"I should not have supposed you would so soon be tired of Arden Court," she remarked pleasantly, during that dreary quarter of an hour after dinner which Mr. Granger and his wife and daughter were wont to pass in the contemplation of crystallized apricots and hothouse grapes, and the exchange of the baldest commonplaces in the way of conversation; Perhaps if Clarissa and her husband had been alone on such occasions that air of ceremony might have vanished. The young wife might have drawn her chair a little nearer her husband's, and there might have been some pleasant talk about that inexhaustible source of wonder and delight, the baby. But with Miss Granger always at hand, the dessert was as ceremonious as if there had been a party of eighteen, and infinitely more dreary, lacking the cheery clatter and buzz of company. She ate five hothouse grapes, and sipped half a glass of claret, with as solemn an air as if she had been making a libation to the gods.
Mr. Granger looked up from his plate when his daughter made this remark about Arden, and glanced inquiringly at his wife, with a shadow of displeasure in his face. Yielding and indulgent as he had been to her, there was in his composition something of the stuff that makes a tyrant. His wife must love the things that he loved. It would have been intolerable to him to suppose that Mrs. Granger could grow weary of the house that he had beautified.
"I am not tired of the Court," Clarissa answered with a sad smile. "There are too many recollections to make it dear to me."
Daniel Granger's face flushed ever so slightly at this speech.
It was the past, then, and not the present, that rendered the place dear to her.
"I could never grow tired of Arden," she went on; "but I think it will be very nice to spend a winter in Paris."
"Lady Laura Armstrong has put that notion into your head, no doubt," said Miss Granger, with the faintest suspicion of a sneer. She was not very warmly attached to the lady of Hale Castle nowadays, regarding her as the chief promoter of Mr. Granger's marriage.
"Lady Laura has said that they enjoyed themselves very much in Paris the winter before last," Clarissa answered frankly; "and has promised me plenty of introductions. She even promises that she and Mrs. Armstrong will come over for a week or two, while we are there."
"And poor Lady Geraldine Challoner?"
Miss Granger always exhibited a profound pity for Lady Geraldine, and never lost any opportunity of dwelling upon Mr. Fairfax's bad conduct.