"I—I beg your pardon. I hope everything is going on as you wish; the home farm, and all that kind of thing. Miss Granger—Sophia—is well, I hope?"
"Sophia is quite well, I believe. I have not seen her since I left
Ventnor."
"She has been away from Arden, then?"
"No; it is I who have not been there. Indeed, I doubt if I shall ever go there again—without you, Clarissa. The place is hateful to me."
Again and again, with infinite iteration, Daniel Granger had told himself that reconciliation with his wife was impossible. Throughout his journey by road and rail—and above all things is a long journey conductive to profound meditation—he had been firmly resolved to see his boy, and then go on his way at once, with neither delay nor wavering. But the sight of that pale pensive face to-night had well-nigh unmanned him. Was this the girl whose brightness and beauty had been the delight of his life? Alas, poor child, what sorrow his foolish love had brought upon her! He began all at once to pity her, to think of her as a sacrifice to her father's selfishness, his own obstinacy.
"I ought to have taken my answer that day at the Court, when I first told her my secret," he said to himself. "That look of pained surprise, which came into her face when I spoke, might surely have been enough for me. Yet I persisted, and was not man enough to face the question boldly—whether she had any heart to give me."
Clarissa rose, with the child still in her arms.
"I am afraid the dew is beginning to fall," she said; "I had better take
Lovel home."
"Let me carry him," exclaimed Mr. Granger; and in the next moment the boy was in his father's strong arms, the flaxen head nestling in the paternal waistcoat.
"And so you are going to begin your travels to-morrow morning," he said, as they walked slowly homeward side by side.