Clarissa was fain to admit that it was so. More than once she had ventured to speak of her brother to Daniel Granger, and on each occasion had quickly perceived that her husband had some fixed opinion about Austin, and was inclined to regard her love for him as an amiable weakness that should be as far as possible discouraged.
"Your father has told me the story of his disagreement with his son, my dear Clarissa," Daniel Granger had said in his gravest tone, "and after what I have heard, I can but think it would be infinitely wise in you to forget that you had ever had a brother."
This was hard; and Clarissa felt her husband's want of sympathy in this matter as keenly as she could have felt any overt act of unkindness.
"Will you give me Austin's address" she asked, after a thoughtful pause. "I can write to him, at least, and send him some money, without consulting any one. I have about thirty pounds left of my last quarter's money, and even that may be of use to him."
"Most decidedly. The poor fellow told me he had been glad to get ten napoleons for half-a-dozen sketches: more than a fortnight's hard work. Would it not be better, by the way, for you to send your letter to me, and allow me to forward it to your brother? and if you would like to send him fifty pounds, or a hundred, I shall be only too proud to be your banker."
Clarissa blushed crimson, remembering that scene in the orchard, and her baffled lover's menaces. Had he forgiven her altogether, and was this kind interest in her affairs an unconscious heaping of coals of fire on her head? Had he forgiven her so easily? Again she argued with herself, as she had so often argued before, that his love had never been more than a truant fancy, a transient folly, the merest vagabondage of an idle brain.
"You are very good," she said, with a tinge of hauteur, "but I could not think of borrowing money, even to help my brother. If you will kindly tell me the best method of remitting money to Paris."
Here, Mr. Fairfax said, there was a difficulty; it ought to be remitted through a banker, and Mrs. Granger might find this troublesome to arrange, unless she had an account of her own. Clarissa said she had no account, but met the objection by suggesting bank notes; and Mr. Fairfax was compelled to own that notes upon the Bank of England could be converted into French coin at any Parisian money-changer's.
He gave Clarissa the address, 13, Rue du Chevalier Bayard, near the
Luxembourg.
"I will write to him to-night," she said, and then rose from the rustic bench among the laurels. "I think I must go and look for my husband now. I left him some time ago on account of a headache. I wanted to get away from the noise and confusion on the river-bank."