"Do you think there can ever be any question of money between us?" he asked. "Do you think that if, by the surrender of every shilling I possess, I could win back my faith in my wife, I should hold the loss a heavy one?"
Mr. Lovel smiled, a quiet, self-satisfied smile, in the gloaming.
"He will make her income a handsome one," he said to himself, "and I shall have my daughter—who is really an acquisition, for I was beginning to find life solitary—and plenty of ready money. Or he will come after her in three months' time. That is the result I anticipate."
They walked till a late moon had risen from the deep blue waters, and when they went back to the house everything was settled. Mr. Lovel answered for his daughter as freely as if he had been answering for himself. He was to take her abroad, with his grandson and namesake Lovel, attended by Jane Target and the new nurse, vice Mrs. Brobson, dismissed for neglect of her charge immediately after Clarissa's flight. If the world asked any questions, the world must be told that Mr. and Mrs. Granger had parted by mutual consent, or that Mrs. Granger's doctor had ordered continental travel. Daniel Granger could settle that point according to his own pleasure; or could refuse to give the world any answer at all, if he pleased.
Mr. Lovel told his daughter the arrangement that he had made for her next morning.
"I am to have my son?" she asked eagerly.
"Yes, don't I tell you so? You and Lovel are to come with me. You can live anywhere you please; you will have a fair income, a liberal one, I daresay. You are very well off, upon my word, Clarissa, taking into consideration the fact of your supreme imprudence—only you have lost your husband."
"And I have lost Arden Court. Does not there seem a kind of retribution in that? I made a false vow for the love of Arden Court—and—and for your sake, papa."
"False fiddlestick!" exclaimed Mr. Lovel, impatiently; "any reasonable woman might have been happy in your position, and with such a man as Granger; a man who positively worshipped you. However, you have lost all that. I am not going to lecture you—the penalty you pay is heavy enough, without any sermonising on my part. You are a very lucky woman to retain custody of your child, and escape any public exposure; and I consider that your husband has shown himself most generous."
Daniel Granger and his wife parted soon after this; parted without any sign of compunction—there was a dead wall of pride between them. Clarissa felt the burden of her guilt, but could not bring herself to make any avowal of her repentance to the husband who had put her away from him,—so easily, as it seemed to her. That touched her pride a little.