and more exclusively to his betrothed; but Clarissa could not help fancying, among her many fancies about these two people, that them was something formal and ceremonial in his devotion; that he had, at the best, something of the air of a man who was doing his duty. Yet it would have seemed absurd to doubt the reality of his attachment to Lady Geraldine, or to fear the result of an engagement that had grown out of a friendship which had lasted for years. The chorus of friends at Hale Castle were never tired of dwelling upon this fact, and declaring what a beautiful and perfect arrangement such a marriage was. It was only Lizzie Fermor who, in moments of confidential converse with Clarissa, was apt to elevate her expressive eyebrows and impertinent little nose, and to make disrespectful comments upon the subject of Lady Geraldine’s engagement–remarks which Miss Lovel felt it in some manner her duty to parry, by a warm defence of her friend’s sister.

“You are such a partisan, Clarissa,” Miss Fermor would exclaim impatiently; “but take my word for it, that woman only marries George Fairfax because she feels she has come to the end of her chances, and that this is about the last opportunity she may have of making a decent marriage.”

The engaged couple were to be absent only a week–that was a settled point; for on the very day after that arranged for their return there was to be a ball at Hale Castle–the first real ball of the season–an event which would of course lose half its glory if Lady Geraldine and her lover were missing. So Laura Armstrong had been most emphatic in her parting charge to George Fairfax.

“Remember, George, however fascinating your bachelor friends may be–and of course we know that nothing we have to offer you in a civilized way can be so delightful as roughing it in a Highland bothy (bothy is what you call your cottage, isn’t it?) with a tribe of wild sportsmen–you are to be back in time for my ball on the twenty-fifth. I shall never forgive you, if you fail me.”

“My dear Lady Laura, I would perish in the struggle to be up to time, rather than be such a caitiff. I would do the journey on foot, like Jeannie Deans, rather than incur the odium of disappointing so fair a hostess.”

And upon this Mr. Fairfax departed, with a gayer aspect than he had worn of late, almost as if it had been a relief to him to get away from Hale Castle.

Lady Laura had a new set of visitors coming, and was full of the business involved in their reception. She was not a person who left every arrangement to servants, numerous and skilful as her staff was. She liked to have a finger in every pie, and it was one of her boasts that no department of the household was without her supervision. She would stop in the middle of a page of Tasso to discuss the day’s bill of fare with her cook; and that functionary had enough to do to gratify my lady’s eagerness for originality and distinction even in the details of her dinner-table.

“My good Volavent,” she would say, tossing the poor man’s list aside, with a despairing shrug of her shoulders, “all these entrees are as old as the hills. I am sure Adam must have had stewed pigeons with green peas, and chicken a la Marengo–they are the very ABC of cookery. Do, pray, strike out something a little newer. Let me see; I copied the menu of a dinner at St. Petersburg from ‘Count Cralonzki’s Diary of his Own Times,’ the other day, on purpose to show you. There really are some ideas in it. Do look it over, Volavent, and see if it will inspire you. We must try to rise above the level of a West-end hotel.”

In the same manner did my lady supervise the gardens, to the affliction of the chief official and his dozen or so of underlings. To have the first peaches and the last grapes in the county of York, to decorate her table with the latest marvel in pitcher plants and rare butterfly-shaped orchids, was Lady Laura’s ambition; to astonish morning visitors with new effects in the garden her unceasing desire. Nor within doors was her influence less actively exercised. Drawing-rooms and boudoirs, morning-rooms and bedchambers, were always undergoing some improving touch, some graceful embellishment, inspired by that changeful fancy. When new visitors were expected at the Castle, Lady Laura flitted about their rooms, inspecting every arrangement, and thinking of the smallest minutiae. She would even look into the rooms prepared for the servants on these occasions, to be sure that nothing was wanting for their comfort. She liked the very maids and valets to go away and declare there was no place so pleasant as Hale Castle. Perhaps when people had been to her two or three times, she was apt to grow a little more careless upon these points. To dazzle and astonish was her chief delight, and of course it is somewhat difficult to dazzle old friends.

In the two days after Geraldine Challoner’s departure Lady Laura was in her gayest mood. She had a delightful air of mystery in her converse with Clarissa; would stop suddenly sometimes in the midst of her discourse to kiss the girl, and would contemplate her for a few moments with her sweetest smile.

“My dear Lady Laura, what pleasant subject are you thinking about?” Clarissa asked wonderingly; “I am sure there is something. You have such a mysterious air to-day, and one would suppose by your manner that I must be concerned in this mystery.”

“And suppose you were, Clary–suppose I were plotting for your happiness? But no; there is really nothing; you must not take such silly fancies into your head. You know how much I love you, Clary–as much as if you were a younger sister of my own; and there is nothing I would not do to secure your happiness.”

Clarissa shook her head sadly.

“My dear Lady Laura, good and generous as you are, it is not in your power to do that,” she said, “unless you could make my father love me, or bring my brother happily home.”

“Or give you back Arden Court?” suggested Lady Laura, smiling.

“Ah, that is the wildest dream of all! But I would not even ask Providence for that. I would be content, if my father loved me; if we were only a happy united family.”

“Don’t you think your father would be a changed man, if he could get back his old home somehow? The loss of that must have soured him a good deal.”

“I don’t know about that. Yes, of course that loss does weigh upon his mind; but even when we were almost children he did not seem to care much for my brother Austin or me. He was not like other fathers.”

“His money troubles may have oppressed him even then. The loss of Arden Court might have been a foreseen calamity.”

“Yes, it may have been so. But there is no use in thinking of that. Even if papa were rich enough to buy it, Mr. Granger would never sell the Court.”

“Sell it!” repeated Lady Laura, meditatively; “well, perhaps not. One could hardly expect him to do that–a place for which he has done so much. But one never knows what may happen; I have really seen such wonderful changes come to pass among friends and acquaintances of mine, that scarcely anything would astonish me–no, Clary, not if I were to see you mistress of Arden Court.”

And then Lady Laura kissed her protegee once more with effusion, and anon dipped her brush in the carmine, and went on with the manipulation of a florid initial in her Missal–a fat gothic M, interlaced with ivy-leaves and holly.

“You haven’t asked me who the people are that I am expecting this afternoon,” she said presently, with a careless air.

“My dear Lady Laura, if you were to tell me their names, I don’t suppose I should be any wiser than I am now. I know so few people.”

“But you do know these–or at least you know all about them. My arrivals to-day are Mr. and Miss Granger.”

Clarissa gave a faint sigh, and bent a little lower over her work.

“Well, child, are you not surprised? have you nothing to say?” cried Lady Laura, rather impatiently.

“I–I daresay they are very nice people,” Clarissa answered, nervously. “But the truth is–I know you must despise me for such folly–I cannot help associating them with our loss, and I have a kind of involuntary dislike of them. I have never so much as seen them, you know–not even at church; for they go to the gothic chapel which Mr. Granger has built in his model village, and never come to our dear little church at Arden; and it is very childish and absurd of me, no doubt, but I don’t think I ever could like them.”

“It is very absurd of you, Clary,” returned my lady; “and if I could be angry with you for anything, it certainly would be for this unjust prejudice against people I want you to like. Think what a nice companion Miss Granger would be for you when you are at home–so near a neighbour, and really a very superior girl.”

“I don’t want a companion; I am used to being alone.”

“Well, well, when you come to know her, you will like her very much, I daresay, in spite of yourself; that will be my triumph. I am bent upon bringing about friendly relation, between your father and Mr. Granger.”

“You will never do that, Lady Laura.”

“I don’t know. I have a profound faith in my own ideas.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER XI.

DANIEL GRANGER.

After luncheon that day, Clarissa lost sight of Lady Laura. The Castle seemed particularly quiet on this afternoon. Nearly every one was out of doors playing croquet; but Clarissa had begun to find croquet rather a wearisome business of late, and had excused herself on the plea of letters to write. She had not begun her letter-writing yet, however, but was wandering about the house in a purposeless way–now standing still for a quarter of an hour at a time, looking out of a window, without being in the least degree conscious of the landscape she was looking at, and then pacing slowly up and down the long picture gallery with a sense of relief in being alone.

At last she roused herself from this absent dreamy state.

“I am too idle to write this afternoon,” she thought. “I’ll go to the library and get a book.”

The Hale library was Clarissa’s delight. It was a noble collection gathered by dead-and-gone owners of the Castle, and filled up with all the most famous modern works at the bidding of Mr. Armstrong, who gave his bookseller a standing order to supply everything that was proper, and rarely for his own individual amusement or instruction had recourse to any shelf but one which contained neat editions of the complete works of the Druid and Mr. Apperley, the _Life of Assheton Smith_, and all the volumes of the original _Sporting Magazine_ bound in crimson russia. These, with _Ruff’s Guide_, the _Racing Calendar_, and a few volumes on farriery, supplied Mr. Armstrong’s literary necessities. But to Clarissa, for whom books were at once the pleasure and consolation of life, this library seemed a treasure-house of inexhaustible delights. Her father’s collection was of the choicest, but limited. Here she found everything she had ever heard of, and a whole world of literature she had never dreamed of. She was not by any means a pedant or a blue-stocking, and it was naturally amongst the books of a lighter class she found the chief attraction; but she was better read than most girls of her age, and better able to enjoy solid reading.

To-day she was out of spirits, and came to the library for some relief from those vaguely painful thoughts that had oppressed her lately. The room was so little affected by my lady’s butterfly guests that she made sure of having it all to herself this afternoon, when the voices and laughter of the croquet-players, floating in at the open windows, told her that the sport was still at its height.

She went into the room, and stopped suddenly a few paces from the doorway. A gentleman was standing before the wide empty fireplace, where there was a great dog-stove of ironwork and brass which consumed about half a ton of coal a day in winter; a tall, ponderous-looking man, with his hands behind him, glancing downward with cold gray eyes, but not in the least degree inclining his stately head to listen to Lady Laura Armstrong, who was seated on a sofa near him, fanning herself and prattling gaily after her usual vivacious manner.

Clarissa started and drew back at sight of this tall stranger.

“Mr. Granger,” she thought, and tried to make her escape without being seen.

The attempt was a failure. Lady Laura called to her.

“Who is that in a white dress? Miss Lovel, I am sure.–Come here, Clary–what are you running away for? I want to introduce my friend Mr. Granger to you.–Mr. Granger, this is Miss Lovel, the Miss Lovel whose birthplace fortune has given to you.”

Mr. Granger bowed rather stiffly, and with the air of a man to whom a bow was a matter of business.

