"If you really, really wish to have me, dear Lady Laura," she said; "but you have been so kind already, and I have stayed so long, that I begin to feel myself quite an intruder."

"You silly child! I do really, really wish to have you. I should like to keep you with me always, if I could. You suit me so much better than any of my sisters; they are the most provoking girls in the world, I think, for being uninterested in my pursuits. And your Italian is something wonderful.

I have not opened my dictionary since we have been reading together. And beyond all that, I have a very particular reason for wishing you to be here next month."

"Why next month, Lady Laura?"

"I am not going to tell you that."

"But you quite mystify me."

"I mean to mystify you. No, it's not the least use asking questions, Clary; but mind, you must not tease me any more about running away: that is understood."

In all this time Clarissa had not found herself any nearer to that desired result of getting on well with Geraldine Challoner. That lady seemed quite as far away from her after a month's acquaintance as she had seemed at the very first. It was not that Lady Geraldine was uncivil. She was polite, after her manner, to Clarissa, but never cordial; and yet she could not fail to see that George Fairfax admired and liked Miss Lovel, and she might have been supposed to wish to think well of any one he liked.

Was she jealous of Clarissa? Well, no, it scarcely seemed possible to a.s.sociate the fever of jealousy with that serene temperament. She had an air of complete security in all her intercourse with George Fairfax, which was hardly compatible with doubt or the faintest shadow of suspicion.

If ever she did speak of Miss Lovel to her lover, or to any one else, she talked of her as a pretty country girl, and seemed to consider her as far removed, by reason of her youth and obscure position, from herself, as if they had been inhabitants of two separate worlds.

Mr. Lovel had been invited to several dinner-parties at the Castle during his daughter's visit, but was not to be drawn from his seclusion. He had no objection, however, that Clarissa should stay as long as Lady Laura cared to retain her, and wrote very cordially to that effect.

What a pleasant, idle, purposeless life it was, and how rapidly it drifted by for Clarissa! She wondered to find herself so happy; wondered what the charm was which made life so new and sweet, which made her open her eyes on the morning sunshine with such a glad eagerness to greet the beginning of another day, and filled up every hour with such a perfect sense of contentment.

She wondered at this happiness only in a vague dreamy way, not taking much trouble to a.n.a.lyse her feelings. It was scarcely strange that she should be completely happy in a life so different from her dull existence at home.

The freshness and beauty of all these pleasant things would be worn off in time, no doubt, and she would become just like those other young women, with their experience of many seasons, and their perpetual complaint of being bored; but just now, while the freshness lasted, everything delighted her.

Clarissa had been more than six weeks at the Castle, while other visitors had come and gone, and the round of country-house gaieties had been unbroken. The Fermors still lingered on, and languidly deprecated the length of their visit, without any hint of actual departure. Captain Westleigh had gone back to his military duties, very much in love with Miss Lovel. He plaintively protested, in his confidences with a few chosen friends, against a Providence which had made them both penniless.

"I don't suppose I shall ever meet such a girl again," he would declare piteously. "More than once I was on the point of making her an offer; the words were almost out, you know; for I don't go in for making a solemn business of the thing, with a lot of preliminary palaver. If a fellow really likes a girl, he doesn't want to preach a sermon in order to let her know it; and ever so many times, when we've been playing croquet, or when I've been hanging about the piano with her of an evening, I've been on the point of saying, 'Upon my word, Miss Lovel, I think we two are eminently suited to each other, don't you?' or something plain and straightforward of that kind; and then I've remembered that her father can't give her a sixpence, which, taken in conjunction with my own financial condition, would mean starvation!"

"And do you think she liked you?" a curious friend would perhaps inquire.

"Well, I don't know. She might do worse, you see. As a rule, girls generally do like me. I don't see why there should be any difference in her case."

Nor did the Captain for a moment imagine that Clarissa would have rejected him, had he been in a position to make an offer of his hand.

