"And she loved you, papa?" said Clarissa softly. "I am sure she must have loved you."

"That is a question that I have never answered with any satisfaction to myself. I thought she loved me. She liked me well enough, I believe, till that man crossed her path, and might have learnt to like me better as she grew older and wiser, and rose above the slavery of frivolous pleasures. But, in the most evil hour of her life, she met Temple Fairfax, and from that hour her heart was turned from me. We were travelling, trying to recover from the expenses of a house perpetually full of my wife's set; and it was at Florence that we first encountered the Colonel. He had just returned from India, had been doing great things there, and was considered rather a distinguished person in Florentine society. I need not stop to describe him. His son is like him. He and I became friends, and met almost daily. It was not till a year afterwards that I knew how pitiful a dupe of this man's treachery I had been from the very first. We were still in Italy when I made my first discovery; it was one that let in the light upon his character, but did not seriously involve my wife. We fought, and I was wounded. When I recovered, I brought my wife home to Arden. Our year's retrenchment had left me poorer than when I left home. Your mother's beauty was a luxury not to be maintained more cheaply at Florence than in Yorkshire."

There was another pause, and then Marmaduke Lovel went on, in the same bitter tone:

"Within a short time of our return your brother was born. There are things that I can't even hint to you, Clarissa; but there have been times when the shadow of that man has come between me and my children. Passion has made me unjust. I know that in her worst sin against my love—for I went on loving her to the last—your mother remained what the world calls innocent. But years after I had believed there was an end of all communion between those two, I discovered letters, even stolen meetings—rare, I confess, and never without witnesses, but no less a treason against me. Colonel Fairfax had friends at Holborough, by whose aid he contrived to see my wife. That he urged her to leave me, I know, and that she was steadfast in her refusal to do me that last wrong. But I know too that she loved him. I have read the confession of that which she called her 'madness' under her own hand."

"O, papa, papa, how sad! how dreadful!"

"Within a year or two of your birth she began to fade. From my heart I believe it was this struggle between passion and the last remnant of honour that killed her. I need not tell you the details of my discoveries, some of them made not very long before her death. They led to bitter scenes between us; but I thank God I did believe her protestations of innocence, and that I kept her under my own roof. There were others not so merciful. Colonel Fairfax's wife was told of his devotion to mine at Florence, and the duel which ended our acquaintance. She found out something of his subsequent meetings with your mother, and her jealousy brought about a separation. It was managed quietly enough, but not without scandal; and nothing but my determination to maintain my wife's position could have saved her from utter disgrace. Yes, Clarissa, I loved her to the last, but the misery of that last year was something that no words can tell. She died in my arms, and in her latest hours of consciousness thanked me for what she called my generosity. I went straight from her funeral to London, with a bundle of letters in my pocket, to find Temple Fairfax. What might have happened between us, had we met, I can scarcely guess; but there were no scruples on my side. Fortune favoured him, however; he had sailed for India a few weeks before, in command of his regiment. I had some thoughts of following him even there, but abandoned the notion. My wrongs would keep. I waited for his return, but that never happened. He was killed in Afghanistan, and carried to his Indian grave the reputation of one of the worst men and best soldiers who ever bore the king's commission."

This was all. To speak of these things had profoundly agitated Marmaduke Lovel; but a sudden impulse had moved this man, who was apt to be so silent about himself and his own feelings, and he had been in a manner constrained to tell this story.

"You can understand now, I suppose, Clarissa," he said coldly, after another pause, "why this young man, George Fairfax, is hateful to me."

"Yes, papa. It is only natural that you should be prejudiced against him. Does he know, do you think——" she faltered and stopped, with a bitter sense of shame.

"Does he know what?"

"About the past?"

"Of course he must know. Do you suppose his mother has not told him her grievances?"

Clarissa remembered Mrs. Fairfax's cold manner, and understood the reason of that tacit avoidance which had wounded her so deeply. She too, no doubt, was hateful; as hateful to the injured wife of Colonel Fairfax as his son could be to her father.

"And now, Clarissa," said Mr. Lovel, "remember that any acquaintance between you and George Fairfax is most repugnant to me. I have told you this story in order that there may be no possibility of any mistake between us. God only knows what it costs a man to open old wounds as I have opened mine to-night. Only this afternoon you affected a considerable regard for me, which I promised to return to the best of my power. All that is a dead letter if you hold any communion with this man. Choose him for your friend, and renounce me for your father. You cannot have both."

"He is not my friend, papa; he is nothing to me. Even it there were no such thing as this prejudice on your part, I am not so dishonourably as to forget that Mr. Fairfax is engaged to Lady Geraldine."

"And you promise that there shall be no more meetings, no repetition of the kind of thing I saw to-night?"

"I promise, papa, that of my own free will I will never see him again. Our meeting to-night was entirely accidental."

"On your part, perhaps; but was it so on his?"

"I cannot tell that, papa."

Mr. Lovel felt himself obliged to be satisfied with this answer. It seemed to him a hard thing that the son of his enemy should arise thus to torment him—an accident that might have tempted a superstitious man to think that an evil fate brooded over his house; and Marmaduke Lovel's mind, being by no means strongly influenced by belief, was more or less tainted with superstition. Looked at from any point of view, it was too provoking that this man should cross Clarissa's pathway at the very moment when it was all-important to her destiny that her heart should be untouched, her fancy unfettered.

"If nothing comes of this Granger business I shall take her abroad," Mr. Lovel said to himself; "anything to get her out of the way of a Fairfax."

He drank his tea in silence, meditating upon that little scene in the moonlight, and stealing a look at his daughter every now and then, as she sat opposite to him pretending to read. He could see that the open book was the merest pretence, and that Clarissa was profoundly agitated. Was it her mother's story that had moved her so deeply, or that other newer story which George Fairfax might have been whispering to her just now in the lonely moonlit road? Mr. Lovel was disturbed by this question, but did not care to seek any farther explanation from his daughter. There are some subjects that will not bear discussion.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XIX.

MR. GRANGER IS PRECIPITATE.

Clarissa had little sleep that night. The image of George Fairfax, and of that dead soldier whom she pictured darkly like him, haunted her all through the slow silent hours. Her mother's story had touched her to the heart; but her sympathies were with her father. Here was a new reason why she should shut her heart against Lady Geraldine's lover, if any reason were wanted to strengthen that sense of honour which reigns supreme in a girl's unsullied soul. In her conviction as to what was right she never wavered. She felt herself very weak where this man was concerned—weak enough to love him in spite of reason and honour; but she did not doubt her power to keep that guilty secret, and to hide her weakness from George Fairfax.

She had almost forgotten her engagement at Arden Court when her father came down to his late breakfast, and found her sketching at a little table near the window, with the affectionate Ponto nestling close at her side.

"I thought you would be dressing for your visit by this time, Clary," he said very graciously.

"My visit, papa? O, yes, to the Court," she replied, with a faint sigh of resignation. "I had very nearly forgotten all about it. I was to be there between twelve and one, I think. I shall have plenty of time to give you your breakfast. It's not eleven yet."

"Be sure you dress yourself becomingly. I don't want you to appear at a disadvantage compared with the heiress."

"I'll put on my prettiest dress, if you like, papa; but I can't wear such silks and laces as Miss Granger wears."

"You will have such things some day, I daresay, and set them off better than Miss Granger. She is not a bad-looking young woman—good complexion, fine figure, and so on—but as stiff as a poker."

"I think she is mentally stiff, papa; she is a sort of person I could never get on with. How I wish you were coming with me this morning!"

"I couldn't manage it, Clarissa. The schools and the model villagers would be more than I could stand. But at your age you ought to be interested in that sort of thing; and you really ought to get on with Miss Granger."

It was half-past twelve when Miss Lovel opened the gate leading into Arden Park—the first time that she had ever opened it; though she had stood so often leaning on that rustic boundary, and gazing into the well-known woodland, with fond sad looks. There was an actual pain at her heart as she entered that unforgotten domain; and she felt angry with Daniel Granger for having forced this visit upon her.

"I suppose he is determined that we shall pay homage to his wealth, and admire his taste, and drink the bitter cup of humiliation to the very dregs. If he had any real delicacy of feeling, he would understand our reluctance to any intimacy with him."

While she was thinking of Mr. Granger in this unfriendly spirit, a step sounded on the winding path before her, and looking up, she perceived the subject of her thoughts coming quickly towards her. Was there ever such an intrusive man? She blushed rosy red with vexation.

He came to her, with his hat in his hand, looking very big and stiff and counting-house like among the flickering shadows of forest trees; not an Arcadian figure by any means, but with a certain formal business-like-dignity about him, for all that; not a man to be ridiculed or despised.

"I am glad you have not forgotten your promise to come early, Miss Lovel," he said, in his strong sonorous voice. "I was just walking over to the cottage to remind you. Sophia is quite ready to do the honours of her schools. But I shall not let her carry you off till after luncheon; I want to show you my improvements. I had set my heart on your seeing the Court for the first time—since its restoration—under my guidance."