“I regret,” he said, “to have robbed Miss Lovel of a home to which she was attached. I regret still more that she will not avail herself of my desire to consider the park and grounds entirely at her disposal on all occasions. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see her use the place as if it were her own.”

“And nothing could be kinder than such a wish on your part.” exclaimed my lady approvingly.

Clarissa lifted her eyes rather shyly to the rich man’s face. He was not a connoisseur in feminine loveliness, but they struck him at once as very fine eyes. He was a connoisseur in pictures, and no mean judge of them, and those brilliant hazel eyes of Clarissa’s reminded him of a portrait by Velasquez, of which he was particularly proud.

“You are very kind,” she murmured; “but–but there are some associations too painful to bear. The park would remind me so bitterly of all I have lost since I was a child.”

She was thinking of her brother, and his disgrace–or misfortune; she did not even know which of these two it was that had robbed her of him. Mr. Granger looked at her wonderingly. Her words and manner seemed to betray a deeper feeling than he could have supposed involved in the loss of an estate. He was not a man of sentiment himself, and had gone through life affected only by its sternest realities. There was something rather too Rosa-Matildaish for his taste in this faltered speech of Clarissa’s; but he thought her a very pretty girl nevertheless, and was inclined to look somewhat indulgently upon a weakness he would have condemned without compunction in his daughter. Mr. Granger was a man who prided himself upon his strength of mind, and he had a very poor idea of the exclusive recluse whose early extravagances had made him master of Arden Court. He had not seen Mr. Lovel half-a-dozen times in his life, for all business between those two that could be transacted by their respective lawyers had been so transacted; but what he had seen of that pale careworn face, that fragile figure, and somewhat irritable manner, had led the ponderous, strong-minded Daniel Granger to consider Marmaduke Lovel a very poor creature.

He was interested in this predecessor of his nevertheless. A man must be harder than iron who can usurp another man’s home, and sit by another man’s hearthstone, without giving some thought to the exile he has ousted. Daniel Granger was not so hard as that, and he did profoundly pity the ruined gentleman he had deposed. Perhaps he was still more inclined to pity the ruined gentleman’s only daughter, who must needs suffer for the sins and errors of others.

“Now, pray don’t run away, Clary,” cried Lady Laura, seeing Clarissa moving towards the door, as if still anxious to escape. “You came to look for some books, I know.–Miss Lovel is a very clever young lady, I assure you, Mr. Granger, and has read immensely.–Sit down, Clary; you shall take away an armful of books by-and-by, if you like.”

Clarissa seated herself near my lady’s sofa with a gracious submissive air, which the owner of Arden Court thought a rather pretty kind of thing, in its way. He had a habit of classifying all young women in a general way with his own daughter, as if in possessing that one specimen of the female race he had a key to the whole species. His daughter was obedient–it was one of her chief virtues; but somehow there was not quite such a graceful air in her small concessions as he perceived in this little submission of Miss Lovel’s.

Mr. Granger was rather a silent man; but my lady rattled on gaily in her accustomed style, and while that perennial stream of small talk flowed on, Clarissa had leisure to observe the usurper.

He was a tall man, six feet high perhaps, with a powerful and somewhat bulky frame, broad shoulders, a head erect and firmly planted as an obelisk, and altogether an appearance which gave a general idea of strength. He was not a bad-looking man by any means. His features were large and well cut, the mouth firm as iron, and unshadowed by beard or moustache; the eyes gray and clear, but very cold. Such a man could surely be cruel, Clarissa thought, with an inward shudder. He was a man who would have looked grand in a judge’s wig; a man whose eyes and eyebrows, lowered upon some trembling delinquent, might have been almost as awful as Lord Thurlow’s. Even his own light-brown hair, faintly streaked with grey, which he wore rather long, had something of a leonine air.

He listened to Lady Laura’s trivial discourse with a manner which was no doubt meant to be gracious, but with no great show of interest. Once he went so far as to remark that the Castle gardens were looking very fine for so advanced a season, and attended politely to my lady’s rather diffuse account of her triumphs in the orchid line.

“I don’t pretend to understand much about those things,” he said, in his stately far-off way, as if he lived in some world quite remote from Lady Laura’s, and of a superior rank in the catalogue of worlds. “They are pretty and curious, no doubt. My daughter interests herself considerably in that sort of thing. We have a good deal of glass at Arden–more than I care about. My head man tells me that I must have grapes and pines all the year round: and since he insists upon it, I submit. But I imagine that a good many more of his pines and grapes find their way to Covent Garden than to my table.”

Clarissa remembered the old kitchen-gardens at the Court in her father’s time, when the whole extent of “glass” was comprised by a couple of dilapidated cucumber-frames, and a queer little greenhouse in a corner, where she and her brother had made some primitive experiments in horticulture, and where there was a particular race of spiders, the biggest specimens of the spidery species it had ever been her horror to encounter.

“I wonder whether the little greenhouse is there still?” she thought. “O, no, no; battered down to the ground, of course, by this pompous man’s order. I don’t suppose I should know the dear old place, if I were to see it now.”

“You are fond of botany, I suppose, Miss Lovel?” Mr. Granger asked presently, with a palpable effort. He was not an adept in small talk, and though in the course of years of dinner-eating and dinner-giving he had been frequently called upon to address his conversation to young ladies, he never opened his lips to one of the class without a sense of constraint and an obvious difficulty. He had all his life been most at home in men’s society, where the talk was of grave things, and was no bad talker when the question in hand was either commercial or political. But as a rich man cannot go through life without being cultivated more or less by the frivolous herd, Mr. Granger had been compelled to conform himself somehow to the requirements of civilised society, and to talk in his stiff bald way of things which he neither understood nor cared for.

“I am fond of flowers,” Clarissa answered, “but I really know nothing of botany. I would always rather paint them than anatomise them.”

“Indeed! Painting is a delightful occupation for a young lady. My daughter sketches a little, but I cannot say that she has any remarkable talent that way. She has been well taught, of course.”

“You will find Miss Lovel quite a first-rate artist,” said Lady Laura, pleased to praise her favourite. “I really know no one of her age with such a marked genius for art. Everybody observes it.” And then, half afraid that this praise might seem to depreciate Miss Granger, the good-natured _chatelaine_ went on, “Your daughter illuminates, I daresay?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so, Lady Laura. I know that Sophia does some massy kind of work involving the use of gums and colours. I have seen her engaged in it sometimes. And there are scriptural texts on the walls of our poor-schools which I conclude are her work. A young woman cannot have too many pursuits. I like to see my daughter occupied.”

“Miss Granger reads a good deal, I suppose, like Clarissa,’ Lady Laura hazarded.

“No, I cannot say that she does. My daughter’s habits are active and energetic rather than studious. Nor should I encourage her in giving much time to literature, unless the works she read were of a very solid character. I have never found anything great achieved by reading men of my own acquaintance; and directly I hear that, a man is never so happy as in his library, I put him down as a man whose life will be a failure.”

“But the great men of our day have generally been men of wide reading, have they not?”

“I think not, Lady Laura. They have been men who have made a little learning go a long way. Of course there are numerous exceptions amongst the highest class of all–statesmen, and so on. But for success in active life, I take it, a man cannot have his brain too clear of waste rubbish in the way of book-learning. He wants all his intellectual coin in his current account, you see, ready for immediate use, not invested in out-of-the-way corners, where he can’t get at it.”

While Mr. Granger and my lady were arguing this question, Clarissa went to the bookshelves and amused herself hunting for some attractive volumes. Daniel Granger followed the slender girlish figure with curious eyes. Nothing could have been more unexpected than this meeting with Marmaduke Lovel’s daughter. He had done his best, in the first year or so of his residence at the Court, to cultivate friendly relations with Mr. Lovel, and had most completely failed in that well-meant attempt. Some men in Mr. Granger’s position might have been piqued by this coldness. But Daniel Granger was not such a one; he was not given to undervalue the advantage of his friendship or patronage. A career of unbroken prosperity, and a character by nature self-contained and strong-willed, combined to sustain his belief in himself. He could not for a moment conceive that Mr. Lovel declined his acquaintance as a thing not worth having. He therefore concluded that the banished lord of Arden felt his loss too keenly to endure to look upon his successor’s happiness, and he pitied him accordingly. It would have been the one last drop of bitterness in Marmaduke Lovel’s cup to know that this man did pity him. Having thus failed in cultivating anything approaching intimacy with the father, Mr. Granger was so much the more disposed to feel an interest–half curious, half compassionate–in the daughter. From the characterless ranks of young-ladyhood this particular damsel stood out with unwonted distinctness. He found his mind wandering a little as he tried to talk with Lady Laura. He could not help watching the graceful figure yonder, the slim white-robed figure standing out so sharply against the dark background of carved oaken bookshelves.

Clarissa selected a couple of volumes to carry away with her presently, and then came back to her seat by Lady Laura’s sofa. She did not want to appear rude to Mr. Granger, or to disoblige her kind friend, who for some reason or other was evidently anxious she should remain, or she would have been only too glad to run away to her own room.

The talk went on. My lady was confidential after her manner communicating her family affairs to Daniel Granger as freely as she might have done if he had been an uncle or an executor. She told him about her sister’s approaching marriage and George Fairfax’s expectations.

“They will have to begin life upon an income that I daresay _you_ would think barely sufficient for bread and cheese,” she said.

Mr. Granger shook his head, and murmured that his own personal requirements could be satisfied for thirty shillings a week.

“I daresay. It is generally the case with millionaires. They give four hundred a year to a cook, and dine upon a mutton-chop or a boiled chicken. But really Mr. Fairfax and Geraldine will be almost poor at first; only my sister has fortunately no taste for display, and George must have sown all his wild oats by this time. I expect them to be a model couple, they are so thoroughly attached to each other.”

Clarissa opened one of her volumes and bent over it at this juncture. Was this really true? Did Lady Laura believe what she said? Was that problem which she had been perpetually trying to solve lately so very simple, after all, and only a perplexity to her own weak powers of reason? Lady Laura must be the best judge, of course, and she was surely too warm-hearted a woman to take a conventional view of things, or to rejoice in a mere marriage of convenience. No, it must be true. They really did love each other, these two, and that utter absence of all those small signs and tokens of attachment which Clarissa had expected to see was only a characteristic of good taste. What she had taken for coldness was merely a natural reserve, which at once proved their superior breeding and rebuked her own vulgar curiosity.

From the question of the coming marriage, Lady Laura flew to the lighter subject of the ball.

