Fit for nothing! The phrase roused Clarissa from her apathy. Too weak to do battle for her right to the custody of her child, she thought; and influenced by this idea, she struggled through a tolerable breakfast, eating delicate petits pains which tasted like ashes, and drinking strong tea with a feverish eagerness.
The tea fortified her nerves; she got up and paced her room, thinking what she ought to do.
Daniel Granger was going to take her child from her—that was certain—unless by some desperate means she secured her darling to herself. Nothing could be harder or more pitiless than his manner that morning. The doors of Arden Court were to be shut against her.
"And I sold myself for Arden!" she thought bitterly. She fancied how the record of her life would stand by-and-by, like a verse in those Chronicles which Sophia was so fond of: "And Clarissa reigned a year and a half, and did that which was evil"—and so on. Very brief had been her glory; very deep was her disgrace.
What was she to do? Carry her child away before they could take him from her—secure him to herself somehow. If it were to be done at all, it must be done quickly; and who had she to help her in this hour of desperate need.
She looked at Jane Target, who was standing by the dressing-table dusting the gold-topped scent-bottles and innumerable prettinesses scattered there—the costly trifles with which women who are not really happy strive to create for themselves a factitious kind of happiness. The girl was lingering over her work, loth to leave her mistress unless actually dismissed.
Jane Target, Clarissa remembered her a flaxen-haired cottage girl, with an honest freckled face and a calico-bonnet; a girl who was always swinging on five-barred gates, or overturning a baby brother out of a primitive wooden cart—surely this girl was faithful, and would help her in her extremity. In all the world, there was no other creature to whom she could appeal.
"Jane," she said at last, stopping before the girl and looking at her with earnest questioning eyes, "I think I can trust you."
"Indeed you can, ma'am," answered Jane, throwing down her feather dusting-brush to clasp her hands impetuously. "There's nothing in this world I would not do to prove myself true to you."
"I am in great trouble, Jane."