"Pompous, insufferable parvenu," thought Clarissa, to whom this desire on Mr. Granger's part seemed only an odious eagerness to exhibit his wealth. She little knew how much sentiment there was involved in this wish of Daniel Granger's.

They came into the open part of the park presently, and she was fain to confess, that whatever changes had been made—and the alterations here were not many—had been made with a perfect appreciation of the picturesque. Even the supreme neatness with which the grounds were now kept did not mar their beauty. Fairy-like young plantations of rare specimens of the coniferous tribe had arisen at every available point of the landscape, wherever there had been barrenness before. Here and there the old timber had been thinned a little, always judiciously. No cockney freaks of fancy disfigured the scene. There were no sham ruins, no artificial waterfalls poorly supplied with water, no Chinese pagodas, or Swiss cottages, or gothic hermitages. At one point of the shrubbery where the gloom of cypress and fir was deepest, they came suddenly on a Grecian temple, whose slender marble columns might have gleamed amidst the sacred groves of Diana; and this was the only indulgence Mr. Granger had allowed to an architect's fancy, Presently, at the end of a wide avenue, a broad alley of turf between double lines of unrivalled beeches, the first glimpse of the Court burst upon Clarissa's sight—unchanged and beautiful. A man must have been a Goth, indeed, who had altered the outward aspect of the place by a hair's breadth.

The house was surrounded by a moat, and there was a massive stone gateway, of older date than the Court itself—though that was old—dividing a small prim garden from the park; this gatehouse was a noble piece of masonry, of the purest gothic, rich with the mellow tint of age, and almost as perfect as in the days when some wandering companionship of masons gave the last stroke of their chisels to the delicate tracery of window and parapet.

The Court formed three sides of a quadrangle. A dear old place, lovable rather than magnificent, yet with all the grandeur of the middle ages; a place that might have stood a siege perhaps, but had evidently been built for a home. The garden originally belonging to the house was simplicity itself, and covered scarcely an acre. All round the inner border of the moat there ran a broad terrace-walk, divided by a low stone balustrade from a grassy bank that sloped down to the water. The square plot of ground before the house was laid out in quaint old flower-beds, where the roses seemed, to Clarissa at least, to flourish as they flourished nowhere else. The rest of the garden consisted of lawn and flower-beds, with more roses. There were no trees near the house, and the stables and out-offices, which made a massive pile of building, formed a background to the grave old gothic mansion.

Without, at least, Mr. Granger had respected the past. Clarissa felt relieved by this moderation, and was inclined to think him a little less hateful. So far he had said nothing which could seem to betray a boastful spirit. He had watched her face and listened to her few remarks with a kind of deferential eagerness, as if it had been a matter of vital importance to him that she should approve what he had done. A steward, who had been entrusted with the conduct of alterations and renovations during the absence of his master, could scarcely have appeared more anxious as to the result of his operations.

The great iron gates under the gothic archway stood wide open just as they had been wont to do in Mr. Lovel's time, and Clarissa and her companion passed into the quiet garden. How well she remembered the neglected air of the place when last she had seen it—the mossgrown walks, the duckweed in the moat, the straggling rose-bushes, everything out of order, from the broken weathercock on one of the gateway towers, to the scraper by the half-glass door in one corner of the quadrangle, which had been, used instead of the chief entrance! It seems natural to a man of decayed fortune to shut up his hall-door and sneak in and out of his habitation by some obscure portal.

Now all was changed; a kind of antique primness, which had no taint of cockney stiffness, pervaded the scene. One might have expected to see Sir Thomas More or Lord Bacon emerge from the massive gothic porch, and stroll with slow step and meditative aspect towards the stone sun-dial that stood in the centre of that square rose-garden. The whole place had an air of doublet and hose. It seemed older to Clarissa than when she had seen it last—older and yet newer, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, restored, after a century of decay, to all its original grandeur.

The door under the porch stood open; but there were a couple of men in a sober livery waiting in the hall—footmen who had never been reared in those Yorkshire wilds—men with powdered hair, and the stamp of Grosvenor-square upon them. Those flew to open inner doors, and Clarissa began with wonder to behold the new glories of the mansion. She followed Mr. Granger in silence through dining and billiard-rooms, saloon and picture-gallery, boudoir and music-room, in all of which the Elizabethan air, the solemn grace of a departed age, had been maintained with a marvellous art. Money can do so much; above all, where a man has no bigoted belief in his own taste or capacity, and will put his trust in the intelligence of professional artists. Daniel Granger had done this. He had said to an accomplished architect, "I give you the house of my choice; make it what it was in its best days. Improve wherever you can, but alter as little as possible; and, above all, no modernising."

Empowered by this carte blanche, the architect had given his soul to dreams of mediaeval splendour and had produced a place which, in its way, was faultless. No matter that some of the carved-oak furniture was fresh from the chisel of the carver, while other things were the spoil of old Belgian churches; that the tapestry in one saloon was as old as the days of its designer, Boucher, and that in the adjoining chamber made on purpose for Arden Court at the Gobelins manufactory of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon III. No matter that the gilt-leather hangings in one room had hung there in the reign of Charles I., while those in another were supplied by a West-end upholsterer. Perfect taste had harmonised every detail; there was not so much as a footstool or a curtain that could have been called an anachronism. Clarissa looked at all these things with a strange sense of wandering somewhere in a dream. It was, and yet was not her old home. There was nothing incongruous. The place scarcely seemed new to her, though everything was altered. It was only as it ought to have been always.

She remembered the bare rooms, the scanty shabby furniture of the Georgian era, the patches and glimpses of faded splendour here and there, the Bond-street prettinesses and fripperies in her mother's boudoir, which, even in her early girlhood, had grown tawdry and rococo, the old pictures rotting in their tarnished frames; everything with that sordid air of poverty and decay upon it."

"Well, Miss Lovel," Daniel Granger said at last, when they had gone through all the chief rooms almost in silence, "do you approve of what has been done?"

"It is beautiful," Clarissa answered, "most beautiful; but—but it breaks my heart to see it."

The words were wrung from her somehow. In the next moment she was ashamed of them—it seemed like the basest envy.

"O, pray, pray do not think me mean or contemptible, Mr. Granger," she said; "it is not that I envy you your house, only it was my home so long, and I always felt its neglect so keenly; and to see it now so beautiful, as I could have only pictured it in my dreams—and even in them I could not fancy it so perfect."

"It may be your home again, Clarissa, if you care to make it so," said Mr. Granger, coming very close to her, and with a sudden passion in his voice. "I little thought when I planned this place that it would one day seem worthless to me without one lovely mistress. It is all yours, Clarissa, if you will have it—and the heart of its master, who never thought that it was in his nature to feel what he feels for you."

He tried to take her hand; but she shrank away from him, trembling a little, and with a frightened look in her face.

"Mr. Granger, O, pray, pray don't——"

"For God's sake don't tell me that this seems preposterous or hateful to you—that you cannot value the love of a man old enough to be your father. You do not know what it is for a man of my age and my character to love for the first time. I had gone through life heart-whole, Clarissa, till I saw you. Between my wife and me there was never more than liking. She was a good woman, and I respected her, and we got on very well together. That was all. Clarissa, tell me that there is some hope. I ought not to have spoken so soon; I never meant to be such a fool—but the words came in spite of me. O, my dearest, don't crush me with a point-blank refusal. I know that all this must seem strange to you. Let it pass. Think no more of anything I have said till you know me better—till you find my love is worth having. I believe I fell in love with you that first afternoon in the library at Hale. From that time forth your face haunted me—like some beautiful picture—the loveliest thing I had ever seen, Clarissa."

"I cannot answer you, Mr. Granger," she said in a broken voice; "you have shocked and surprised me so much, I——"

"Shocked and surprised you! That seems hard."

In that very moment it flashed upon her that this was what her father and Lady Laura Armstrong had wished to bring about. She was to win back the lost heritage of Arden Court—win it by the sacrifice of every natural feeling of her heart, by the barter of her very self.

How much more Mr. Granger might have said there is no knowing—for, once having spoken, a man is loth to leave such a subject as this unexhausted—but there came to Clarissa's relief the rustling sound of a stiff silk dress, announcing the advent of Miss Granger, who sailed towards them through a vista of splendid rooms, with a stately uncompromising air that did not argue the warmest possible welcome for her guest.

"I have been hunting for you everywhere, papa," she said in an aggrieved tone. "Where have you been hiding Miss Lovel?"

And then she held out her hand and shook hands with Clarissa in the coldest manner in which it was possible for a human being to perform that ceremony. She looked at her father with watchful suspicious eyes as he walked away to one of the windows, not caring that his daughter should see his face just at that moment. There was something, evidently, Sophia thought,—something which it concerned her to discover.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XX.