“I hope Miss Granger has brought a ball-dress; I told her all about our ball in my last note.”

“I believe she has provided herself for the occasion,” replied Mr. Granger. “I know there was an extra trunk, to which I objected when my people were packing the luggage. Sophia is not usually extravagant in the matter of dress. She has a fair allowance, of course, and liberty to exceed it on occasion; but I believe she spends more upon her school-children and pensioners in the village than on her toilet.”

“Your ideas on the subject of costume are not quite so wide as Mr. Brummel’s, I suppose,” said my lady. “Do you remember his reply, when an anxious mother asked him what she ought to allow her son for dress?”

Mr. Granger did not spoil my lady’s delight in telling an anecdote by remembering; and he was a man who would have conscientiously declared his familiarity with the story, had he known it.

“‘It might be done on eight hundred a year, madam,’ replied Brummel, ‘with the strictest economy.'”

Mr. Granger gave a single-knock kind of laugh.

“Curious fellow, that Brummel,” he said. “I remember seeing him at Caen, when I was travelling as a young man.”

And so the conversation meandered on, my lady persistently lively in her pleasant commonplace way, Mr. Granger still more commonplace, and not at all lively. Clarissa thought that hour and a half in the library the longest she had ever spent in her life. How different from that afternoon in the same room when George Fairfax had looked at his watch and declared the Castle bell must be wrong!

That infallible bell rang at last–a welcome sound to Clarissa, and perhaps not altogether unwelcome to Lady Laura and Mr. Granger, who had more than once sympathised in a smothered yawn.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XII.

MR. GRANGER IS INTERESTED.

When Clarissa went to the great drawing-room dressed for dinner, she found Lizzie Fermor talking to a young lady whom she at once guessed to be Miss Granger. Nor was she allowed to remain in any doubt of the fact; for the lively Lizzie beckoned her to the window by which they were seated, and introduced the two young ladies to each other.

“Miss Granger and I are quite old friends,” she said, “and I mean you to like each other very much.”

Miss Granger bowed stiffly, but pledged herself to nothing. She was a tall young woman of about two-and-twenty, with very little of the tender grace of girlhood about her; a young woman who, by right of a stately carriage and a pair of handsome shoulders, might have been called fine-looking. Her features were not unlike her father’s; and those eyes and eyebrows of Daniel Granger’s, which would have looked so well under a judicial wig, were reproduced in a modified degree in the countenance of his daughter. She had what would be generally called a fine complexion, fair and florid; and her hair, of which she had an abundant quantity, was of an insipid light brown, and the straightest Clarissa had ever seen. Altogether, she was a young lady who, invested with all the extraneous charms of her father’s wealth, would no doubt be described as attractive, and even handsome. She was dressed well, with a costly simplicity, in a dark-blue corded silk, relieved by a berthe of old point lace, and the whiteness of her full firm throat was agreeably set off by a broad band of black velvet, from which there hung a Maltese cross of large rubies.

The two young ladies went on with their talk, which was chiefly of gaieties they had each assisted at since their last meeting, and people they had met.

Clarissa, being quite unable to assist in this conversation, looked on meekly, a little interested in Miss Granger, who was, like herself, an only daughter, and about whose relations with her father she had begun to wonder. Was he very fond of this only child, and in this, as in all else, unlike her own father? He had spoken of her that afternoon several times, and had even praised her, but somewhat coldly, and with a practical matter-of-course air, almost as Mr. Lovel might have spoken of his daughter if constrained to talk of her in society.

Miss Granger said a good deal about the great people she had met that year. They seemed all to be more or less the elect of the earth: but she pulled herself up once or twice to protest that she cared very little for society; she was happier when employed with her schools and poor people–_that_ was her real element.

“One feels all the other thing to be so purposeless and hollow,” she said sententiously. “After a round of dinners and dances and operas and concerts in London, I always have a kind of guilty feeling. So much time wasted, and nothing to show for it. And really my poor are improving so wonderfully. If you could see my cottages, Miss Fermor!” (she did not say, “their cottages.”) “I give a prize for the cleanest floors and windows, an illuminated ticket for the neatest garden-beds. I don’t suppose you could get a sprig of groundsel for love or money in Arden village. I have actually to cultivate it in a corner of the kitchen-garden for my canaries. I give another prize at Christmas for the most economical household management, accorded to the family which has dined oftenest without meat in the course of the year; and I give a premium of one per cent upon all investments in the Holborough savings-bank–one and a half in the case of widows; a complete suit of clothes to every woman who has attended morning and evening service without missing one Sunday in the year, the consequence of which has been to put a total stop to cooking on the day of rest. I don’t believe you could come across so much as a hot potato on a Sunday in one of my cottages.”

“And do the husbands like the cold dinners?” Miss Fermor asked rather flippantly.

“I should hope that spiritual advantage would prevail over temporal luxury, even in their half-awakened minds,” replied Miss Granger. “I have never inquired about their feelings on the subject. I did indeed hear that the village baker, who had driven a profitable trade every Sunday morning before my improvements, made some most insolent comments upon what I had done. But I trust I can rise superior to the impertinence of a village baker. However, you must come to Arden and see my cottages, and judge for yourself; and if you could only know the benighted state in which I found these poor creatures—-“

Lizzie Fermor glanced towards Clarissa, and then gave a little warning look, which had the effect of stopping Miss Granger’s disquisition.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Lovel,” she said; “I forgot that I was talking of your own old parish. But you were a mere child, I believe, when you left the Court, and of course could not be capable of effecting much improvement.”

“We were too poor to do much, or to give prizes,” Clarissa answered; “but we gave what we could, and–and I think the people were fond of us.”

Miss Granger looked as if this last fact were very wide from the question.

“I have never studied how to make the people fond of me,” she said. “My constant effort has been to make them improve themselves and their own condition. All my plans are based upon that principle. ‘If you want a new gown, cloak, and bonnet at Christmas,’ I tell the women, ‘you must earn them by unfailing attendance at church. If you wish to obtain the money-gift I wish to give you, you must first show me something saved by your own economy and self-sacrifice.’ To my children I hold out similar inducements–a prize for the largest amount of plain needlework, every stitch of which I make it my duty to examine through a magnifying glass; a prize for scrupulous neatness in dress; and for scripture knowledge. I have children in my Sunday-schools who can answer any question upon the Old-Testament history from Genesis to Chronicles.”

Clarissa gave a faint sigh, almost appalled by these wonders. She remembered the girls’ Sunday-school in her early girlhood, and her own poor little efforts at instruction, in the course of which she had seldom carried her pupils out of the Garden of Eden, or been able to get over the rivers that watered that paradise, as described by the juvenile inhabitants of Arden, without little stifled bursts of laughter on her own part; while, in the very midst of her most earnest endeavours, she was apt to find her brother Austin standing behind her, tempting the juvenile mind by the surreptitious offer of apples or walnuts. The attempts at teaching generally ended in merry laughter and the distribution of nuts and apples, with humble apologies to the professional schoolmistress for so useless an intrusion.

Miss Granger had no time to enlarge farther upon her manifold improvements before dinner, to which she was escorted by one of the officers from Steepleton, the nearest garrison town, who happened to be dining there that day, and was very glad to get an innings with the great heiress. The master of Arden Court had the honour of escorting Lady Laura; but from his post by the head of the long table he looked more than once to that remote spot where Clarissa sat, not far from his daughter. My lady saw those curious glances, and was delighted to see them. They might mean nothing, of course; but to that sanguine spirit they seemed an augury of success for the scheme which had been for a long time hatching in the matron’s busy brain.

“What do you think of my pet, Mr. Granger?” she asked presently.

Mr. Granger glanced at the ground near my lady’s chair with rather a puzzled look, half expecting to see a Maltese spaniel or a flossy-haired Skye terrier standing on its hind legs.

“What do you think of my pet and _protegee_, Miss Lovel?”

“Miss Lovel! Well, upon my word, Lady Laura, I am so poor a judge of the merits of young ladies in a general way; but she really appears a very amiable young person.”

“And is she not lovely?” asked Lady Laura, contemplating the distant Clarissa in a dreamy way through her double eye-glass. “I think it is the sweetest face I ever saw.”

“She is certainly very pretty,” admitted Mr. Granger. “I was struck by her appearance this afternoon in the library. I suppose there is something really out of the common in her face, for I am generally the most unobservant of men in such matters.”

“Out of the common!” exclaimed Lady Laura. “My dear sir, it is such a face as you do not see twice in a lifetime. Madame Recamier must have been something like that, I should fancy–a woman who could attract the eyes of all the people in the great court of the Luxembourg, and divide public attention with Napoleon.”

Mr. Granger did not seem interested in the rather abstract question of Clarissa’s possible likeness to Madame Recamier.

“She is certainly very pretty,” he repeated in a meditative manner; and stared so long and vacantly at a fricandeau which a footman was just offering him, that any less well-trained attendant must have left him in embarrassment.

The next few days were enlivened by a good deal of talk about the ball, in which event Miss Granger did not seem to take a very keen interest.

“I go to balls, of course,” she said; “one is obliged to do so: for it would seem so ungracious to refuse one’s friends’ invitations; but I really do not care for them. They are all alike, and the rooms are always hot.”

“I don’t think you will be able to say that here,” replied Miss Fermor. “Lady Laura’s arrangements are always admirable; and there is to be an impromptu conservatory under canvas the whole length of the terrace, in front of the grand saloon where we are to dance, so that the six windows can be open all the evening.”

“Then I daresay it will be a cold night,” said Miss Granger, who was not prone to admire other people’s cleverness. “I generally find that it is so, when people take special precautions against heat.”

Clarissa naturally found herself thrown a good deal into Sophia Granger’s society; but though they worked, and drove, and walked together, and played croquet, and acted in the same charades, it is doubtful whether there was really much more sympathy between these two than between Clarissa and Lady Geraldine. There was perhaps less; for Clarissa Lovel had been interested in Geraldine Challoner, and she was not in the faintest degree interested in Miss Granger. The cold and shining surface of that young lady’s character emitted no galvanic spark. It was impossible to deny that she was wise and accomplished; that she did everything well that she attempted; that, although obviously conscious of her own supreme advantages as the heiress to a great fortune, she was benignly indulgent to the less blessed among her sex,–it was impossible to deny all this; and yet it was not any more easy to get on with Sophia Granger than with Lady Geraldine.