Lady Geraldine was a fixture at Hale. She was to stay there till her marriage, with the exception, perhaps, of a brief excursion to London for millinery purposes, Lady Laura told Clarissa. But the date of the marriage had not yet been settled--had been, indeed, only discussed in the vaguest manner, and the event seemed still remote.

"It will be some time this year, I suppose," Lady Laura said; "but beyond that I can really say nothing. Geraldine is so capricious; and perhaps George Fairfax may not be in a great hurry to give up his bachelor privileges. He is very different from Fred, who worried me into marrying him six weeks after he proposed. And in this case a long engagement seems so absurd, when you consider that they have known each other for ten years.

I shall really be very glad when the business is over, for I never feel quite sure of Geraldine."

CHAPTER VIII.

SMOULDERING FIRES.

With the beginning of August there came a change in the weather. High winds, gloom, and rain succeeded that brilliant cloudless summer-time, which had become, as it were, the normal condition of the universe; and Lady Laura's guests were fain to abandon their picnics and forest excursions, their botanical researches and distant race-meetings--nay, even croquet itself, that perennial source of recreation for the youthful mind, had to be given up, except in the most fitful s.n.a.t.c.hes. In this state of things, amateur concerts and acted charades came into fashion. The billiard-room was crowded from breakfast till dinner time. It was a charmingly composite apartment--having one long wall lined with bookshelves, sacred to the most frivolous ephemeral literature, and a grand piano in an arched recess at one end of the room--and in wet weather was the chosen resort of every socially-disposed guest at Hale. Here Clarissa learned to elevate her pretty little hand into the approved form of bridge, and acquired some acquaintance with the mysteries of cannons and pockets.

It was Mr. Fairfax who taught her billiards. Lady Geraldine dropped into the room now and then, and played a game in a dashing off-hand way with her lover, amidst the admiring comments of her friends; but she did not come very often, and Mr. Fairfax had plenty of time for Clarissa's instruction.

Upon one of these wet days he insisted upon looking over her portfolio of drawings; and in going through a heap of careless sketches they came upon something of her brother Austin's. They were sitting in the library,--a very solemn and splendid chamber, with a carved oak roof and deep mullioned windows,--a room that was less used than any other apartment in the Castle.

Mr. Fairfax had caught Miss Lovel here, with her portfolio open on the table before her, copying a drawing of Piranesi's; so there could be no better opportunity for inspecting the sketches, which she had hitherto refused to show him.

That sketch of Austin's--a group of Arab hors.e.m.e.n done in pen and ink--set them talking about him at once; and George Fairfax told Clarissa all he could tell about his intercourse with her brother.

"I really liked him so much," he said gently, seeing how deeply she was moved by the slightest mention of that name. "I cannot say that I ever knew him intimately, that I can claim to have been his friend; but I used at one time to see a good deal of him, and I was very much impressed by his genius. I never met a young man who gave me a stronger notion of undisciplined genius; but, unhappily, there was a recklessness about him which I can easily imagine would lead him into dangerous a.s.sociations. I was told that he had quarrelled with his family, and meant to sell out, and take to painting as a profession,--and I really believe that he would have made his fortune as a painter; but when I heard of him next, he had gone abroad--to the colonies, some one said. I could never learn anything more precise than that."

"I would give the world to know where he is," said Clarissa mournfully; "but I dare not ask papa anything about him, even if he could tell me, which I doubt very much. I did try to speak of him once; but it was no use--papa would not hear his name."

"That seems very hard; and yet your father must have been proud of him and fond of him once, I should think."

"I am not sure of that. Papa and Austin never seemed to get on quite well together. There was always something--as if there had been some kind of hidden resentment, some painful feeling in the mind of each. I was too young to be a competent judge, of course; but I know, as a child, I had always a sense that there was a cloud between those two, a shadow that seemed to darken our lives."