MODEL VILLAGERS.

They went to luncheon in a secondary dining room—a comfortable apartment, which served pleasantly for all small gatherings, and had that social air so impossible in a stately banqueting-chamber—a perfect gem of a room, hung with gilt leather, relieved here and there by a choice picture in a frame of gold and ebony. Here the draperies were of a dark crimson cut velvet, which the sunshine brightened into ruby. The only ornaments in this room were a pair of matchless Venetian girandoles on the mantelpiece, and a monster Palissy dish, almost as elaborate in design as the shield of Achilles, on the oaken buffet.

The luncheon was not a very genial repast; Miss Granger maintained a polite sulkiness; Clarissa had not yet recovered from the agitation which Mr. Granger's most unexpected avowal had occasioned; and even the strong man himself felt his nerves shaken, and knew that he was at a disadvantage, between the daughter who suspected him and the woman who had all but refused his hand. He did his utmost to seem at his ease, and to beguile his daughter into a more cordial bearing; but there was a gloom upon that little party of three which was palpably oppressive. It seemed in vain to struggle against the dismal influence. Mr. Granger felt relieved when, just at the close of the meal, his butler announced that Mr. Tillott was in the drawing-room. Mr. Tillott was a mild inoffensive young man of High-church tendencies, the curate of Arden.

"I asked Tillott to go round the schools with us this afternoon," Mr. Granger said to his daughter in an explanatory tone. "I know what an interest he takes in the thing, and I thought it would be pleasanter."

"You are very kind, papa," Miss Granger replied, with implacable stiffness; "but I really don't see what we want with Mr. Tillott, or with you either. There's not the least reason that we should take you away from your usual occupations; and you are generally so busy of an afternoon. Miss Lovel and I can see everything there is to be seen, without any escort; and I have always heard you complain that my schools bored you."

"Well, perhaps I may have had rather an overdose of the philanthropic business occasionally, my dear," answered Mr. Granger, with a good-humoured laugh. "However, I have set my heart upon seeing how all your improvements affect Miss Lovel. She has such a peculiar interest in the place, you see, and is so identified with the people. I thought you'd be pleased to have Tillott. He's really a good fellow, and you and he always seem to have so much to talk about."

On this they all repaired to the drawing-room, where Mr. Tillott the curate was sitting at a table, turning over the leaves of an illuminated psalter, and looking altogether as if he had just posed himself for a photograph.

To this mild young man Miss Granger was in a manner compelled to relax the austerity of her demeanour. She even smiled in a frosty way as she shook hands with him; but she had no less a sense of the fact that her father had out-manoeuvred her, and that this invitation to Mr. Tillott was a crafty design whereby he intended to have Clarissa all to himself during that afternoon.

"I am sorry you could not come to luncheon with us, Tillott," said Mr. Granger in his hearty way. "Or are you sure, by the bye, that you have taken luncheon? We can go back to the dining-room and hear the last news of the parish while you wash down some game-pie with a glass or two of the old madeira."

"Thanks, you are very good; but I never eat meat on Wednesdays or Fridays. I had a hard-boiled egg and some cocoa at half-past seven this morning, and shall take nothing more till sunset. I had duties at Swanwick which detained me till within the last half-hour, or I should have been very happy to have eaten a biscuit with you at your luncheon."

"Upon my word, Tillott, you are the most indefatigable of men; but I really wish you High-church people had not such a fancy for starving yourselves. So much expenditure of brain-power must involve a waste of the coarser material. Now, Sophy, if you and Miss Lovel are ready, we may as well start."

They went out into the sunny quadrangle, where the late roses were blooming with all their old luxuriance. How well Clarissa remembered them in those days when they had been the sole glory of the neglected place! In spite of Sophia, who tried her hardest to prevent the arrangement, Mr. Granger contrived that he and Clarissa should walk side by side, and that Mr. Tillott should completely absorb his daughter. This the curate was by no means indisposed to do; for, if the youthful saint had a weakness, it lay in the direction of vanity. He sincerely admired the serious qualities of Miss Granger's mind, and conceived that, blest with such a woman and with the free use of her fortune, he might achieve a rare distinction for his labours in tins fold, to say nothing of placing himself on the high-road to a bishopric. Nor was he inclined to think Miss Granger indifferent to his own merits, or that the conquest would be by any means an impossible one. It was a question of time, he thought; the sympathy between them was too strong not to take some higher development. He thought of St. Francis de Sales and Madame de Chantal, and fancied himself entrusted with the full guidance of Miss Granger's superior mind.

They walked across the park to a small gothic gateway, which had been made since the close of Marmaduke Lovel's reign. Just outside this stood the chapel of Mr. Granger's building, and the new schools, also gothic, and with that bran-new aspect against which architecture can do nothing. They would be picturesque, perhaps, ten years hence. To-day they had the odour of the architect's drawing-board.

Beyond the schools there were some twenty cottages, of the same modern gothic, each habitation more or less borne down and in a manner extinguished by its porch and chimney. If the rooms had been in reasonable proportion to the chimneys, the cottages would have been mansions; but gothic chimneys are pleasing objects, and the general effect was good. These twenty cottages formed the beginning of Mr. Granger's model village—a new Arden, which was to arise on this side of the Court. They were for the most part inhabited by gardeners and labourers more or less dependent on Arden Court, and it had been therefore an easy matter for Miss Granger to obtain a certain deference to her wishes from the tenants.

The inspection of the schools and cottages was rather a tedious business. Sophia would not let her companions off with an iota less than the whole thing. Her model pupils were trotted out and examined in the Scriptures—always in Kings and Chronicles—and evinced a familiarity with the ways of Jezebel and Rehoboam that made Clarissa blush at the thought of her own ignorance. Then there came an exhibition of plain needlework, excruciatingly suggestive of impaired eyesight; then fancy-work, which Miss Granger contemplated with a doubtful air, as having a frivolous tendency; and then the school mistress's parlour and kitchen were shown, and displayed so extreme a neatness that made one wonder where she lived; and then the garden, where the heels of one's boots seemed a profanation; and then, the schools and schoolhouses being exhausted, there came the cottages.

How Clarissa's heart bled for the nice clean motherly women who were put through their paces for Miss Granger's glorification, and were fain to confess that their housekeeping had been all a delusion and a snare till that young lady taught them domestic economy! How she pitied them as the severe Sophia led the way into sacred corners, and lifted the lids of coppers and dustholes, and opened cupboard-doors, and once, with an aspect of horror, detected an actual cobweb lurking in an angle of the whitewashed wall! Clarissa could not admire things too much, in order to do away with some of the bitterness of that microscopic survey. Then there was such cross-examination about church-going, and the shortcomings of the absent husbands were so ruthlessly dragged into the light of day. The poor wives blushed to own that these unregenerate spirits had still a lurking desire for an occasional social evening at the Coach and Horses, in spite of the charms of a gothic chimney, and a porch that was massive enough for the dungeon of a mediaeval fortress. Miss Granger and the curate played into each other's hands, and between the two the model villagers underwent a kind of moral dissection. It was dreary work altogether; and Daniel Granger had been guilty of more than one yawn before it was all over, even though he had the new delight of being near Clarissa all the time. It was finished at last. One woman, who in her benighted state had known Miss Lovel, had shown herself touched by the sight of her.

"You never come anigh me now, miss," she said tenderly, "though I've knowed you ever since you was a little girl; and it would do my heart good to see your sweet face here once in a way."

"You've better friends now, you see, Mrs. Rice," Clarissa answered gently. "I could do so little for you. But I shall be pleased to look in upon you now and then."

"Do'ee, now, miss; me and my master will be right down glad to see you. However kind new friends may be," this was said with a conciliatory curtsey to Miss Granger, "we can't forget old friends. We haven't forgot your goodness when my boy Bill was laid up with the fever, miss, and how you sat beside his bed and read to him."

It was at this juncture that Sophia espied another cobweb, after which the little party left this the last of the cottages, and walked back to the park, Daniel Granger still by Clarissa's side. He did not make the faintest allusion to that desperate avowal of the morning. He was indeed cruelly ashamed of his precipitation, feeling that he had gone the very way to ruin his cause. All that afternoon, while his daughter had been peering into coppers and washing-tubs and dustholes, he had been meditating upon the absurdity of his conduct, and hating himself for his folly. He was not a man who suffered from a mean opinion of his own merits. On the contrary, in all the ordinary commerce of life he fancied himself more than the equal of the best among his fellow-men. He had never wished himself other than what he was, or mistrusted his own judgment, or doubted that he, Daniel Granger, was a very important atom in the scheme of creation. But in this case it was different. He knew himself to be a grave middle-aged man, with none of those attributes that might have qualified him to take a young woman's heart by storm; and as surely as he knew this, he also knew himself to be passionately in love. All the happiness of his future life depended on this girl who walked by his side, with her pale calm face and deep hazel eyes. If she should refuse him, all would be finished. He had dreamed his dream, and life could never any more be what it had been for him. The days were past in which, he himself had been all-sufficient for his own happiness. But, though he repented that hasty betrayal of his feelings, he did not altogether despair. It is not easy to reduce a man of his age and character to the humble level of a despairing lover. He had so much to bestow, and could not separate himself in his own mind from those rich gifts of fortune which went along with him. No, there was every chance of ultimate success, he thought, in spite of his rashness of that morning. He had only to teach himself patience—to bide his time.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XXI.