One day, after luncheon, when a bevy of girls were grouped round the piano in the billiard-room, Lizzie Fermor–who indulged in the wildest latitude of discourse–was audacious enough to ask Miss Granger how she would like her father to marry again.

The faultless Sophia elevated her well-marked eyebrows with a look of astonishment that ought to have frozen Miss Fermor. The eyebrows were as hard and as neatly pencilled as the shading in Miss Granger’s landscapes.

“Marry again!” she repeated, “papa!–if you knew him better, Miss Fermor, you would never speculate upon such a thing. Papa will never marry again.”

“Has he promised you that?” asked the irrepressible Lizzie.

“I do not require any promise from him. I know him too well to have the slightest doubt upon the subject. Papa might have married brilliantly, again and again, since I was a little thing.” (It was rather difficult to fancy Miss Granger a “little thing” in any stage of her existence.) “But nothing has ever been more remote from his ideas than a second marriage. I have heard people regret it.”

“_You_ have not regretted it, of course.”

“I hope I know my duty too well, to wish to stand between papa and his happiness. If it had been for his happiness to marry–a person of a suitable age and position, of course–I should not have considered my own feelings in the matter.”

“Well, I suppose not,” replied Lizzie, rather doubtfully; “still it is nice to have one’s father all to oneself–to say nothing of being an heiress. And the worst of the business is, that when a widower of your papa’s age does take it into his head to marry, he is apt to fall in love with some chit of a girl.”

Miss Granger stared at the speaker with a gaze as stony as Antigone herself could have turned upon any impious jester who had hinted that Oedipus, in his blindness and banishment, was groping for some frivolous successor to Jocasta.

“My father in love with a girl!” she exclaimed. “What a very false idea you must have formed of his character, Miss Fermor, when you can suggest such an utter absurdity!”

“But, you see, I wasn’t speaking of Mr. Granger, only of widowers in general. I have seen several marriages of that kind–men of forty or fifty throwing themselves away, I suppose one ought to say, upon girls scarcely out of their teens. In some cases the marriage seems to turn out well enough; but of course one does sometimes hear of things not going on quite happily.”

Miss Granger was grave and meditative after this–perhaps half disposed to suspect Elizabeth Fermor of some lurking design on her father. She had been seated at the piano during this conversation, and now resumed her playing–executing a sonata of Beethoven’s with faultless precision and the highest form of taught expression; so much emphasis upon each note–careful _rallentando_ here, a gradual _crescendo_ there; nothing careless or slapdash from the first bar to the last. She would play the same piece a hundred times without varying the performance by a hair’s-breadth. Nor did she affect anything but classical music. She was one of those young ladies who, when asked for a waltz or a polka, freeze the impudent demander by replying that they play no dance music–nothing more frivolous than Mozart.

The day for the ball came, but there was no George Fairfax. Lady Geraldine had arrived at the Castle on the evening before the festival, bringing an excellent account of her father’s health. He had been cheered by her visit, and was altogether so much improved, that his doctors would have given him permission to come down to Yorkshire for his daughter’s wedding. It was only his own valetudinarian habits and extreme dread of fatigue which had prevented Lady Geraldine bringing him down in triumph.

Lady Laura was loudly indignant at Mr. Fairfax’s non-appearance; and for the first time Clarissa heard Lady Geraldine defend her lover with some natural and womanly air of proprietorship.

“After pledging his word to me as he did!” exclaimed my lady, when it had come to luncheon-time and there were still no signs of the delinquent’s return.

“But really, Laura, there is no reason he should not keep his word,” Geraldine answered, with her serene air. “You know men like to do these things in a desperate kind of way–as if they were winning a race. I daresay he has made his plans so as not to leave himself more than half-an-hour’s margin, and will reach the Castle just in time to dress.”

“That is all very well; but I don’t call that keeping his promise to me, to come rushing into the place just as we are beginning to dance; after travelling all night perhaps, and knocking himself up in all sorts of ways, and with no more animation or vivacity left in him than a man who is walking in his sleep. Besides, he ought to consider our anxiety.”

“Your anxiety, if you please, Laura. I am not anxious. I cannot see that George’s appearance at the ball is a matter of such vital importance.”

“But, my deal Geraldine, it would seem so strange for him to be away. People would wonder so.”

“Let them wonder,” Lady Geraldine replied, with a little haughty backward movement of her head, which was natural to her.

Amongst the cases and packages which had been perpetually arriving from London during the last week or so, there was one light deal box which Lady Laura’s second maid brought to Clarissa’s room one morning with her mistress’s love. The box contained the airiest and most girlish of ball-dresses, all cloudlike white tulle, and the most entrancing wreath of wild-roses and hawthorn, such a wreath as never before had crowned Miss Lovel’s bright-brown hair. Of course there was the usual amount of thanks and kissing and raptures.

“I am responsible to your father for your looking your best, you see, Clary,” Lady Laura said, laughing; “and I intend you to make quite a sensation to-night. The muslin you meant to wear is very pretty, and will do for some smaller occasion; but to-night is a field-night. Be sure you come to me when you are dressed. I shall be in my own rooms till the people begin to arrive; and I want to see you when Fosset has put her finishing touches to your dress.”

Clarissa promised to present herself before her kind patroness. She was really pleased with her dress, and sincerely grateful to the giver. Lady Laura was a person from whom it was easy to accept benefits. There was something bounteous and expansive in her nature, and her own pleasure in the transaction made it impossible for any but the most churlish recipient to feel otherwise than pleased.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIII.

OPEN TREASON.

The ball began, and without the assistance of Mr. Fairfax–much to my lady’s indignation. She was scarcely consoled by the praises and compliments she received on the subject of her arrangements and decorations; but these laudations were so unanimous and so gratifying, that she did at last forget Mr. Fairfax’s defection in the delight of such perfect success.

_The_ Duke–the one sovereign magnate of that district–a tall grand-looking old man with white hair, even deigned to be pleased and surprised by what she had done.

“But then you have such a splendid platform to work upon,” he said; “I don’t think we have a place in Yorkshire that can compare with Hale. You had your decorators from London, of course?”

“No, indeed, your grace,” replied my lady, sparkling with delighted pride; “and if there is anything I can boast of, it is that. Fred wanted me to send for London people, and have the thing done in their wholesale manner–put myself entirely into their hands, give them _carte blanche_, and so on; so that, till the whole business was finished, I shouldn’t have known what the place was to be like; but that is just the kind of arrangement I detest. So I sent for one of my Holborough men, told him my ideas, gave him a few preliminary sketches, and after a good many consultations and discussions, we arrived at our present notion. Abolish every glimmer of gas,” I said, “and give me plenty of flowers and wax-candles. The rest is mere detail.”

Everything was successful; Miss Granger’s prophecy of cold weather was happily unfulfilled. The night was unusually still and sultry, a broad harvest moon steeping terraces and gardens in tender mellow light; not a breath to stir the wealth of blossoms, or to flutter the draperies of the many windows, all wide open to the warm night–a night of summer at the beginning of autumn.

Clarissa found herself in great request for the dances, and danced more than she had done since the days of her schoolgirl waltzes and polkas in the play-room at Belforet. It was about an hour after the dancing had begun, when Lady Laura brought her no less a partner than Mr. Granger, who had walked a solemn quadrille or two with a stately dowager, and whose request was very surprising to Clarissa. She had one set of quadrilles, however, unappropriated on her card, and expressed herself at Mr. Granger’s disposal for that particular dance, and then tripped away, to be whirled round the great room by one of her military partners.

Daniel Granger stood amongst the loungers at one end of the room, watching that aerial revolving figure. Yes, Lady Laura was right; she was very lovely. In all his life he had never before paid much heed to female loveliness, any more than to the grandeurs and splendours of nature, or anything beyond the narrow boundary of his own successful commonplace existence. But in this girl’s face there was something that attracted his attention, and dwelt in his memory when he was away from her; perhaps, after all, it was the result of her position rather than her beauty. It was natural that he should be interested in her, poor child. He had robbed her of her home, or it would seem so to her, no doubt; and she had let him see that she set an exaggerated value on that lost home, that she clung to it with a morbid sentimentality.

“I should not wonder if she hates me,” he said to himself. He had never thought as much about her father, but then certainly he had never been brought into such close contact with her father.

He waited quietly for that appointed quadrille, declining a dance in which Lady Laura would have enlisted him, and keeping a close watch upon Clarissa during the interval. What a gay butterfly creature she seemed to-night! He could scarcely fancy this was the same girl who had spoken so mournfully of her lost home in the library that afternoon. He looked from her to his daughter for a moment, comparing the two; Sophia resplendent in pink areophane and pearls, and showing herself not above the pleasures of a polka; eminently a fine young woman, but O, of what a different day from that other one!

Once Miss Fermor, passing the rich man on the arm of her partner, surprised the watchful gray eyes with a new look in them–a look that was neither cold nor stern.

“So, my gentleman,” thought the lively Lizzie, “is it that way your fancies are drifting? It was I whom you suspected of dangerous designs the other day, Miss Granger. Take care your papa doesn’t fall into a deeper pitfall. I should like to see him marry again, if it were only to take down that great pink creature’s insolence.” Whereby it will be seen that Miss Granger was not quite so popular among her contemporaries as, in the serenity of her self-possessed soul, she was wont to imagine herself.

The quadrille began presently, and Clarissa walked through its serious mazes with the man whom she was apt to consider the enemy of her race. She could not help wondering a little to find herself in this position, and her replies to Mr. Granger’s commonplace remarks were somewhat mechanical.

Once he contrived to bring the conversation round to Arden Court.

“It would give me so much pleasure to see you there as my daughter’s guest,” he said, in a warmer tone than was usual to him, “and I really think you would be interested in her parish-work. She has done wonders in a small way.”

“I have no doubt. You are very kind,” faltered Clarissa; “but I do not the least understand how to manage people as Miss Granger does, and I could not bear to come to the Court. I was so happy there with my brother, and now that he is gone, and that I am forbidden even to mention his name, the associations of the place would be too painful.”

Mr. Granger grew suddenly grave and silent.

“Yes, there was that business about the brother,” he thought to himself; “a bad business no doubt, or the father would never have turned him out of doors–something very queer perhaps. A strange set these Lovels evidently. The father a spendthrift, the son something worse.”

And then he looked down at Clarissa, and thought again how lovely she was, and pitied her for her beauty and her helplessness–the daughter of such a father, the sister of such a brother.

“But she will marry well, of course,” he said to himself, just as George Fairfax had done; “all these young fellows seem tremendously struck by her. I suppose she is the prettiest girl in the room. She will make a good match, I daresay, and get out of her father’s hands. It must be a dreary life for her in that cottage, with, a selfish disappointed man.”