They talked for a long time of this prodigal son; and this kind of conversation seemed to bring them nearer to each other than anything else that had happened within the six weeks of their acquaintance.

"If ever I have any opportunity of finding out your brother's whereabouts, Miss Lovel, you may be sure that I will use every effort to get you some tidings of him. I don't want to say anything that might lead to your being disappointed; but when I go to town again, I will hunt up a man who used to be one of his friends, and try to learn something. Only you must promise me not to be disappointed if I fail."

"I won't promise that; but I promise to bear my disappointment quietly, and to be grateful to you for your goodness," Clarissa answered, with a faint smile.

They went on with the inspection of the drawings, in which Mr. Fairfax showed himself deeply interested. His own manipulative powers were of the smallest, but he was an excellent critic.

"I think I may say of you what I said of your brother just now--that you might make a fortune, if you were to cultivate art seriously."

"I wish I could make a fortune large enough to buy back Arden Court,"

Clarissa answered eagerly.

"You think so much of Arden?"

"O yes, I am always thinking of it, always dreaming of it; the dear old rooms haunt me sleeping and waking. I suppose they are all altered now. I think it would almost break my heart to see them different."

"Do you know, I am scarcely in a position to understand that fervent love for one's birthplace. I may be said to have no birthplace myself. I was born in lodgings, or a furnished house--some temporary ark of that kind--the next thing to being born on board ship, and having Stepney for one's parish. My father was in a hard-working cavalry regiment, and the early days of my mother's married life were spent in perpetual wanderings.

They separated, when I was about eight years old, for ever--a sad story, of course--something worse than incompatibility of temper on the husband's side; and from that time I never saw him, though he lived for some years.

So, you see, the words 'home' and 'father' are for me very little more than sentimental abstractions. But with my mother I have been quite happy. She has indeed been the most devoted of women. She took a house at Eton when my brother and I were at school there, and superintended our home studies herself; and from that time to this she has watched my career with unchanging care. It is the old story of maternal kindness and filial shortcomings. I have given her a world of trouble; but I am not the less fond of her, or the less grateful to her." He stopped for a few moments, with something like a sigh, and then went on in a lighter tone: "You can see, however, that having no ancestral home of my own, I am hardly able to understand the depth of your feeling for Arden Court. There is an old place down in Kent, a fine old castellated mansion, built in the days of Edward VI., which is to be mine by-and-by; but I doubt if I shall ever value it as you do your old home. Perhaps I am wanting in the poetic feeling necessary for the appreciation of these things."

"O no, it is not that," Clarissa answered eagerly; "but the house you speak of will not have been your home. You won't have that dim, dreamy recollection of childhood spent in the old rooms; another life, the life of another being almost, it seems, as one looks back to it. I have only the faintest memory of my mother; but it is very sweet, and it is all a.s.sociated with Arden Court. I cannot conjure up her image for a moment without that background. Yes, I do wish for fortune, for that one reason. I would give the world to win back Arden."

She was very much in earnest. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened with those eager words. Never perhaps had she looked lovelier than at that moment. George Fairfax paused a little before he answered her, admiring the bright animated face; admiring her, he thought, very much as he might have admired some beautiful wayward child. And then he said gravely:

"It is dangerous to wish for anything so intensely. There are wishes the gratification whereof is fatal. There are a dozen old stories in the cla.s.sics to show that; to say nothing of all those mediaeval legends in which Satan is complaisant to some eager wisher."

"But there is no chance of my wish being gratified. If I could work my fingers to the bone in the pursuit of art or literature, or any of the professions by which women win money, I should never earn the price of Arden; nor would that hateful Mr. Granger be disposed to sell a place which gives him his position in the county. And I suppose he is fond of it, after a fashion. He has spent a fortune upon improvements. Improvements!"

repeated Clarissa contemptuously; "I daresay he has improved away the very spirit of the place."

"You cherish a strong dislike for this gentleman, it seems, Miss Lovel."