VERY FAR GONE.

It was a little after six when they came to the gateway of the Court, at which point Mr. Tillott made his adieux. Mr. Granger would have been very glad to ask him to dinner, had he not promised Mr. Lovel that they would be quite alone; so he made up for any apparent inhospitality towards the curate by a hearty invitation for the following Sunday.

There was nearly an hour and a half before dinner; but Sophia carried off her guest to her own rooms at once, for the revision of her toilet, and detained her in those upper regions until just before the ringing of the second bell, very much to the aggravation of Mr. Granger, who paced the long drawing-room in dismal solitude, waiting for Mr. Lovel's arrival.

In her own rooms Miss Granger became a shade more gracious to Clarissa. The exhibition of her sanctum sanctorum was always pleasing to her. It was the primmest of apartments, half study, half office; and Sophia, one of whose proudest boasts was of her methodical habits, here displayed herself in full force. It seemed as if she had inherited all the commercial faculties of her father, and having no other outlet for this mercantile genius, was fain to expend her gifts upon the petty details of a woman's life. Never had Clarissa seen such a writing-table, with so many pigeon-holes for the classification of documents, and such ranges of drawers with Brahma locks. Miss Granger might have carried on a small banking business with less paraphernalia than she employed in the conduct of her housekeeping and philanthropy.

"I am my own housekeeper," she told Clarissa triumphantly, "and know the consumption of this large establishment to an ounce. There is no stint of anything, of course. The diet in the servant's hall is on the most liberal scale, but there is no waste. Every cinder produced in the house is sifted; every candle we burn has been in stock a twelvemonth. I could not pretend to teach my cottagers economy if I did not practise it myself. I rule everything by the doctrine of averages—so much consumed in one month, so much necessarily required in another; and I reduce everything to figures. Figures cannot deceive, as I tell Mrs. Plumptree, my cook, when she shows me a result that I cannot understand or accept. And there are my books."

Miss Granger waved her hand towards a row of most uncompromising-looking volumes of the ledger or day-book species. The delight which she displayed in these things was something curious to behold. Every small charity Miss Granger performed, every shortcoming of the recipients thereof, was recorded in those inexorable volumes. She had a book for the record of the church-going, a book for the plain needlework, and was wont to freeze the young blood of her school-children by telling them at the end of the year how many inches of cambric frilling they had hemmed, and how many times they had missed afternoon service. To them she appeared a supernatural creature—a kind of prophetess, sent upon earth for their correction and abasement.

On a solid ecclesiastical-looking oak table in one of the windows Miss Granger had a row of brass-bound money-boxes, inscribed, "For the Home Mission," "For the Extra Curate Society," and so on—boxes into which Miss Granger's friends and visitors were expected to drop their mite. Clarissa felt that if she had been laden down with shillings, she could not for her very life have approached those formidable boxes to drop one in under Miss Granger's ken; but, of course, this was a morbid fancy. On another table there were little piles of material for plain work; so prim, so square, so geometrically precise, that Clarissa thought the flannel itself looked cold—a hard, fibrous, cruel fabric, that could never be of use to mortal flesh except as an irritant.

Miss Granger's bedroom and dressing-room were like Miss Granger's morning-room. No frivolous mediaevalism here, no dainty upholsterer's work in many-coloured woods, but solid mahogany, relieved by solemn draperies of drab damask, in a style which the wise Sophia called unpretentious. The chief feature in one room was a sewing-machine that looked like a small church organ, and in the other a monster medicine-chest, from the contents of which Miss Granger dealt out doses of her own concoction to her parishioners. Both of these objects she showed to Clarissa with pride, but the medicine-chest was evidently the favourite.

Having improved the time after this manner till twenty minutes past seven, with a very brief interval devoted to the duties of the toilet, the two young ladies went down to the drawing-room, where the lamps were lighted, and Mr. Lovel just arrived.

That gentleman had the honour of taking Miss Granger in to dinner, and did his utmost to render himself agreeable to her in a quiet undemonstrative way, and to take the gauge of her mental powers. She received his attentions graciously enough—indeed it would not have been easy for any one to be ungracious to Marmaduke Lovel when he cared to please—but he could see very clearly that she suspected the state of affairs, and would be, to the last degree, antagonistic to his own and his daughter's interests. He saw how close a watch she kept upon her father all through the dinner, and how her attention was distracted every now and then when he was talking to Clarissa.

"It is only natural that she should set her face against the business," he said to himself; "no woman in her position could be expected to act otherwise; but it strikes me that Granger is not a man likely to be influenced by domestic opposition. He is the kind of man to take his own way, I fancy, in defiance of an opposing universe—a very difficult man to govern. He seems over head and ears in love, however, and it will be Clarissa's own fault if she doesn't do what she likes with him. Heaven grant she may prove reasonable! Most women would be enchanted with such an opportunity, but with a raw school-girl there is no knowing. And that fellow Fairfax's influence may work against us, in spite of her protestations last night."

This was the gist of Mr. Level's disjointed musings during the progress of the dinner; but he took care not to neglect Miss Granger even for a moment, and he gave her very little time to listen to her father's conversation with Clarissa.

The dinner ceremonial was performed in a manner which seemed perfection, even to the fastidious taste of Marmaduke Lovel. There was not the faintest indication of ostentation. Daniel Granger's father had been rich before him; he had been born in the commercial purple, as it were, and none of these things were new to him. Before the Arden Court days he had occupied a handsome modern country house southward, near Doncaster. He had only expanded his style of living after the purchase of the Court, that was all. He had good taste too, and a keen sense of the incongruous. He did not affect the orchids and frivolous floral decorations, the fragile fairy-like glass, with which Lady Laura Armstrong brightened her dinner-table; but, on the other hand, his plate, of which he exhibited no vulgar profusion, was in the highest art, the old Indian china dinner-service scarcely less costly than solid silver, and the heavy diamond-cut glass, with gold emblazonment of crest and monogram, worthy to be exhibited behind the glazed doors of a cabinet. There was no such abomination as gas in the state chambers of Arden Court. Innumerable candles, in antique silver candelabra, gave a subdued brightness to the dining-room. More candles, in sconces against the walls, and two pairs of noble moderator-lamps, on bronze and ormolu pedestals six feet high, lighted the drawing-room. In the halls and corridors there was the same soft glow of lamplight. Only in kitchens and out-offices and stables was the gas permitted to blaze merrily for the illumination of cooks and scullions, grooms and helpers.

Miss Granger only lingered long enough to trifle with a cluster of purple grapes before giving the signal for withdrawal Her father started up to open the dining-room door, with a little sudden sigh. He had had Clarissa all to himself throughout the dinner, and had been very happy, talking about things that were commonplace enough in themselves, but finding a perfect contentment in the fact that he was talking to her, that she listened to him and smiled upon him graciously, with a sweet self-possession which put him quite at his ease. She had recovered from that awkward scene of the morning, and had settled in her own mind that the business was rather absurd than serious. She had only to take care that Mr. Granger never had any second opportunity for indulging in such folly.

He held the door open as Clarissa and his daughter went out of the room—held it till that slim girlish figure had vanished at the end of the corridor, and then came back to his seat with another sigh.

"Very far gone," Mr. Lovel thought, smiling ever so little, as he bent over his claret-glass, pretending to admire the colour of the wine.

It was really wonderful. That vague dream which had grown out of Lady Laura's womanly hints, that pleasant phantom which she had conjured up in Mr. Lovel's mental vision a month or two ago, in the midsummer afternoon, had made itself into a reality so quickly as to astound a man too Horatian in his philosophy to be easily surprised. The fish was such a big one to be caught so easily—without any exercise of those subtle manoeuvres and Machiavellian artifices in which the skilful angler delights—nay, to pounce open-eyed upon the hook, and swallow it bodily!

Mr. Granger filled his glass with such a nervous hand, that half the claret he poured out ran upon the shining oak table. He wiped up the spilt wine clumsily enough, with a muttered denunciation of his own folly, and then made a feeble effort to talk about indifferent things.

It was of no use; with every appearance of courtesy and interest Mr. Lovel contrived not to help him. One subject after another fell flat: the state of the Conservative party, the probability of a war—there is always a probability of war somewhere, according to after-dinner politicians—the aspect of the country politically and agriculturally, and so on. No, it was no use; Daniel Granger broke down altogether at last, and thought it best to unbosom himself.