The night waned, and there was no George Fairfax. Lady Geraldine bore herself bravely, and danced a good deal more than she would have done, had there not been appearances to be kept up. She had to answer a great many questions about her lover, and she answered all with supreme frankness. He was away in Scotland with some bachelor friends, enjoying himself no doubt. He promised to be with them to-night, and had broken his promise; that was all–she was not afraid of any accident.

“I daresay he found the grouse-shooting too attractive,” she said coolly.

After supper, while the most determined of the waltzers were still spinning round to a brisk _deux temps_ of Charles d’Albert’s, Clarissa was fain to tell the last of her partners she could dance no more.

“I am not tired of the ball,” she said; “I like looking on, but I really can’t dance another step. Do go and get some one else for this waltz; I know you are dying to dance it.”

This was to the devoted Captain Westleigh, a person with whom Miss Level always felt very much at home.

“With _you_,” he answered tenderly. “But if you mean to sit down, I am at your service. I would not desert you for worlds. And you really are looking a little pale. Shall we find some pleasanter place? That inner room, looks deliciously cool.”

He offered his arm to Clarissa, and they walked slowly away towards a small room at the end of the saloon; a room which Lady Laura had arranged with an artful eye to effect, leaving it almost in shadow. There were only a few wax-candles glimmering here and there among the cool dark foliage of the ferns and pitcher-plants that filled every niche and corner, and the moonlight shone full into the room through a wide window that opened upon a stone balcony a few feet above the terrace.

“If I am left alone with her for five minutes, I am sure I shall propose,” Captain Westleigh thought, on beholding the soft secluded aspect of this apartment, which was untenanted when he and Clarissa entered it.

She sank down upon a sofa near the window, more thoroughly tired than she had confessed. This long night of dancing and excitement was quite a new thing to her. It was nearly over now, and the reaction was coming, bringing with it that vague sense of hopelessness and disappointment which had so grown upon her of late. She had abandoned herself fully to the enchantment of the ball, almost losing the sense of her own identity in that brilliant scene. But self-consciousness came back to her now, and she remembered that she was Clarissa Lovel, for whom life was at best a dreary business.

“Can I get you anything?” asked the Captain, alarmed by her pallor.

“Thanks, you are very kind. If it would not be too much trouble–I know the refreshment-room is a long way off–but I should be glad of a little water.”

“I’ll get some directly. But I really am afraid you are ill,” said the Captain, looking at her anxiously, scarcely liking to leave her for fear she should faint before he came back.

“No, indeed, I am not ill–only very tired. If you’ll let me lest here a little without talking.”

She half closed her eyes. There was a dizziness in her head very much like the preliminary stage of fainting.

“My dear Miss Lovel, I should be a wretch to bore you. I’ll go for the water this moment.”

He hurried away. Clarissa gave a long weary sigh, and that painful dizziness passed off in some degree. All she wanted was air, she thought, if there had been any air to be got that sultry night. She rose from the sofa presently, and went out upon the balcony. Below her was the river; not a ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks. Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases of geraniums and dwarf roses, which seemed only masses of dark foliage in the moonlight.

The Captain was some little time gone for that glass of water. Clarissa had forgotten him and his errand as she sat upon a bench in the balcony with her elbow leaning on the broad stone ledge, looking down at the water and thinking of her own life–thinking what it might have been if everything in the world had been different.

A sudden step on the walk below startled her, and a low voice said,

“I would I were a glove upon that hand, that I might kiss that cheek.”

She knew the voice directly, but was not less startled at hearing it just then. The step came near her, and in the next moment a dark figure had swung itself lightly upward from the path below, and George Fairfax was seated on the angle of the massive balustrade.

“Juliet!” he said, in the same low voice, “what put it into your head to play Juliet to-night? As if you were not dangerous enough without that.”

“Mr. Fairfax, how could you startle me so? Lady Laura has been expecting you all the evening.”

“I suppose so. But you don’t imagine I’ve been hiding in the garden all the evening, like the man in Tennyson’s _Maud_? I strained heaven and earth to be here in time; but there was a break-down between Edinburgh and Carlisle. Nothing very serious: an engine-driver knocked about a little, and a few passengers shaken and bruised more or less, but I escaped unscathed, and had to cool my impatience for half a dozen hours at a dingy little station where there was no refreshment for body or mind but a brown jug of tepid water and a big Bible. There I stayed till I was picked up by the night-mail, and here I am. I think I shall stand absolved by my lady when she reads the account of my perils in to-morrow’s papers. People are just going away, I suppose. It would be useless for me to dress and put in an appearance now.”

“I think Lady Laura would be glad to see you. She has been very anxious, I know.”

“Her sisterly cares shall cease before she goes to sleep to-night. She shall be informed that I am in the house; and I will make my peace to-morrow morning.”

He did not go away however, and Clarissa began to feel that there was something embarrassing in her position. He had stepped lightly across the balustrade, and had seated himself very near her, looking down at her face.

“Clarissa, do you know what has happened to me since I have been away from this place?”

She looked up at him with an alarmed expression. It was the first time he had ever uttered her Christian name, but his tone was so serious as to make that a minor question.

“You cannot guess, I suppose,” he went on, “I’ve made a discovery–a most perplexing, most calamitous discovery.”

“What is that?”

“I have found out that I love you.”

Her hand was lying on the broad stone ledge. He took it in his firm grasp, and held it as he went on:

“Yes, Clarissa; I had my doubts before I went away, but thought I was master of myself in this, as I have been in other things, and fancied myself strong enough to strangle the serpent. But it would not be strangled, Clarissa; it has wound itself about my heart, and here I sit by your side dishonoured in my own sight, come what may–bound to one woman and loving another with all my soul–yes, with all my soul. What am I to do?”

“Your duty,” Clarissa answered, in a low steady voice.

Her heart was beating so violently that she wondered at her power to utter those two words. What was it that she felt–anger, indignation? Alas, no; Pride, delight, rapture, stirred that undisciplined heart. She knew now what was wanted to make her life bright and happy; she knew now that she had loved George Fairfax almost from the first. And her own duty–the duty she was bound in honour to perform–what was that? Upon that question she had not a moment’s doubt. Her duty was to resign him without a murmur; never to let him know that he had touched her heart. Even after having done this, there would be much left to her–the knowledge that he had loved her.

“My duty! what is that?” he asked in a hoarse hard voice. “To keep faith with Geraldine, whatsoever misery it may bring upon both of us? I am not one of those saints who think of everybody’s happiness before their own, Clarissa. I am very human, with all humanity’s selfishness. I want to be happy. I want a wife for whom I can feel something more than a cold well-bred liking. I did not think that it was in me to feel more than that. I thought I had outlived my capacity for loving, wasted the strength of my heart’s youth on worthless fancies, spent all my patrimony of affection; but the light shines on me again, and I thank God that it is so. Yes, Clarissa, come what may, I thank my God that I am not so old a man in heart and feeling as I thought myself.”

Clarissa tried to stem the current of his talk, with her heart still beating stormily, but with semblance of exceeding calmness.

“I must not hear you talk in this wild way, Mr. Fairfax,” she said. “I feel as if I had been guilty of a sin against Lady Geraldine in having listened so long. But I cannot for a moment think you are in earnest.”

“Do not play the Jesuit, Clarissa. You _know_ that I am in earnest.”

“Then the railway accident must have turned your brain, and I can only hope that to-morrow morning will restore your reason.”

“Well, I am mad, if you like–madly in love with you. What am I to do? If with some show of decency I can recover my liberty–by an appeal to Lady Geraldine’s generosity, for instance–believe me, I shall not break her heart; our mutual regard is the calmest, coolest sentiment possible–if I can get myself free from this engagement, will you be my wife, Clarissa?”

“No; a thousand times no.”

“You don’t care for me, then? The madness is all on my side?”

“The madness–if you are really in earnest, and not carrying on some absurd jest–is all on your side.”

“Well, that seems hard. I was vain enough to think otherwise. I thought so strong a feeling on one side could not co-exist with perfect indifference on the other. I fancied there was something like predestination in this, and that my wandering unwedded soul had met its other half–it’s an old Greek notion, you know, that men and women were made in pairs–but I was miserably mistaken, I suppose. How many lovers have you rejected since you left school, Miss Lovel?” he asked with a short bitter laugh. “Geraldine herself could not have given me my quietus more coldly.”

He was evidently wounded to the quick, being a creature spoiled by easy conquests, and would have gone on perhaps in the same angry strain, but there was a light step on the floor within, and Lady Laura Armstrong came quickly towards the balcony.

“My dearest Clary, Captain Westleigh tells me that you are quite knocked up–” she began; and then recognizing the belated traveller, cried out, “George Fairfax! Is it possible?”

“George Fairfax, my dear Lady Laura, and not quite so base a delinquent as he seems. I must plead guilty to pushing matters to the last limit; but I made my plans to be here at seven o’clock this evening, and should inevitably have arrived at that hour, but for a smash between Edinburgh and Carlisle.”

“An accident! Were you hurt?”

“Not so much as shaken; but the break-down lost me half a dozen hours. We were stuck for no end of time at a dingy little station whose name I forget, and when I did reach Carlisle, it was too late for any train to bring me on, except the night-mail, which does not stop at Holborough. I had to post from York, and arrived about ten minutes ago–too late for anything except to prove to you that I did make heroic efforts to keep my word.”

“And how, in goodness’ name, did you get here, to this room, without my seeing you?”

“From the garden. Finding myself too late to make an appearance in the ball-room, I prowled round the premises, listening to the sounds of revelry within; and then seeing Miss Lovel alone here–playing Juliet without a Romeo–I made so bold as to accost her and charge her with a message for you.”

“You are amazingly considerate; but I really cannot forgive you for having deferred your return to the last moment. You have quite spoilt Geraldine’s evening, to say nothing of the odd look your absence must have to our friends. I shall tell her you have arrived, and I suppose that is all I can do. You must want some supper, by the bye: you’ll find plenty of people in the dining-room.”

“No, thanks; I had some cold chicken and coffee at Carlisle. I’ll ring for a soda-and-brandy when I get to my room, and that’s all I shall do to-night. Good-night, Lady Laura; good-night, Miss Lovel.”

He dropped lightly across the balcony and vanished. Lady Laura stood in the window for a few moments in a meditative mood, and then, looking up suddenly, said,

“O, by the bye, Clarissa, I came to fetch you for another dance, the last quadrille, if you feel well enough to dance it. Mr. Granger wants you for a partner.”

