Miss Granger seemed as if she were trying to swallow some hard substance—a knotty little bit of the pineapple she had just been eating, perhaps—before she replied to this speech of her father's.
"I am sure, papa, I am quite at a loss to comprehend your meaning," she said at last. "I have no near neighbour whom I can call my friend, unless you mean Mrs. Patterly, the doctor's wife, who has taken such a warm interest in my clothing-club, and who has such a beautiful mind. But you would hardly call her a young lady."
"Patterly's wife! no, I should think not!" exclaimed Mr. Granger impatiently: "I was speaking of Clarissa Lovel."
Miss Granger drew herself up suddenly, and pinched her lips together as if they were never to unclose again. She did open them nevertheless, after a pause, to say in an icy tone,—
"Miss Lovel is my acquaintance, but not my friend."
"Why should she not be your friend? She is a very charming girl."
"Oh, yes, I have no doubt of that, papa, from your point of view; that is to say, she is very pretty, and thinks a great deal of dress, and is quite ready to flirt with any one who likes to flirt with her—I'm sure you must have seen that at Hale Castle—and fills her scrap-book with portraits of engaged men; witness all those drawings of Mr. Fairfax. I have no doubt she is just the kind of person gentlemen call charming; but she is no friend of mine, and she never will be."
"I am sorry to hear that," said her father sternly; "for she is very likely to be your stepmother."
It was a death-blow, but one that Sophia Granger had anticipated for a long time.
"You are going to marry Miss Lovel, papa—a girl two years younger than I am?"