"There is something that I think you have a right to know, Mr. Lovel," he said, in an awkward hesitating way; "something which I should scarcely like you to learn from your daughter's lips, should she think it worth her while to mention it, before you have heard it from mine. The fact is, in plain English"—he was playing with his dessert-knife as he spoke, and seemed to be debating within himself whereabouts upon the dinning-table he should begin to carve his name—"the fact is, I made an abject fool of myself this morning. I love your daughter—and told her so."

Mr. Lovel gave a little start, the faintest perceptible movement, expressive of a gentle astonishment.

"I need hardly tell you that you have taken me entirely by surprise," he said in his quietest tone.

"Of course not. People always are surprised when a man of my age presumes to fall in love with a beautiful girl of eighteen or twenty. If I were to marry some worn-out woman of fashion, some battered widow, steeped to the lips in worldly wisdom, every one would call the match the most suitable thing possible. But if a man of fifty ventures to dream a brighter dream, he is condemned at once for a fool."

"Pardon me, my dear Granger; I have no idea of looking at things in that light. I only remark that you surprise me, as you no doubt surprised my daughter by any avowal you may have made this morning."

"Yes; and, I fear, disgusted her still more. I daresay I did my cause all the harm that it was possible to do it."

"I must own that you were precipitate," Mr. Lovel answered, with his quiet smile. He felt as if he had been talking to a schoolboy. In his own words the man was so "very far gone."

"I shall know how to be more careful in future, if not wiser; but I suffered myself to be carried away by impulse this morning. It was altogether unworthy of—of my time of life." This was said rather bitterly. "Frankly, now, Mr. Lovel: if in the future I were able to gain some hold upon your daughter's affection—without that I would do nothing, no, so help me heaven, however passionately I might love her; if I could—if, in spite of the difference of our ages, I could win her heart—would you be in any way antagonistic to such a marriage?"

"On the contrary, my dear Granger." Mr. Lovel had already something of the tone of a father-in-law. "Slight as our actual acquaintance has been, I think I know the estimable qualities of your character well enough from other sources to be able to say that such a marriage would be eminently pleasing to me. Nor is this all. I mean to be perfectly candid with you, Granger. My daughter and myself have both an almost romantic attachment to this place, and I freely own that it would be very delightful to me to see her mistress of her old home. But, at the same time, I give you my honour that nothing would induce me to govern her choice by the smallest exercise of parental influence. If you can win her, win her, and my best wishes shall go with your wooing; but I will utter no word to persuade her to be your wife."

"I respect you for that resolution; I think I should have asked you to be neutral, if you hadn't said as much. I couldn't stand the idea of a wife driven into my arms by fatherly coercion. I suppose such things are done in modern society. No, I must win my treasure myself, or not at all. I have everything against me, no doubt, except a rival. There is no fear of that, is there, Lovel?"

"Not the slightest. Clarissa is the merest school-girl. Her visit to Lady Laura Armstrong was her first glimpse of the world. No, Granger, you have the field all before you. And you strike me as a man not likely to be vanquished by small difficulties."

"I never yet set myself to do a thing which I didn't accomplish in the long run," answered Mr. Granger; "but then I never set myself to win a woman's heart. My wife and I came together easily enough—in the way of business, as I may say—and liked each other well enough, and I regretted her honestly when she was gone, poor soul! but that was all. I was never 'in love' till I knew your daughter; never understood the meaning of the phrase. Of all the accidents that might have happened to me, this is the most surprising to myself. I can never cease to wonder at my own folly."

"I do not know why you should call it a folly. You are only in the very middle of a man's life; you have a fortune that exempts you from all care and labour, and of course at the same time leaves you more or less without occupation. Your daughter will marry and leave you in a year or two, no doubt. Without some new tie your future existence must needs be very empty."

"I have felt that; but only since I have loved your daughter."

This was all. The men came in with coffee, and put an end to all confidential converse; after which Mr. Granger seemed very glad to go back to the drawing-room, where Clarissa was playing a mazurka; while Sophia sat before a great frame, upon which some splendid achievement in Berlin woolwork, that was to be the glory of an approaching charity bazaar, was rapidly advancing towards completion. The design was a group of dogs, after Landseer, and Miss Granger was putting in the pert black nose of a Skye-terrier as the gentlemen entered. The two ladies were as far apart as they well could be in the spacious room, and had altogether an inharmonious air, Mr. Granger thought; but then he was nervously anxious that these two should become friends.

He went straight to the piano, and seated himself near Clarissa, almost with the air of having a right to take that place.

"Pray go on playing," he said; "that seems very pretty music. I am no judge, and I don't pretend to care for that classical music which every one talks about nowadays, but I know what pleases me."

The evening was not an especially gay one; but it seemed pleasant enough to Mr. Granger, and he found himself wondering at its brevity. He showed Clarissa some of his favourite pictures. His collection of modern art was a fine one—not large, but very perfect in its way, and he was delighted to see her appreciation of his treasures. Here at least was a point upon which they might sympathise. He had been a good deal worried by Sophia's obtuseness upon all artistic matters.

Mr. Lovel was not very sorry when the fly from the Arden Inn was announced, and it was time to go home. The pictures were fine, no doubt, and the old house was beautiful in its restored splendour; but the whole business jarred upon Marmaduke Lovel's sensitive nerves just a little, in spite of the sudden realization of that vague dream of his. This place might be his daughter's home, and he return to it: but not as its master. The day of his glory was gone. He was doubtful if he should even care to inhabit that house as his daughter's guest. He had to remind himself of the desperate condition of his own circumstances before he could feel duly grateful to Providence for his daughter's subjugation of Daniel Granger.

He was careful to utter no word about her conquest on the way home, or during the quarter of an hour Clarissa spent with him before going to her room.

"You look pale and tired, my child," he said, with a sympathetic air, turning over the leaves of a book as he spoke.

"The day was rather fatiguing, papa," his daughter answered listlessly, "and Miss Granger is a tiring person. She is so strong-minded, that she makes one feel weak and helpless by the mere force of contrast."

"Yes, she is a tiring person, certainly; but I think I had the worst of her at dinner and in the evening."

"But there was all the time before dinner, papa. She showed us her cottages—O, how I pitied the poor people! though I daresay she is kind to them, in her way; but imagine any one coming in here and opening all our cupboards, and spying out cobwebs, and giving a little shriek at the discovery of a new loaf in our larder. She found out that one of her model cottagers had been eating new bread. She said it gave her quite a revulsion of feeling. And then when we went home she showed me her account-books and her medicine-chest. It was very tiring."

"Poor child! and this young woman will have Arden Court some day—unless her father should marry again."

Clarissa's pale face flamed with sudden crimson.

"Which he is pretty sure to do, sooner or later," continued Mr. Lovel, with an absent meditative air, as of a man who discusses the most indifferent subject possible. "I hope he may. It would be a pity for such a place to fall into such hands. She would make it a phalanstery, a nest for Dorcas societies and callow curates."

"But if she does good with her money, papa, what more could one wish?"

"I don't believe that she would do much good. There is a pinched hard look about the lower part of her face which makes me fancy she is mean. I believe she would hoard her money, and make a great talk and fuss about nothing. Yes, I hope Granger will marry again. The house is very fine, isn't it, since its renovation?"

"It is superb, papa. Dearly as I love the place, I did not think it could be made so beautiful."

"Yes, and everything has been done in good taste, too," Mr. Lovel went on, in rather a querulous tone. "I did not expect to see that. But of course a man of that kind has only to put himself into the hands of a first-class architect, and if he is lucky enough to select an architect with an artistic mind, the thing is done. All the rest is merely a question of money. Good heavens, what a shabby sordid hole this room looks, after the place we have come from!"

The room was not so bad as to merit that look of angry disgust with which Mr. Lovel surveyed it. Curtains and carpet were something the worse for wear, the old-fashioned furniture was a little sombre; but the rich binding of the books and a rare old bronze here and there redeemed it from commonness—poor jetsam and flotsam from the wreck of the great house, but enough to give some touch of elegance to meaner things.

"O, papa," Clarissa cried reproachfully, "the room is very nice, and we have been peaceful and happy in it. I don't suppose all the splendour of Arden would have made us much happier. Those external things make so little difference."

She thought of those evenings at Hale Castle, when George Fairfax had abandoned her to pay duty to his betrothed, and of the desolation of spirit that had come upon her in the midst of those brilliant surroundings.

Her father paced the little room as if it had been a den, and answered her philosophic remonstrance with an exclamation of contempt.

"That's rank nonsense, Clarissa—copybook morality, which nobody in his heart ever believes. External things make all the difference—except when a man is writhing in physical pain perhaps. External things make the difference between a king and a beggar. Do you suppose that man Granger is no happier for the possession of Arden Court—of those pictures of his? Why, every time he looks at a Frith or Millais he feels a little thrill of triumph, as he says to himself, 'And that is mine.' There is a sensuous delight in beautiful surroundings which will remain to a man whose heart is dead to every other form of pleasure. I suppose that is why the Popes were such patrons of art in days gone by. It was the one legitimate delight left to them. Do you imagine it is no pleasure to dine every night as that man dines? no happiness to feel the sense of security about the future which he feels every morning? Great God, when I think of his position and of mine!"

