"O, the baby!" said Austin, rather coolly. "I daresay he's a nice little chap, and I should like to see him very much, if it were practicable. But how about Granger himself? He is a good sort of fellow, I hope."
"He is all goodness to me," Clarissa answered gravely, casting down her eyes as she spoke; and Austin Lovel knew that the marriage which had given his sister Arden Court had been no love-match.
They talked for some time; talked of the old days when they had been together at Arden; but of the years that made the story of his life, Austin Lovel spoke very little.
"I have always been an unlucky beggar," he said, in his careless way. "There's very little use in going over old ground. Some men never get fairly on the high-road of life. They spend their existence wading across swamps, and scrambling through bushes, and never reach any particular point at the end. My career has been that sort of thing."
"But you are so young, Austin," pleaded Clarissa, "and may do so much yet."
He shook his head with an air of hopelessness that was half indifference.
"My dear child, I am neither a Raffaelle nor a Dore," he said, "and I need be one or the other to redeem my past But so long as I can pick up enough to keep the little woman yonder and the bairns, and get a decent cigar and an honest bottle of Bordeaux, I'm content. Ambition departed from me ten years ago."
"O Austin, I can't bear to hear you say that! With your genius you ought to do so much. I wish you would be friends with my husband, and that he could be of use to you."
"My dear Clarissa, put that idea out of your mind at once and for ever. There can be no such thing as friendship between Mr. Granger and me. Do you remember what Samuel Johnson said about some one's distaste for clean linen—'And I, sir, have no passion for it!' I confess to having no passion for respectable people. I am very glad to hear Mr. Granger is a good husband; but he's much too respectable a citizen for my acquaintance."
Clarissa sighed; there was a prejudice here, even if Daniel Granger could have been induced to think kindly of his brother-in-law.