Clarissa found herself in great request for the dances, and danced more than she had done since the days of her schoolgirl waltzes and polkas in the play-room at Belforet. It was about an hour after the dancing had begun, when Lady Laura brought her no less a partner than Mr. Granger, who had walked a solemn quadrille or two with a stately dowager, and whose request was very surprising to Clarissa. She had one set of quadrilles, however, unappropriated on her card, and expressed herself at Mr. Granger"s disposal for that particular dance, and then tripped away, to be whirled round the great room by one of her military partners.
Daniel Granger stood amongst the loungers at one end of the room, watching that aerial revolving figure. Yes, Lady Laura was right; she was very lovely. In all his life he had never before paid much heed to female loveliness, any more than to the grandeurs and splendours of nature, or anything beyond the narrow boundary of his own successful commonplace existence. But in this girl"s face there was something that attracted his attention, and dwelt in his memory when he was away from her; perhaps, after all, it was the result of her position rather than her beauty. It was natural that he should be interested in her, poor child. He had robbed her of her home, or it would seem so to her, no doubt; and she had let him see that she set an exaggerated value on that lost home, that she clung to it with a morbid sentimentality.
"I should not wonder if she hates me," he said to himself. He had never thought as much about her father, but then certainly he had never been brought into such close contact with her father.
He waited quietly for that appointed quadrille, declining a dance in which Lady Laura would have enlisted him, and keeping a close watch upon Clarissa during the interval. What a gay b.u.t.terfly creature she seemed to-night! He could scarcely fancy this was the same girl who had spoken so mournfully of her lost home in the library that afternoon. He looked from her to his daughter for a moment, comparing the two; Sophia resplendent in pink areophane and pearls, and showing herself not above the pleasures of a polka; eminently a fine young woman, but O, of what a different day from that other one!
Once Miss Fermor, pa.s.sing the rich man on the arm of her partner, surprised the watchful gray eyes with a new look in them--a look that was neither cold nor stern.
"So, my gentleman," thought the lively Lizzie, "is it that way your fancies are drifting? It was I whom you suspected of dangerous designs the other day, Miss Granger. Take care your papa doesn"t fall into a deeper pitfall.
I should like to see him marry again, if it were only to take down that great pink creature"s insolence." Whereby it will be seen that Miss Granger was not quite so popular among her contemporaries as, in the serenity of her self-possessed soul, she was wont to imagine herself.
The quadrille began presently, and Clarissa walked through its serious mazes with the man whom she was apt to consider the enemy of her race. She could not help wondering a little to find herself in this position, and her replies to Mr. Granger"s commonplace remarks were somewhat mechanical.
Once he contrived to bring the conversation round to Arden Court.
"It would give me so much pleasure to see you there as my daughter"s guest," he said, in a warmer tone than was usual to him, "and I really think you would be interested in her parish-work. She has done wonders in a small way."
"I have no doubt. You are very kind," faltered Clarissa; "but I do not the least understand how to manage people as Miss Granger does, and I could not bear to come to the Court. I was so happy there with my brother, and now that he is gone, and that I am forbidden even to mention his name, the a.s.sociations of the place would be too painful."
Mr. Granger grew suddenly grave and silent.
"Yes, there was that business about the brother," he thought to himself; "a bad business no doubt, or the father would never have turned him out of doors--something very queer perhaps. A strange set these Lovels evidently.
The father a spendthrift, the son something worse."
And then he looked down at Clarissa, and thought again how lovely she was, and pitied her for her beauty and her helplessness--the daughter of such a father, the sister of such a brother.
"But she will marry well, of course," he said to himself, just as George Fairfax had done; "all these young fellows seem tremendously struck by her. I suppose she is the prettiest girl in the room. She will make a good match, I daresay, and get out of her father"s hands. It must be a dreary life for her in that cottage, with a selfish disappointed man."
The night waned, and there was no George Fairfax. Lady Geraldine bore herself bravely, and danced a good deal more than she would have done, had there not been appearances to be kept up. She had to answer a great many questions about her lover, and she answered all with supreme frankness. He was away in Scotland with some bachelor friends, enjoying himself no doubt.
He promised to be with them to-night, and had broken his promise; that was all--she was not afraid of any accident.
"I daresay he found the grouse-shooting too attractive," she said coolly.
After supper, while the most determined of the waltzers were still spinning round to a brisk _deux temps_ of Charles d"Albert"s, Clarissa was fain to tell the last of her partners she could dance no more.
"I am not tired of the ball," she said; "I like looking on, but I really can"t dance another step. Do go and get some one else for this waltz; I know you are dying to dance it."
This was to the devoted Captain Westleigh, a person with whom Miss Lovel always felt very much at home.
"With _you_," he answered tenderly. "But if you mean to sit down, I am at your service. I would not desert you for worlds. And you really are looking a little pale. Shall we find some pleasanter place? That inner room looks deliciously cool."