Never before had he spoken so freely to his daughter; never had he so completely revealed the weakness of his mind.

She was sorry for him, and forbore to utter any of those pious commonplaces by which she might have attempted to bring him to a better frame of mind. She had tact enough to divine that he was best left to himself—left to struggle out of this grovelling state by some effort of his own, rather than to be dragged from the slough of despond by moral violence of hers.

He dismissed her presently with a brief good-night; but lying awake nearly two hours afterwards, she heard him pass her door on the way to his room. He too was wakeful, therefore, and full of care.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XXII.

TAKING THE PLEDGE.

Clarissa had a visitor next day. She was clipping and trimming the late roses in the bright autumnal afternoon, when Lady Laura Armstrong's close carriage drove up to the gate, with my lady inside it, in deep mourning. The visit was unexpected, and startled Clarissa a little, with a sensation that was not all pleasure. She could scarcely be otherwise than glad to see so kind a friend; but there were reasons why the advent of any one from Hale Castle should be somewhat painful to her. That meeting with George Fairfax by the churchyard had never been quite out of her mind since it happened. His looks and his words had haunted her perpetually, and now she was inclined to ascribe Lady Laura's coming to some influence of his. She had a guilty feeling, as if she had indeed tried to steal Lady Geraldine's lover.

Lady Laura greeted her with all the old cordiality. There was a relief in that; and Clarissa's face, which had been very pale when she opened the gate to admit her visitor, brightened a little as my lady kissed her.

"My dear child, I am so glad to see you again!" exclaimed Lady Laura. "I am not supposed to stir outside the Castle in all this dreary week. Poor papa is to be buried to-morrow; but I wanted so much to see you on a most important business; so I ordered the brougham and drove here, with the blinds down all the way; and I'm sure, Clary, you won't think that I feel papa's loss any less because I come to see you just now. But I declare you are looking as pale and wan as any of us at Hale. You have not recovered that dreadful shock yet."

"It was indeed a dreadful shock, dear Lady Laura," said Clarissa; and then in a less steady tone she went on: "Lady Geraldine is better, I hope?"

"Geraldine is what she always is, Clary—a marvel of calmness. And yet I know she feels this affliction very deeply. She was papa's favourite, you know, and had a most extraordinary influence over him. He was so proud of her, poor dear!"

"Won't you come into the house, Lady Laura?"

"By and by, just to pay my respects to your papa. But we'll stay in the garden for the present, please, dear. I have something most particular to say to you."

Clarissa's heart beat a little quicker. This most particular something was about George Fairfax: she felt very sure of that.

"I am going to be quite candid with you, Clary," Lady Laura began presently, when they were in a narrow walk sheltered by hazel bushes, the most secluded bit of the garden. "I shall treat you just as if you were a younger sister of my own. I think I have almost a right to do that; for I'm sure I love you as much as if you were my sister."

And here Lady Laura's plump little black-gloved hand squeezed Clarissa's tenderly.

"You have been all goodness to me," the girl answered; "I can never be too grateful to you."

"Nonsense, Clary; I will not have that word gratitude spoken between us. I only want you to understand that I am sincerely attached to you, and that I am the last person in the world to hold your happiness lightly. And now, dearest child, tell me the truth—have you seen George Fairfax since you left Hale?"

Clarissa flushed crimson. To be asked for the truth, as if, under any circumstances, she would have spoken anything less than truth about George Fairfax! And yet that unwonted guilty feeling clung to her, and she was not a little ashamed to confess that she had seen him.

"Yes, Lady Laura."

"I thought so. I was sure of it. He came here on the very day you left—the day which was to have been his wedding-day."

"It was on that evening that I saw him; but he did not come to this house. I was sitting outside the churchyard sketching when I saw him."

"He did not come to the house—no; but he came to Arden on purpose to see you," Lady Laura answered eagerly. "I am sure of that."

Unhappily Clarissa could not deny the fact. He had told her only too plainly that he had come to Arden determined to see her.

"Now, Clary, let us be perfectly frank. Before my sister Geraldine came to Hale, I told you that the attachment between her and George Fairfax was one of long standing; that I was sure her happiness was involved in the matter, and how rejoiced I was at the turn things had taken. I told you all this, Clary; but I did not tell you that in the years we had known him Mr. Fairfax had been wild and unsteady; that, while always more or less devoted to Geraldine, he had had attachments elsewhere—unacknowledged attachments of no very creditable nature; such affairs as one only hears of by a side wind, as it were. How much Geraldine may have known of this, I cannot tell. I heard the scandals, naturally enough, through Fred; but she may have heard very little. I said nothing of this to you, Clarissa; it was not necessary that I should say anything to depreciate the character of my future brother-in-law, and of a man I really liked."

"Of course not," faltered Clarissa.

"Of course not. I was only too happy to find that George had become a reformed person, and that he had declared himself so soon after the change in his fortunes. I was convinced that Geraldine loved him, and that she could only be really happy as his wife. I am convinced of that still; but I know that nothing on earth could induce her to marry him if she had the least doubt of his devotion to herself."

"I hope that she may never have occasion to doubt that, Lady Laura," answered Clarissa. It was really all she could find to say under the circumstances.

"I hope not, and I think not, Clary. He has been attached to my sister so long—he proposed to her in such a deliberate manner—that I can scarcely imagine he would prove really inconstant. But I know that he is a slave to a pretty face, and fatally apt to be ruled by the impulse of the moment. It would be very hard now, Clary, if some transient fancy of that kind were to ruin the happiness of two lives—would it not, my dear?"

"It would be very hard."

"O, Clarissa, do pray be candid. You must understand what I mean. That wretched man has been making love to you?"

"You ought not to ask me such a question, Lady Laura," answered Clarissa, sorely perplexed by this straight attack.

"You must know that I should respect Lady Geraldine's position—that I should be incapable of forgetting her claims upon Mr. Fairfax. Whatever he may have said to me has been, the merest folly. He knows that I consider it in that light, and I have refused ever to see him again if I can possibly help it."

"That's right, dear!" cried Lady Laura, with a pleased look. "I knew that you would come out of the business well, in spite of everything. Of course you can care nothing for this foolish fellow; but I know Geraldine's sensitive nature so well, and that if she had the faintest suspicion of George's conduct, the whole thing would be off for ever—an attachment of many years' standing, think of that, Clary! Now I want you to promise me that, come what may, you will give Mr. Fairfax no encouragement. Without encouragement this foolish fancy will die out very quickly. Of course, if it were possible you could care for him, I would not come here to ask you such a thing as this. You would have a right to consider your own happiness before my sister's. But as that is out of the question, and the man is almost a stranger to you——"

"Out of the question—almost a stranger." Clarissa remembered that night in the railway carriage, and it seemed to her as if she and George Fairfax had never been strangers.

"It is so easy for you to give me this promise. Tell me now, Clary dear, that you will not have anything to say to him, if he should contrive to see you again."

"I will not, Lady Laura."

"Is that a promise, now, Clarissa?"

"A most sacred promise."

Lady Armstrong kissed her young friend in ratification of the compact.

"You are a dear generous-minded girl," she said, "and I feel as if I had saved my sister's happiness by this bold course. And now tell me what you have been doing since you left us. Have you seen anything more of the Grangers?"

Questioned thus, Clarissa was fain to give her friend some slight account of her day at Arden.

"It must have affected you very much to see the old place. Ah, Clary, it is you who ought to be mistress there, instead of Miss Granger!"

Clarissa blushed, remembering that awkward avowal of Daniel Granger's.

"I am not fit to be mistress of such, a place," she said. "I could never manage things as Miss Granger does."

"Not in that petty way, perhaps. I should not care to see you keeping accounts and prying into grocery-lists as she does. You would govern your house on a grander scale. I should like to see you the owner of a great house"

"That is a thing you are never likely to see, Lady Laura."

"I am not so sure of that. I have an idea that there is a great fortune lying at your feet, if you would only stoop to pick it up. But girls are so foolish; they never know what is really for their happiness; and if by any chance there should happen to be some passing folly, some fancy of the moment, to come between them and good fortune, everything is lost."

She looked at Clarissa closely as she said this. The girl's face had been changing from red to pale throughout the interview. She was very pale now, but quite self-possessed, and had left off blushing. Had she not given her promise—pledged away her freedom of action with regard to George Fairfax—and thus made an end of everything between them? She felt very calm, but she felt as if she had made a sacrifice. As for Daniel Granger, any reference to him and his admiration for her touched upon the regions of the absurd. Nothing—no friendly manoeuvring of Lady Laura's, no selfish desires of her father's—could ever induce her to listen for a moment to any proposition from that quarter.

