He had taken a knife from his pocket, and was deliberately cutting out the leaf from Miss Lovel's sketch-book.
"I shall keep this, Clarissa,—this one blessed scrap of evidence that you do sometimes think of me."
"I think of a good many people in the same manner," she said, smiling, with recovered self-possession. "I have very few acquaintance whose likenesses I have not attempted in some fashion."
"But you have attempted mine very often," he answered, looking over the leaves of the book. "Yes, here is my profile amongst bits of foliage, and scroll-work, and all the vagabond thoughts of your artistic brain. You shall not snub me, Clarissa. You do think of me—not as I think of you, perhaps, by day and night, but enough for my encouragement, almost enough for my happiness. Good heavens, how angry I have been with you during the last few weeks!"
"What right had you to be angry with me, Mr. Fairfax?"
"The sublime right of loving you. To my mind that constitutes a kind of moral ownership. And to see you flirting with that fellow Granger, and yet have to hold my peace! But, thank God, all pretences are done with. I recognize the event of to-day as an interposition of Providence. As soon as I can decently do so, I shall tell Lady Geraldine the truth."
"You will not break your engagement—at such a time—when she has double need of your love?" cried Clarissa indignantly.
She saw the situation from the woman's point of view, and it was of Geraldine Challoner's feelings she thought at this crisis. George Fairfax weighed nothing in the scale against that sorrowing daughter. And yet she loved him.
"My love she never had, and never can have; nor do I believe that honour compels me to make myself miserable for life. Of course I shall not disturb her in the hour of her grief by any talk about our intended marriage; but, so soon as I can do so with kindness, I shall let her know the real state of my feelings. She is too generous to exact any sacrifice from me."
"And you will make her miserable for life, perhaps?"