“I don’t think I can dance any more, Lady Laura. I refused Captain Westleigh the last waltz.”

“Yes, but a quadrille is different. However, if you are really tired, I must tell Mr. Granger so. What was George Fairfax saying to you just now? You both looked prodigiously serious.”

“I really don’t know–I forget–it was nothing very particular,” Clarissa answered, conscious that she was blushing, and confused by that consciousness.

Lady Laura looked at her with a sharp scrutinising glance.

“I think it would have been better taste on George’s part if he had taken care to relieve my sister’s anxiety directly he arrived, instead of acting the balcony scene in _Romeo and Juliet_. I must go back to Mr. Granger with your refusal, Clarissa. O, here comes Captain Westleigh with some water.”

The Captain did appear at this very moment carrying a glass of that beverage, much to Clarissa’s relief, for a _tete-a-tete_ with Lady Laura was very embarrassing to her just now.

“My dear Miss Lovel, you must think me an utter barbarian,” exclaimed the Captain; “but you really can’t conceive the difficulties I’ve had to overcome. It seemed as if there wasn’t a drop of iced water to be had in the Castle. If you’d wanted Strasburg pies or barley-sugar temples, I could have brought you them by cartloads. Moselle and Maraschino are the merest drugs in the market; but not a creature could I persuade to get me this glass of water. Of course the fellows all said, ‘Yes, sir;’ and then went off and forgot all about me. And even when I had got my prize, I was waylaid by thirsty dowagers who wanted to rob me of it. It was like searching for the North-west Passage.”

Lady Laura had departed by this time. Clarissa drank some of the water and took the Captain’s arm to return to the ball-room, which was beginning to look a little empty. On the threshold of the saloon they met Mr. Granger.

“I am so sorry to hear you are not well, Miss Lovel,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Granger, but I am really not ill–only too tired to dance any more.”

“So Lady Laura tells me–very much to my regret. I had hoped for the honour of dancing this quadrille with you.”

“If you knew how rarely Mr. Granger dances, you’d consider yourself rather distinguished, I think, Miss Lovel,” said the Captain, laughing.

“Well, no, I don’t often dance,” replied Mr. Granger, with a shade of confusion in his manner; “but really, such a ball as this quite inspires a man–and Lady Laura was good enough to wish me to dance.”

He remained by Clarissa’s side as they walked back through the rooms. They were near the door when Miss Granger met them, looking as cold and prim in her pink crape and pearls as if she had that moment emerged from her dressing-room.

“Do you know how late it is, papa?” she asked, contemplating her parent with severe eyes.

“Well, no, one does not think of time upon such an occasion as this. I suppose it is late; but it would not do for us of the household to desert before the rest of the company.”

“I was thinking of saying good-night,” answered Miss Granger. “I don’t suppose any one would miss me, or you either, papa, if we slipped away quietly; and I am sure you will have one of your headaches to-morrow morning.”

There is no weapon so useful in the hands of a dutiful child as some chronic complaint of its parent. A certain nervous headache from which Mr. Granger suffered now and then served the fair Sophia as a kind of rod for his correction on occasions.

“I am not tired, my dear.”

“O, papa, I know your constitution better than you do yourself. Poor Lady Laura, how worn out she must be!”

“Lady Laura has been doing wonders all the evening,” said Captain Westleigh. “She has been as ubiquitous as Richmond at Bosworth, and she has the talent of never seeming tired.”

Clarissa took the first opportunity of saying good-night. If so important a person as the heiress of Arden Court could depart and not leave a void in the assembly, there could be assuredly no fear that she would be missed. Mr. Granger shook hands with her for the first time in his life as he wished her good-night, and then stood in the doorway watching her receding figure till it was beyond his ken.

“I like your friend Miss Lovel, Sophia,” he said to his daughter presently.

“Miss Lovel is hardly a friend of mine, papa,” replied that young lady somewhat sharply. “I am not in the habit of making sudden friendships, and I have not known Miss Lovel a week. Besides which, she is not the kind of girl I care for.”

“Why not?” asked her father bluntly.

“One can scarcely explain that kind of thing. She is too frivolous for me to get on very well with her. She takes no real interest in my poor, in spite of her connection with Arden, or in church music. I think she hardly knows one _Te Deum_ from another.”

“She is rather a nice girl, though,” said the Captain, who would fain be loyal to Clarissa, yet for whom the good opinion of such an heiress is Miss Granger could not be a matter of indifference–there was always the chance that she might take a fancy to him, as he put it to his brother-officers, and what a lucky hit that would be! “She’s a nice girl,” he repeated, “and uncommonly pretty.”

“I was not discussing her looks, Captain Westleigh,” replied Miss Granger with some asperity; “I was talking of her ideas and tastes, which are quite different from mine. I am sorry you let Lady Laura persuade you to dance with a girl like that, papa. You may have offended old friends, who would fancy they had a prior claim on your attention.”

Mr. Granger laughed at this reproof.

“I didn’t think a quadrille was such a serious matter, Sophy,” he said. “And then, you see, when a man of my age does make a fool of himself, he likes to have the prettiest girl in the room for his partner.”

Miss Granger made an involuntary wry face, as if she had been eating something nasty. Mr. Granger gave a great yawn, and, as the rooms by this time were almost empty, made his way to Lady Laura in order to offer his congratulations upon her triumph before retiring to rest.

For once in a way, the vivacious chatelaine of Hale Castle was almost cross.

“Do you really think the ball has gone off well?” she asked incredulously. “It seems to me to have been an elaborate failure.” She was thinking of those two whom she had surprised tete-a-tete in the balcony, and wondering what George Fairfax could have been saying to produce Clarissa’s confusion. Clarissa was her protegee, and she was responsible to her sister Geraldine for any mischief brought about by her favourite.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MORNING AFTER.

The day after the ball was a broken straggling kind of day, after the usual manner of the to-morrow that succeeds a festival. Hale Castle was full to overflowing with guests who, having been invited to spend one night, were pressed to stay longer. The men spent their afternoon for the most part in the billiard-room, after a late lingering luncheon, at which there was a good deal of pleasant gossip. The women sat together in groups in the drawing-room, pretending to work, but all desperately idle. It was a fine afternoon, but no one cared for walking or driving. A few youthful enthusiasts did indeed get up a game at croquet, but even this soul-enthralling sport was pursued with a certain listlessness.

Mr. Fairfax and Lady Geraldine walked in the garden. To all appearance, a perfect harmony prevailed between them. Clarissa, sitting alone in an oriel at the end of the drawing-room, watched them with weary eyes and a dull load at her heart, wondering about them perpetually, with a painful wonder.

If she could only have gone home, she thought to herself, what a refuge the dull quiet of her lonely life would have been! She had not slept five minutes since the festival of last night, but had lain tossing wearily from side to side, thinking of what George Fairfax had said to her–thinking of what might have been and could never be, and then praying that she might do her duty; that she might have strength to keep firmly to the right, if he should try to tempt her again.

He would scarcely do that, she thought. That wild desperate talk of last night was perhaps the merest folly–a caprice of the moment, the shallowest rodomontade, which he would be angry with himself for having spoken. She told herself that this was so; but she knew now, as she had not known before last night, that she had given this man her heart.

It would be a hard thing to remain at Hale to perform her part in the grand ceremonial of the marriage, and yet keep her guilty secret hidden from every eye; above all, from his whom it most concerned. But there seemed no possibility of escape from this ordeal, unless she were to be really ill, and excused on that ground. She sat in the oriel that afternoon, wondering whether a painful headache, the natural result of her sleeplessness and hyper-activity of brain, might not be the beginning of some serious illness–a fever perhaps, which would strike her down for a time and make an end to all her difficulties.

She had been sitting in the window for a long time quite alone, looking out at the sunny garden and those two figures passing and repassing upon an elevated terrace, with such an appearance of being absorbed in each other’s talk, and all-sufficient for each other’s happiness. It seemed to Clarissa that she had never seen them so united before. Had he been laughing at her last night? she asked herself indignantly; was that balcony scene a practical joke? He had been describing it to Lady Geraldine perhaps this afternoon, and the two had been laughing together at her credulity. She was in so bitter a mood just now that she was almost ready to believe this.

She had been sitting thus a long time, tormented by her own thoughts, and hearing the commonplace chatter of those cheerful groups, now loud, now low, without the faintest feeling of interest, when a heavy step sounded on the floor near her, and looking up suddenly, she saw Mr. Granger approaching her solitary retreat. The cushioned seat in the oriel, the ample curtains falling on either side of her, had made a refuge in which she felt herself alone, and she was not a little vexed to find her retreat discovered.

The master of Arden Court drew a chair towards the oriel, and seated himself deliberately, with an evident intention of remaining. Clarissa was obliged to answer his courteous inquiries about her health, to admit her headache as an excuse for the heaviness of her eyes, and then to go on talking about everything he chose to speak of. He did not talk stupidly by any means, but rather stiffly, and with the air of a man to whom friendly converse with a young lady was quite a new thing. He spoke to her a good deal about the Court and its surroundings–which seemed to her an error in taste–and appeared anxious to interest her in all his improvements.

“You really must come and see the place, Miss Lovel,” he said. “I shall be deeply wounded if you refuse.”

“I will come if you wish it,” Clarissa answered meekly; “but you cannot imagine how painful the sight of the dear old house will be to me.”

“A little painful just for the first time, perhaps. But that sort of feeling will soon wear off. You will come, then? That is settled. I want to win your father’s friendship if I can, and I look to you to put me in the right way of doing so.”

“You are very good, but papa is so reserved–eccentric, I suppose most people would call him–and he lives shut up in himself, as it were. I have never known him make a new friend. Even my uncle Oliver and he seem scarcely more than acquaintances; and yet I know my uncle would do anything to serve us, and I believe papa knows it too.”

“We must trust to time to break down that reserve, Miss Lovel,” Mr. Granger returned cheerily; “and you will come to see us at the Court–that is understood. I want you to inspect Sophia’s schools, and sewing classes, and cooking classes, and goodness knows what. There are plenty of people who remember you, and will be delighted to welcome you amongst them. I have heard them say how kind you were to them before you went abroad.”

“I had so little money,” said Clarissa, “I could do hardly anything.”