She asked her visitor to go into the house presently, in order to put an end to the conversation; and Lady Laura went in to say a few words to Mr. Lovel. They were very melancholy words—all about the dead, and his innumerable virtues—which seemed really at this stage of his history to have been alloyed by no human frailty or shortcoming. Mr. Lovel was sympathetic to the last degree—sighed in unison with his visitor, and brushed some stray drops of moisture from his own eyelids when Lady Laura wept. And then he went out to the carriage with my lady, and saw her drive away, with the blinds discreetly lowered as before.

"What did she come about, Clarissa?" he asked his daughter, while they were going back to the house.

"Only to see me, papa."

"Only to see you! She must have had something very important to say to you, I should think, or she would scarcely have come at such a time."

He glanced at his daughter sharply as he said this, but did not question her farther, though he would have liked to do so. He had a shrewd suspicion that this visit of Lady Laura's bore some reference to George Fairfax. Had there been a row at the Castle? he wondered, and had my lady come to scold her protegee?

"I don't suppose they would show her much mercy if she stood in the way of their schemes," he said to himself. "His brother's death makes this young Fairfax a very decent match. The property must be worth five or six thousand a year—five or six thousand. I wonder what Daniel Granger's income is? Nearer fifty thousand than five, if I may believe what I have been told."

Mr. Granger and his daughter called at Mill Cottage next day: the fair Sophia with a somewhat unwilling aspect, though she was decently civil to Mr. and Miss Lovel. She had protested against the flagrant breach of etiquette in calling on people who had just dined with her, instead of waiting until those diners had discharged their obligation by calling on her; but in vain. Her father had brought her to look at some of Clarissa's sketches, he told his friends.

"I want her to take more interest in landscape art, Mr. Lovel," he said, "and I think your daughter's example may inspire her. Miss Lovel seems to me to have a real genius for landscape. I saw some studies of ferns and underwood that she had done at Hale—full of freedom and of feeling. Sophia doesn't draw badly, but she wants feeling."

The young lady thus coldly commended gave her head rather a supercilious toss as she replied,—

"You must remember that I have higher duties than sketching, papa," she said; "I cannot devote all my existence to ferns and blackberry-bushes."

"O, yes, of course; you've your schools, and that kind of thing; but you might give more time to art than you do, especially if you left the management of the house more to Mrs. Plumptree. I think you waste time and energy upon details."

"I hope I know my duty as mistress of a large establishment, papa, and that I shall never feel the responsibility of administering a large income any less than I do at present. It would be a bad thing for you if I became careless of your interests in order to roam about sketching toadstools and blackberry-bushes."

Mr. Granger looked as if he were rather doubtful upon this point, but it was evidently wisest not to push the discussion too far.

"Will you be so kind as to show us your portfolio, Miss Lovel?" he asked.

"Of course she will," answered her father promptly; "she will only be too happy to exhibit her humble performances to Miss Granger. Bring your drawing-book, Clary."

Clarissa would have given the world to refuse. A drawing-book is in some measure a silent confidante—almost a journal. She did not know how far her random sketches—some of them mere vagabondage of the pencil, jotted down half unconsciously—might betray the secrets of her inner life to the cold eyes of Miss Granger.

"I'd better bring down my finished drawings, papa; those that were mounted for you at Belforet," she said.

"Nonsense, child; Mr. Granger wants to see your rough sketches, not those stiff schoolgirl things, which I suppose were finished by your drawing-master. Bring that book you are always scribbling in. The girl has a kind of passion for art," said Mr. Lovel, rather fretfully; "she is seldom without a pencil in her hand. What are you looking for, Clarissa, in that owlish way? There's your book on that table."

He pointed to the volume—Clarissa's other self and perpetual companion—the very book she had been sketching in when George Fairfax surprised her by the churchyard wall. There was no help for it, no disobeying that imperious finger of her father's; so she brought the book meekly and laid it open before Sophia Granger.

The father and daughter turned over the leaves together. It was book of "bits:" masses of foliage, bramble, and bird's-nest; here the head of an animal, there the profile of a friend; anon a bit of still life; a vase of flowers, with the arabesqued drapery of a curtain for a background; everywhere the evidence of artistic feeling and a practised hand, everywhere a something much above a schoolgirl's art.

Miss Granger looked through the leaves with an icy air. She was obliged to say, "Very pretty," or "Very clever," once in a way; but this cold praise evidently cost her an effort. Not so her father. He was interested in every page, and criticised everything with a real knowledge of what he was talking about, which made Clarissa feel that he was at least no pretender in his love of art; that he was not a man who bought pictures merely because he was rich and picture-buying was the right thing to do.

They came presently to the pages Clarissa had covered at Hale Castle—bits of familiar landscape, glimpses of still life in the Castle rooms, and lightly-touched portraits of the Castle guests. There was one head that appeared very much oftener than others, and Clarissa felt herself blushing a deeper red every time Mr. Granger paused to contemplate this particular likeness.

He lingered longer over each of these sketches, with rather a puzzled air, and though the execution of these heads was very spirited, he forbore to praise.

"There is one face here that I see a good deal of, Miss Lovel," he said at last. "I think it is Mr. Fairfax, is it not?"

Clarissa looked at a profile of George Fairfax dubiously.

"Yes, I believe I meant that for Mr. Fairfax; his is a very easy face to draw, much easier than Lady Geraldine's, though her features are so regular. All my portraits of her are failures."

"I have only seen one attempt at Lady Geraldine's portrait in this book, Miss Lovel," said Sophia.

"I have some more on loose sheets of paper, somewhere; and then I generally destroy my failures, if they are quite hopeless."

"Mr. Fairfax would be quite flattered if he could see how often you have sketched him," Sophia continued blandly.

Clarissa thought of the leaf George Fairfax had cut out of her drawing-book; a recollection which did not serve to diminish her embarrassment.

"I daresay Mr. Fairfax is quite vain enough without any flattery of that kind," said Mr. Lovel. "And now that you have exhibited your rough sketches, you can bring those mounted drawings, if you like, Clarissa."

This was a signal for the closing of the book, which Clarissa felt was intended for her relief. She put the volume back upon the little side-table from which she had taken it, and ran upstairs to fetch her landscapes. These Miss Granger surveyed in the same cold tolerant manner with which she had surveyed the sketch-book—the manner of a person who could have done much better in that line herself, if she had cared to do anything so frivolous.

After this Mr. Lovel and his daughter called at the Court; and the acquaintance between the two families being thus formally inaugurated by a dinner and a couple of morning calls, Mr. Granger came very often to the Cottage, unaccompanied by the inflexible Sophia, who began to feel that her father's infatuation was not to be lessened by any influence of hers, and that she might just as well let him take his own way. It was an odious unexpected turn which events had taken; but there was no help for it. Her confidential maid, Hannah Warman, reminded her of that solemn truth whenever she ventured to touch upon this critical subject.

"If your pa was a young man, miss, or a man that had admired a great many ladies in his time, it would be quite different," said the astute Warman; "but never having took notice of any one before, and taking such particular notice of this young lady, makes it clear to any one that's got eyes. Depend upon it, miss, it won't be long before he'll make her an offer; and it isn't likely she'll refuse him—not with a ruined pa to urge her on!"

"I suppose not," said Sophia disconsolately.

"And after all, miss, he might have made a worse choice. If he were to marry one of those manoeuvring middle-aged widows we've met so often out visiting, you'd have had a regular stepmother, that would have taken every bit of power out of your hands, and treated you like a child. But Miss Lovel seems a very nice young lady, and being so near your own age will be quite a companion for you."

"I don't want such a companion. There is no sympathy between Miss Lovel and me; you ought to know that, Warman. Her tastes are the very reverse of mine, in every way. It's not possible we can ever get on well together; and if papa marries her, I shall feel that he is quite lost to me. Besides, how could I ever have any feeling but contempt for a girl who would marry for money? and of course Miss Lovel could only marry papa for the sake of his money."

"It's done so often nowadays. And sometimes those matches turn out very well—better than some of the love-matches, I've heard say."

"It's no use discussing this hateful business, Warman," Miss Granger answered haughtily. "Nothing could change my opinion."

And in this inflexible manner did Daniel Granger's daughter set her face against the woman he had chosen from among all other women for his wife. He felt that it was so, and that there would be a hard battle for him to fight in the future between these two influences; but no silent opposition of his daughter's could weaken his determination to win Clarissa Lovel, if she was to be won by him.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XXIII.

"HE'S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE."

