"Never alone until last night, and then not with my consent. I went to see
Mr. and Mrs. Austin—I did not know they had left Paris."
"But their departure was very convenient, was it not? It enabled your lover to plead his cause, to make arrangements for your flight. You were to have three days' start of me. Pshaw! why should we bandy words about the shameful business? You have told me that you love him—that is enough."
"Yes," she said, with the anger and defiance gone out of her face and manner, "I have been weak and guilty, but not as guilty as you suppose. I have done nothing to forfeit my right to my son. You shall not part us!"
"You had better tell your maid you are going on a journey to-morrow. She will have to pack your things—your jewels, and all you care to take."
"I shall tell her nothing. Remember what I have said—I will not be separated from Lovel!"
"In that case, I must give the necessary orders myself," said Mr. Granger coolly, and saying this he left the room to look for his wife's maid.
Jane Target, the maid, came in presently. She was the young woman chosen for Clarissa's service by Mrs. Oliver; a girl whose childhood had been spent at Arden, and to whose childish imagination the Lovels of Arden Court had always seemed the greatest people in the world. The girl poured out her mistress's tea, and persuaded her to take something. She perceived that there was something amiss, some serious misunderstanding between Clarissa and her husband. Had not the business been fully discussed in the Areopagus downstairs, all those unaccountable visits to the street near the Luxembourg, and Mr. Fairfax's order to the coachman?
"Nor it ain't the first time I've seen him there neither," Jarvis had remarked; "me and Saunders have noticed him ever so many times, dropping in promiscuous like while Mrs. G. was there, Fishy, to say the least of it!"
Jane Target was very fond of her mistress, and would as soon have doubted that the sun was fire as suspected any flaw in Clarissa's integrity. She had spoken her mind more than once upon this subject in the servants' hall, and had put the bulky Jarvis to shame.
"Do, ma'am, eat something!" she pleaded, when she had poured out the tea.
"You had no dinner yesterday, and no tea, unless you had it in the nursery.
You'll be fit for nothing, if you go on like this."