The Lovels of Arden by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook offline reader txt) 📕

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 _protégée_, 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.

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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