Mr. Granger fell into the habit of strolling across his park, and dropping into the garden of Mill Cottage by that little gate across which Clarissa had so often contemplated the groves and shades of her lost home. He would drop in sometimes in the gloaming, and take a cup of tea in the bright lamplit parlour, where Mr. Lovel dawdled away life over Greek plays, Burton's Anatomy, and Sir Thomas Browne—a humble apartment, which seemed pleasanter to Mr. Granger under the dominion of that spell which bound him just now, than the most luxurious of his mediaeval chambers. Here he would talk politics with Mr. Lovel, who took a mild interest in the course of public affairs, and whose languid adherence to the Conservative party served to sustain discussion with Daniel Granger, who was a vigorous Liberal.

After tea the visitor generally asked for music; and Clarissa would play her favourite waltzes and mazourkas, while the two gentlemen went on with their conversation. There were not many points of sympathy between the two, perhaps. It is doubtful whether Daniel Granger had ever read a line of a Greek play since his attainment to manhood and independence, though he had been driven along the usual highway of the Classics by expensive tutors, and had a dim remembrance of early drillings in Caesar and Virgil. Burton he had certainly never looked into, nor any of those other English classics which were the delight of Marmaduke Lovel; so the subject of books was a dead letter between them. But they found enough to talk about somehow, and really seemed to get on very tolerably together. Mr. Granger was bent upon standing well with his poor neighbour; and Mr. Lovel appeared by no means displeased by the rapid growth of this acquaintance, from which he had so obstinately recoiled in the past. He took care, however, not to be demonstrative of his satisfaction, and allowed Mr. Granger to feel that at the best he was admitted to Mill Cottage on sufferance, under protest as it were, and as a concession to his own wishes. Yet Mr. Lovel meant all this time that his daughter should be mistress of Arden Court, and that his debts should be paid, and his future comfort provided for out of the ample purse of Daniel Granger.

"I shall go and live on the Continent," he thought, "when that is all settled. I could not exist as a hanger-on in the house that was once my own, I might find myself a pied a terre in Paris or Vienna, and finish life pleasantly enough among some of the friends I liked when I was young. Six or seven hundred a year would be opulence for a man of my habits."

Little by little Clarissa came to accept those visits of Mr. Granger's as a common part of her daily life; but she had not the faintest notion that she was drifting into a position from which it would be difficult by-and-by to escape. He paid her no disagreeable attentions; he never alluded to that unfortunate declaration which she remembered with such a sense of its absurdity. It did not seem unreasonable to suppose that he came to Mill Cottage for no keener delight than a quiet chat with Mr. Lovel about the possibility of a coming war, or the chances of a change in the ministry.

Clarissa had been home from Hale nearly six weeks, and she had neither heard nor seen any more of George Fairfax. So far there had been no temptation for the violation of that sacred pledge which she had given to Lady Laura Armstrong. His persistence did not amount to much evidently; his ardour was easily checked; he had sworn that night that she should see him, should listen to him, and six weeks had gone by without his having made the faintest attempt to approach her. It was best, of course, that it should be so—an unqualified blessing for the girl whose determination to be true to herself and her duty was so deeply fixed; and yet she felt a little wounded, a little humiliated, as if she had been tricked by the common phrases of a general wooer—duped into giving something where nothing had been given to her.

"Lady Laura might well talk about his transient folly," she said to herself. "It has not lasted very long. She need scarcely have taken the trouble to be uneasy about it."

There had been one brief note for Clarissa from the mistress of Hale Castle, announcing her departure for Baden with Mr. Armstrong, who was going to shoot capercailzies in the Black Forest. Lady Geraldine, who was very much shaken by her father's death, was to go with them. There was not a word about Mr. Fairfax, and Clarissa had no idea as to his whereabouts. He had gone with the Baden party most likely, she told herself.

It was near the close of October. The days were free from rain or blusterous winds, but dull and gray. The leaves were falling silently in the woods about Arden, and the whole scene wore that aspect of subdued mournfulness which is pleasant enough to the light of heart, but very sad to those who mourn. Clarissa Lovel was not light-hearted. She had discovered of late that there was something wanting in her life. The days were longer and drearier than they used to be. Every day she awoke with a faint sense of expectation that was like an undefined hope; something would come to pass, something would happen to her before the day was done, to quicken the sluggish current of her life; and at nightfall, when the uneventful day had passed in its customary blankness, her heart would grow very heavy. Her father watched her somewhat anxiously at this crisis of her life, and was inwardly disturbed on perceiving her depression.

She went out into the garden alone one evening after dinner, as it was her wont to do almost every evening, leaving Mr. Lovel dozing luxuriously in his easy-chair by the fire—she went out alone in the chill gray dusk, and paced the familiar walks, between borders in which there were only pale autumnal flowers, chrysanthemums and china asters of faint yellow and fainter purple. Even the garden looked melancholy in this wan light, Clarissa thought. She made the circuit of the small domain, walked up and down the path by the mill-stream two or three times, and then went into the leafless orchard, where the gnarled old trees cast their misshapen shadows on the close-cropped grass. A week-old moon had just risen, pale in the lessening twilight. The landscape had a cold shadowy beauty of its own; but to-night everything seemed wan and cheerless to Clarissa.

She was near the gate leading into Arden Park, when she heard a crackling of withered leaves, the sound of an approaching footstep. It was Mr. Granger, of course. She gave a sigh of resignation. Another evening of the pattern which had grown so familiar to her, that it seemed almost as if Mr. Granger must have been dropping in of an evening all her life. The usual talk of public matters—the leaders in that day's Times, and so on. The usual request for a little music; the usual inquiries about her recent artistic studies. It was as monotonous as the lessons she had learned at Madame Marot's seminary.

"Is my life to go on like that for ever?" she asked herself.

The step came a little nearer. Surely it was lighter and quicker than Daniel Granger's—it had a sharp martial sound; it was like a step she had learned to know very well in the gardens of Hale Castle.

"He is at Baden," she said to herself.

But the beating of her heart grew faster in spite of that tranquillizing assurance. She heard an unaccustomed hand trying the fastening of the gate, then a bolt withdrawn, the sharp light step upon the turf behind her, and in the next moment George Fairfax was by her side, among the weird shadows of the orchard trees.

He tried to draw her towards him, with the air of an accepted lover.

"My darling!" he said, "I knew I should find you here. I had a fancy that you would be here, waiting for me in the pale moonlight."

Clarissa laughed—rather an artificial little laugh—but she felt the situation could only be treated lightly. The foolish passionate heart was beating so fast all the time, and the pale face might have told so much, if the light of the new-risen moon had not been dim as yet.

"How long do you suppose I have been waiting at this spot for you, Mr. Fairfax?" she asked lightly. "For six weeks?"

"Six weeks! Yes, it is six weeks since I saw you. It might be six years, if I were to measure the time by my own impatience. I have been at Nice, Clarissa, almost ever since that night we parted."

"At Nice! with Lady Laura and Lady Geraldine, I suppose, I thought they were going to Baden."

"They are at Baden; but I have not been with them. I left England with my mother, who had a very bad attack of her chronic asthma earlier than usual this year, and was ordered off to the South of France, where she is obliged to spend all her winters, poor soul. I went with her, and stayed till she was set up again in some measure. I was really uneasy about her; and it was a good excuse for getting away from Hale."

Clarissa murmured some conventional expression of sympathy, but that was all.

"My darling," said George Fairfax, taking her cold hand in his—she tried to withdraw it, but it was powerless in that firm grasp—"My darling, you know why I have come here; and you know now why my coming has been so long delayed. I could not write to you. The Fates are against us, Clarissa, and I do not expect much favour from your father. So I feared that a letter might do us mischief, and put off everything till I could come, I said a few words to Laura Armstrong before I left the Castle—not telling her very much, but giving her a strong hint of the truth. I don't think she'll be surprised by anything I may do; and my letters to Geraldine have all been written to prepare the way for our parting. I know she will be generous; and if my position with regard to her is rather a despicable one, I have done all I could to make the best of it. I have not made things worse by deceit or double-dealing. I should have boldly asked for my freedom before this, but I hear such bad accounts of poor Geraldine, who seems to be dreadfully grieved by her father's loss, that I have put off all idea of any direct explanation for the present. I am not the less resolved, however, Clarissa."

Miss Lovel turned her face towards him for the first time, and looked at him with a proud steady gaze. She had given her promise, and was not afraid that anything, not even his tenderest, most passionate pleading, could ever tempt her to break it; but she knew more and more that she loved him—that it was his absence and silence which, had made her life so blank, that his coming was the event she had waited and watched for day after day.

"Why should you break faith with Lady Geraldine?" she asked calmly.

"Why! Because my bondage has been hateful to me ever since I came to Hale. Because there is only one woman I will have for my wife—and her name is Clarissa Lovel!"

"You had better keep your word, Mr. Fairfax. I was quite in earnest in what I said to you six weeks ago. Nothing in the world would ever induce me to have any part in your breach of faith. Why, even if I loved you—" her voice trembled a little here, and George Fairfax repeated the words after her, "Even if you loved me—I could never trust you. How could I hope that, after having been so false to her, you could be true to me?"