“But, after all, money is not everything with that class of people. No doubt they like it better than anything in the present moment; but as soon as it is gone they forget it, and are not apt to be grateful for substantial benefits in the past. But past kindness they do remember. Even in my own experience, I have known men who have been ungrateful for large pecuniary benefits, and yet have cherished the memory of some small kindness; a mere friendly word perhaps, spoken at some peculiar moment in their lives. No, Miss Lovel, you will not find yourself forgotten at Arden.”

He was so very earnest in this assurance, that Clarissa could not help feeling that he meant to do her a kindness. She was ashamed of her unworthy prejudice against him, and roused herself with a great effort from her abstraction, in order to talk and listen to Mr. Granger with all due courtesy. Nor had she any farther opportunity of watching those two figures pacing backward and forward upon the terrace; for Mr. Granger contrived to occupy her attention till the dressing-bell rang, and afforded her the usual excuse for hurrying away.

She was one of the last to return to the drawing-room, and to her surprise found Mr. Granger by her side, offering his arm in his stately way when the procession began to file off to the dining-room, oblivious of the claims which my lady’s matronly guests might have upon him.

Throughout that evening Mr. Granger was more or less by Clarissa’s side. His daughter, perceiving this with a scarcely concealed astonishment, turned a deaf ear to the designing compliments of Captain Westleigh (who told himself that a fellow might just as well go in for a good thing as not when he had a chance), and came across the room to take part in her parent’s conversation. She even tried to lure him away on some pretence or other; but this was vain. He seemed rooted to his chair by Clarissa’s side–she listlessly turning over a folio volume of steel plates, he pointing out landscapes and scenes which had been familiar to him in his continental rambles, and remarking upon them in a somewhat disjointed fashion–“Marathon, yes–rather flat, isn’t it? But the mountains make a fine background. We went there with guides one day, when I was a young man. The Acropolis–hum! ha!–very fine ruins, but a most inconvenient place to get at. Would you like to see Greece, Miss Lovel?”

Clarissa gave a little sigh–half pain, half rapture. What chance had she of ever treading that illustrious soil, of ever emerging from the bondage of her dull life? She glanced across the room to the distant spot where Lady Geraldine and George Fairfax sat playing chess. _He_ had been there. She remembered his pleasant talk of his wanderings, on the night of their railroad journey.

“Who would not like to see Greece?” she said.

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Granger answered in his most prosaic way. “It’s a country that ought to be remarkably interesting; but unless one is very well up in its history, one is apt to look at everything in a vague uncertain sort of manner. A mountain here, and a temple there–and then the guides and that kind of people contrive to vulgarise everything somehow; and then there is always an alarm about brigands, to say nothing of the badness of the inns. I really think you would be disappointed in Greece, Miss Lovel.”

“Let me keep my dream,” Clarissa answered rather sadly “I am never likely to see the reality.”

“You cannot be sure of that; at your age all the world is before you.”

“You have read Grote, of course, Miss Lovel?” said Miss Granger, who had read every book which a young lady ought to have read, and who rather prided herself upon the solid nature of her studies.

“Yes, I have read a good deal of Grote,” Clarissa replied meekly.

Miss Granger looked at her as if she rather doubted this assertion, and would like to have come down upon her with some puzzling question about the Archons or the Areopagus, but thought better of it, and asked her father if he had been talking to Mr. Purdew.

Mr. Purdew was a landed gentleman of some standing, whose estate lay near Arden Court, and who had come with his wife and daughters to Lady Laura’s ball.

“He in sitting over there, near the piano,” added Sophia; “I expected to find you enjoying a chat with him.”

“I had my chat with Purdew after luncheon,” answered Mr. Granger; and then he went on turning the leaves for Clarissa with a solemn air, and occasionally pointing out to her some noted feature in a landscape or city. His daughter stared at him in supreme astonishment. She had seen him conventionally polite to young ladies before to-night, but this was something more than conventional politeness. He kept his place all the evening, and all that Sophia could do was to remain on guard.

When Clarissa was lighting her candle at a table in the corridor, Mr. Fairfax came up to her for the first time since the previous night.

“I congratulate you on your conquest, Miss Lovel,” he said in a low voice.

She looked up at him with a pale startled face, for she had not known that he was near her till his voice sounded close in her ear. “I don’t understand you,” she stammered.

“O, of course not; young ladies never can understand that sort of thing. But I understand it very well, and it throws a pretty clear light upon our interview last night. I wasn’t quite prepared for such wise counsel as you gave me then. I can see now whence came the strength of your wisdom. It is a victory worth achieving, Miss Lovel. It means Arden Court.–Yes, that’s a very good portrait, isn’t it?” he went on in a louder key, looking up at a somewhat dingy picture, as a little cluster of ladies came towards the table; “a genuine Sir Joshua, I believe.”

And then came the usual good-nights, and Clarissa went away to her room with those words in her ears, “It means Arden Court.”

Could he be cruel enough to think so despicably of her as this? Could he suppose that she wanted to attract the attention of a man old enough to be her father, only because he was rich and the master of the home she loved? The fact is that Mr. Fairfax–not too good or high-principled a man at the best of times, and yet accounting himself an honourable gentleman–was angry with himself and the whole world, most especially angry with Clarissa, because she had shown herself strong where he had thought to find her weak. Never before had his vanity been so deeply wounded. He had half resolved to sacrifice himself for this girl–and behold, she cared nothing for him!

* * * * *

CHAPTER XV.

CHIEFLY PATERNAL.

The preparations for the wedding went on. Clarissa’s headache did not develop into a fever, and she had no excuse for flying from Hale Castle. Her father, who had written Lady Laura Armstrong several courteous little notes expressing his gratitude for her goodness to his child, surprised Miss Lovel very much by appearing at the Castle one fine afternoon to make a personal acknowledgment of his thankfulness. He consented to remain to dinner, though protesting that he had not dined away from home–except at his brother-in-law’s–for a space of years.

“I am a confirmed recluse, my dear Lady Laura, a worn-out old bookworm, with no better idea of enjoyment than a good fire and a favourite author,” he said; “and I really feel myself quite unfitted for civilised society. But you have a knack at commanding, and to hear is to obey; so if you insist upon it, and will pardon my morning-dress, I remain.”

Mr. Lovel’s morning-dress was a suit of rather clerical-looking black from a fashionable West-end tailor–a costume that would scarcely outrage the proprieties of a patrician dinner-table.

“Clarissa shall show you the gardens between this and dinner-time,” exclaimed Lady Laura. “It’s an age since you’ve seen them, and I want to know your opinion of my improvements. Besides, you must have so much to say to her.”

Clarissa blushed, remembering how very little her father ever had to say to her of a confidential nature, but declared that she would be very pleased to show him the gardens; so after a little more talk with my lady they set out together.

“Well, Clary,” Mr. Lovel began, with his kindest air, “you are making a long stay of it.”

“Too long, papa. I should be so glad to come home. Pray don’t think me ungrateful to Lady Laura, she is all goodness; but I am so tired of this kind of life, and I do so long for the quiet of home.”

“Tired of this kind of life! Did ever any one hear of such a girl! I really think there are some people who would be tired of Paradise. Why, child, it is the making of you to be here! If I were as rich as–as that fellow Granger, for instance; confound Croesus!–I couldn’t give you a better chance. You must stay here as long as that good-natured Lady Laura likes to have you; and I hope you’ll have booked a rich husband before you come home. I shall be very much disappointed if you haven’t.”

“I wish you would not talk in that way, papa; nothing would ever induce me to marry for money.”

“_For_ money; no, I suppose not,” replied Mr. Lovel testily; “but you might marry a man _with_ money. There’s no reason that a rich man should be inferior to the rest of his species. I don’t find anything so remarkably agreeable in poor men.”

“I am not likely to marry foolishly, papa, or to offend you in that way,” Clarissa answered with a kind of quiet firmness, which her father inwardly execrated as “infernal obstinacy;” “but no money in the world would be the faintest temptation to me.”

“Humph! Wait till some Yorkshire squire offers you a thousand a year pin-money; you’ll change your tone then, I should hope. Have you seen anything of that fellow Granger, by the way?”

“I have seen a good deal of Mr. and Miss Granger, papa. They have been staying here for a fortnight, and are here now.”

“You don’t say so! Then I shall be linked into an intimacy with the fellow. Well, it is best to be neighbourly, perhaps. And how do you like Mr. Granger?”

“He is not a particularly unpleasant person, papa; rather stiff and matter-of-fact, but not ungentlemanly; and he has been especially polite to me, as if he pitied me for having lost Arden.”

In a general way Mr. Lovel would have been inclined to protest against being pitied, either in his own person or that of his belongings, by such a man as Daniel Granger. But in his present humour it was not displeasing to him to find that the owner of Arden Court had been especially polite to Clarissa.

“Then he is really a nice fellow, this Granger, eh, Clary?” he said airily.

“I did not say nice, papa.”

“No, but civil and good-natured, and that kind of thing. Do you know, I hear nothing but praises of him about Arden; and he is really doing wonders for the place. Looking at his work with an unjaundiced mind, it is impossible to deny that. And then his wealth!–something enormous, they tell me. How do you like the daughter, by the way?”

This question Mr. Lovel asked with something of a wry face, as if the existence of Daniel Granger’s daughter was not a pleasing circumstance in his mind.

“Not particularly, papa. She is very good, I daresay, and seems anxious to do good among the poor; and she is clever and accomplished, but she is not a winning person. I don’t think I could ever get on with her very well.”

“That’s a pity, since you are such near neighbours.”

“But you have always avoided any acquaintance with the Grangers, papa,” Clarissa said wonderingly.

“Yes, yes, naturally. I have shrunk from knowing people who have turned me out of house and home, as it were. But that sort of thing must come to an end sooner or later. I don’t want to appear prejudiced or churlish; and in short, though I may never care to cross that threshold, there is no reason Miss Granger and you should not be friendly. You have no one at Arden of your own age to associate with, and a companion of that kind might be useful. Has the girl much influence with her father, do you think?”

“She is not a girl, papa, she is a young woman. I don’t suppose she is more than two or three-and-twenty, but no one would ever think of calling Miss Granger a girl.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I scarcely know how to answer it. Mr. Granger seems kind to his daughter, and she talks as if she had a great deal of influence over him; but one does not see much of people’s real feelings in a great house like this. It is ‘company’ all day long. I daresay Mr. and Miss Granger are very fond of one another, but–but–they are not so much to each other as I should like you and me to be, papa,” Clarissa added with a sudden boldness.

Mr. Lovel coughed, as if something had stuck in his throat.