He offered his arm to Clarissa, and they walked slowly away towards a small room at the end of the saloon; a room which Lady Laura had arranged with an artful eye to effect, leaving it almost in shadow. There were only a few wax-candles glimmering here and there among the cool dark foliage of the ferns and pitcher-plants that filled every niche and corner, and the moonlight shone full into the room through a wide window that opened upon a stone balcony a few feet above the terrace.
"If I am left alone with her for five minutes, I am sure I shall propose,"
Captain Westleigh thought, on beholding the soft secluded aspect of this apartment, which was untenanted when he and Clarissa entered it.
She sank down upon a sofa near the window, more thoroughly tired than she had confessed. This long night of dancing and excitement was quite a new thing to her. It was nearly over now, and the reaction was coming, bringing with it that vague sense of hopelessness and disappointment which had so grown upon her of late. She had abandoned herself fully to the enchantment of the ball, almost losing the sense of her own ident.i.ty in that brilliant scene. But self-consciousness came back to her now, and she remembered that she was Clarissa Lovel, for whom life was at best a dreary business.
"Can I get you anything?" asked the Captain, alarmed by her pallor.
"Thanks, you are very kind. If it would not be too much trouble--I know the refreshment-room is a long way off--but I should be glad of a little water."
"I"ll get some directly. But I really am afraid you are ill," said the Captain, looking at her anxiously, scarcely liking to leave her for fear she should faint before he came back.
"No, indeed, I am not ill--only very tired. If you"ll let me rest here a little without talking."
She half closed her eyes. There was a dizziness in her head very much like the preliminary stage of fainting.
"My dear Miss Lovel, I should be a wretch to bore you. I"ll go for the water this moment."
He hurried away. Clarissa gave a long weary sigh, and that painful dizziness pa.s.sed off in some degree. All she wanted was air, she thought, if there had been any air to be got that sultry night. She rose from the sofa presently, and went out upon the balcony. Below her was the river; not a ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks.
Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases of geraniums and dwarf roses, which seemed only ma.s.ses of dark foliage in the moonlight.
The Captain was some little time gone for that gla.s.s of water. Clarissa had forgotten him and his errand as she sat upon a bench in the balcony with her elbow leaning on the broad stone ledge, looking down at the water and thinking of her own life--thinking what it might have been if everything in the world had been different.
A sudden step on the walk below startled her, and a low voice said,
"I would I were a glove upon that hand, that I might kiss that cheek."
She knew the voice directly, but was not less startled at hearing it just then. The step came near her, and in the next moment a dark figure had swung itself lightly upward from the path below, and George Fairfax was seated on the angle of the ma.s.sive bal.u.s.trade.
"Juliet!" he said, in the same low voice, "what put it into your head to play Juliet to-night? As if you were not dangerous enough without that."
"Mr. Fairfax, how could you startle me so? Lady Laura has been expecting you all the evening."
"I suppose so. But you don"t imagine I"ve been hiding in the garden all the evening, like the man in Tennyson"s _Maud_? I strained heaven and earth to be here in time; but there was a break-down between Edinburgh and Carlisle.
Nothing very serious: an engine-driver knocked about a little, and a few pa.s.sengers shaken and bruised more or less, but I escaped unscathed, and had to cool my impatience for half a dozen hours at a dingy little station where there was no refreshment for body or mind but a brown jug of tepid water and a big Bible. There I stayed till I was picked up by the night-mail, and here I am. I think I shall stand absolved by my lady when she reads the account of my perils in to-morrow"s papers. People are just going away, I suppose. It would be useless for me to dress and put in an appearance now."
"I think Lady Laura would be glad to see you. She has been very anxious, I know."
"Her sisterly cares shall cease before she goes to sleep to-night. She shall be informed that I am in the house; and I will make my peace to-morrow morning."
He did not go away however, and Clarissa began to feel that there was something embarra.s.sing in her position. He had stepped lightly across the bal.u.s.trade, and had seated himself very near her, looking down at her face.
"Clarissa, do you know what has happened to me since I have been away from this place?"
She looked up at him with an alarmed expression. It was the first time he had ever uttered her Christian name, but his tone was so serious as to make that a minor question.
"You cannot guess, I suppose," he went on, "I"ve made a discovery--a most perplexing, most calamitous discovery."
"What is that?"
"I have found out that I love you."
Her hand was lying on the broad stone ledge. He took it in his firm grasp, and held it as he went on:
"Yes, Clarissa; I had my doubts before I went away, but thought I was master of myself in this, as I have been in other things, and fancied myself strong enough to strangle the serpent. But it would not be strangled, Clarissa; it has wound itself about my heart, and here I sit by your side dishonoured in my own sight, come what may--bound to one woman and loving another with all my soul--yes, with all my soul. What am I to do?"