Clarissa spent more than an hour with Lady Laura, listening with a tender interest to her praises of the departed. It seemed as if no elderly nobleman—more or less impecunious for the last twenty years of his life—had ever supported such a load of virtues as Lord Calderwood had carried with him to the grave. To praise him inordinately was the only consolation his three daughters could find in the first fervour of their grief. Time was when they had been apt to confess to one another that papa was occasionally rather "trying," a vague expression which scarcely involved a lapse of filial duty on the part of the grumbler. But to hear them to-day one would have supposed that they had never been tried; that life with Lord Calderwood in a small house in Chapel-street, Mayfair, had been altogether a halcyon existence.
Clarissa listened reverently, believing implicitly in the merits of the newly lost, and did her best to console her kind friend during the hour Mr. Armstrong allowed her to spend with Lady Laura. At the end of that time he came and solemnly fetched her away, after a pathetic farewell.
"You must come to me again, Clary, and very, very soon," said my lady, embracing her. "I only wish Fred would let you stay with me now. You would be a great comfort."
"My dearest Lady Laura, it is better not. You have your sisters."
"Yes, they are very good; but I wanted you to stay, Clary. I had such plans for you. O, by the bye, the Grangers will be going back to-day, I suppose. Why should they not take you with them in their great travelling carriage?—Frederick, will you arrange for the Grangers to take Clarissa home?" cried Lady Laura to her husband, who was hovering near the door. In the midst of her grief my lady brightened a little; with the idea of managing something, even so small a matter as this.
"Of course, my dear," replied the affectionate Fred. "Granger shall take Miss Lovel home. And now I must positively hurry her away; all this talk and excitement is so bad for you."
"I must see the Fermors before they go. You'll let me see the Fermors,
Fred?"
"Well, well, I'll bring them just to say good-bye—that's all—Come along,
Miss Lovel."
Clarissa followed him through the corridor.
"O, if you please, Mr. Armstrong," she said, "I did not like to worry Lady
Laura, but I would so much rather go home alone in a fly."