“My dear child, I have every wish to treat you fairly–affectionately, that is to say,” he replied, after that little nervous cough; “but I am not a man given to sentiment, you see, and there are circumstances in my life which go far to excuse a certain coldness. So long as you do not ask too much of me–in the way of sentiment, I mean–we shall get on very well, as we have done since your return from school. I have had every reason to be satisfied.”

This was not much, but Clarissa was grateful even for so little.

“Thank you, papa,” she said in a low voice; “I have been very anxious to please you.”

“Yes, my dear, and I hope–nay, am sure–that your future conduct will give me the same cause for satisfaction; that you will act wisely, and settle the more difficult questions of life like a woman of sense and resolution. There are difficult questions to be solved in life, you know, Clary; and woe betide the woman who lets her heart get the better of her head!”

Clarissa did not quite understand the drift of this remark, but her father dismissed the subject in his lightest manner before she could express her bewilderment.

“That’s quite enough serious talk, my dear,” he said; “and now give me the _carte du pays_. Who is here besides these Grangers? and what little social comedies are being enacted? Your letters, though very nice and dutiful, are not quite up to the Horace-Walpole standard, and have not enlightened me much about the state of things.”

Clarissa ran over the names of the Castle guests. There was one which she felt would be difficult to pronounce, but it must needs come at last. She wound up her list with it: “And–and there are Lady Geraldine Challoner, and the gentleman she is going to marry–Mr. Fairfax.”

To her extreme surprise, the name seemed to awaken some unwonted emotion in her father’s breast.

“Fairfax!” he exclaimed; “what Fairfax is that? You didn’t tell me whom Lady Geraldine was to marry when you told me you were to officiate as bridesmaid. Who is this Mr. Fairfax?”

“He has been in the army, papa, and has sold out. He is the heir to some great estate called Lyvedon, which he is to inherit from an uncle.”

“His son!” muttered Mr. Lovel.

“Do you know Mr. Fairfax, papa?”

“No, I do not know this young man. But I have known others–members of the same family–and have a good reason for hating his name. He comes of a false, unprincipled race. I am sorry for Lady Geraldine.”

“He may not have inherited the faults of his family, papa.”

“May not!” echoed Mr. Lovel contemptuously; “or may. I fancy these vices run in the blood, child, and pass from father to son more surely than a landed estate. To lie and betray came natural to the man I knew. Great Heaven! I can see his false smile at this moment.”

This was said in a low voice; not to Clarissa, but to himself; a half-involuntary exclamation. He turned impatiently presently, and walked hurriedly back towards the Castle.

“Let us go in,” he said. “That name of Fairfax has set my teeth on edge.”

“But you will not be uncivil to Mr. Fairfax, papa?” Clarissa asked anxiously.

“Uncivil to him! No, of course not. The man is Lady Laura’s guest, and a stranger to me; why should I be uncivil to him?”

Nor would it have been possible to imagine by-and-by, when Mr. Lovel and George Fairfax were introduced to each other, that the name of the younger man was in any manner unpleasant to the elder. Clarissa’s father had evidently made up his mind to be agreeable, and was eminently successful in the attempt. At the dinner-table he was really brilliant, and it was a wonder to every one that a man who led a life of seclusion could shine forth all at once with more than the success of a professed diner-out. But it was to Mr. Granger that Marmaduke Lovel was most particularly gracious. He seemed eager to atone, on this one occasion, for all former coldness towards the purchaser of his estate. Nor was Daniel Granger slow to take advantage of his urbane humour. For some reason or other, that gentleman was keenly desirous of acquiring Mr. Lovel’s friendship. It might be the commoner’s slavish worship of ancient race, it might be some deeper motive, that influenced him, but about the fact itself there could be no doubt. The master of Arden was eager to place his coverts, his park, his library, his hot-houses, his picture-gallery–everything that he possessed–at the feet of his ruined neighbour. Yet even in his eagerness to confer these benefits there was some show of delicacy, and he was careful not to outrage the fallen man’s dignity.

Mr. Lovel listened, and bowed, and smiled; pledged himself to nothing; waived off every offer with an airy grace that was all his own. A prime minister, courted by some wealthy place-hunter, could not have had a loftier air; and yet he contrived to make Mr. Granger feel that this was the inauguration of a friendship between them; that he consented to the throwing down of those barriers which had kept them apart hitherto.

“For myself, I am a hermit by profession,” he said; “but I am anxious that my daughter should have friends, and I do not think she could have a more accomplished or agreeable companion than Miss Granger.”

He glanced towards that young lady with a smile–almost a triumphant smile–as he said this. She had been seated next him at dinner, and he had paid her considerable attention–attention which had not been received by her with quite that air of gratification which Mr. Level’s graceful compliments were apt to cause. He was not angry with her, however. He contemplated her with a gentle indulgence, as an interesting study in human nature.

“Well, Mr. Lovel,” said Lady Laura in a confidential tone, when he was wishing her good-night, “what do you think of Mr. Granger now?”

“I think he is a very excellent fellow, my dear Lady Laura; and that I am to blame for having been so prejudiced against him.”

“I am so glad to hear you say that!” cried my lady eagerly. She had drawn him a little way apart from the rest of her visitors, out of earshot of the animated groups of talkers clustered here and there. “And now I want to know if you have made any great discovery?” she added, looking at him triumphantly.

He responded to the look with a most innocent stare.

“A discovery, my dearest Lady Laura–you mystify me. What discovery is there for me to make, except that Hale Castle is the most delightful place to visit?–and that fact I knew beforehand, knowing its mistress.”

“But is it possible that you have seen nothing–guessed nothing? And I should have supposed you such a keen observer–such a profound judge of human nature.”

“One does not enlarge one’s knowledge of human nature by being buried amongst books as I have been. But seriously, Lady Laura, what is the answer to the enigma–what ought I to have guessed, or seen?”

“Why, that Daniel Granger is desperately in love with your daughter.”

“With Clarissa! Impossible! Why, the man is old enough to be her father.”

“Now, my dear Mr. Lovel, you know that is _no_ reason against it. I tell you the thing is certain–palpable to any one who has had some experience in such matters, as I have. I wanted to bring this about; I had set my heart upon it before Clarissa came here, but I did not think it would be accomplished so easily. There is no doubt about his feelings, my dear Mr. Lovel; I know the man thoroughly, and I never saw him pay any woman attention before. Perhaps the poor fellow is scarcely conscious of his own infatuation yet, but the fact is no less certain. He has betrayed himself to me ever so many times by little speeches he has let fall about our dear Clary. I think even the daughter begins to see it.”

“And what then, my kind friend?” asked Mr. Lovel with an air of supreme indifference. “Suppose this fancy of yours to be correct, do you think Clarissa would marry the man?”

“I do not think she would be so foolish as to refuse him,” Lady Laura answered quickly; “unless there were some previous infatuation on her side.”

“You need have no apprehension of that,” returned Mr. Lovel sharply. “Clarissa has never had the opportunity for so much as a flirtation.”

Lady Laura remembered that scene on the balcony with a doubtful feeling.

“I hope she would have some regard for her own interest,” she said thoughtfully. “And if such an opportunity as this were to present itself–as I feel very sure it will–I hope your influence would be exerted on the right side.”

“My dear Lady Laura, my influence should be exercised in any manner you desired,” replied Mr. Lovel eagerly. “You have been so good to that poor friendless girl, that you have a kind of right to dispose of her fate. Heaven forbid that I should interfere with any plans you may have formed on her behalf, except to promote them.”

“It is so good of you to say that. I really am so fond of my dear Clary, and it would so please me to see her make a great marriage, such as this would be. If Mr. Granger were not a good man, if it were a mere question of money, I would not urge it for a moment; but he really is in every way unexceptionable, and if you will give me your permission to use my influence with Clary—-“

“My dear Lady Laura, as a woman, as a mother, you are the fittest judge of what is best for the girl. I leave her in your hands with entire confidence; and if you bring this marriage about, I shall say Providence has been good to us. Yes, I confess I should like to see my daughter mistress of Arden Court.”

Almost as he spoke, there arose before him a vision of what his own position would be if this thing should come to pass. Was it really worth wishing for at best? Never again could he be master of the home of his forefathers. An honoured visitor perhaps, or a tolerated inmate–that was all. Still, it would be something to have his daughter married to a rich man. He had a growing, almost desperate need of some wealthy friend who should stretch out a saving hand between him and his fast-accumulating difficulties; and who so fitted for this office as a son-in-law? Yes, upon the whole, the thing was worth wishing for.

He bade Lady Laura good-night, declaring that this brief glimpse of the civilised world had been strangely agreeable to him. He even promised to stay at the Castle again before long, and so departed, after kissing his daughter almost affectionately, in a better humour with himself and mankind than had been common to him lately.

“So that is young Fairfax,” he said to himself as he jogged slowly homeward in the Arden fly, the single vehicle of that kind at the disposal of the village gentility; “so that is the son of Temple Fairfax. There is a look of his father in his eyes, but not that look of wicked power in his face that there was in the Colonel’s–not that thorough stamp of a bold bad man. It will come, I suppose, in good time.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI.

LORD CALDERWOOD IS THE CAUSE OF INCONVENIENCE.

The preparations for the wedding went on gaily, and whatever inclination to revolt may have lurked in George Fairfax’s breast, he made no sign. Since his insolent address that night in the corridor he had scarcely spoken to Clarissa; but he kept a furtive watch upon her notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her–she was fully conscious of that–unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger’s attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything better than that he should think her capable of courting this man’s admiration. She told herself sometimes that it would be an unspeakable relief to her when the marriage was over, and George Fairfax had gone away from Hale Castle, and out of her life for evermore; and then, while she was trying to believe this, the thought would come to her of what her life would be utterly without him, with no hope of ever seeing him again, with the bitter necessity of remembering him only as Lady Geraldine’s husband. She loved him, and knew that she loved him. To hear his voice, to be in the same room with him, caused her a bitter kind of joy, a something that was sweeter than common pleasure, keener than common pain. His presence, were he ever so silent or angry, gave colour to her life, and to realise the dull blankness of a life without him seemed impossible.

While this silent struggle was going on, and the date of the marriage growing nearer and nearer, Mr. Granger’s attentions became daily more marked. It was impossible even for Clarissa, preoccupied as she was by those other thoughts, to doubt that he admired her with something more than common admiration. Miss Granger’s evident uneasiness and anger were in themselves sufficient to give emphasis to this fact. That young lady, mistress of herself as she was upon most occasions, found the present state