He looked up as the two carriages passed each other; for just one brief moment looked Clarissa Granger in the face; then, pale as death, bent down to caress one of the dogs.
It was George Fairfax.
It was a bitter ending; but such stories are apt to end so; and a man with unlimited means, and nothing particular to do with himself, must find amusement somehow. Clarissa remained in Rome a fortnight after this, and encountered the Senora several times—never unattended, but never again with George Fairfax.
She heard the story afterwards from Lady Laura. He had been infatuated, and had spent thousands upon "that creature." His poor mother had been half broken-hearted about it.
"The Lyvedon estate spoiled him, my dear," Lady Laura said conclusively.
"He was a very good fellow till he came into his property."
Mr. Fairfax reformed, however, a couple of years later, and married a fashionable widow with a large fortune; who kept him in a whirl of society, and spent their combined incomes royally. He and Clarissa meet sometimes in society—meet, touch hands even, and know that every link between them is broken.
And is Clarissa happy? Yes, if happiness can be found in children's voices and a good man's unchanging affection. She has Arden Court, and her children; her father's regard, growing warmer year by year, as with increasing age he feels increasing need of some one to love him; her brother's society now and then—for Mr. Granger has been lavish in his generosity, and all the peccadilloes of Austin's youth have been extinguished from the memories of money-lenders and their like by means of Mr. Granger's cheque-book.
The painter can come to England now, and roam his native woods unburdened by care; but though this is very sweet to him once in a way, he prefers a Continental city, with its café life, and singing and dancing gardens, where he may smoke his cigar in the gloaming. He grows steadier as he grows older, paints better, and makes friends worth making; much to the joy of poor Bessie, who asks no greater privilege than to stand humbly by, gazing fondly while he puts on his white cravat, and sallies forth radiant, with a hot-house flower in his button-hole, to dine in the great world.
But this is only a glance into the future. The story ends in the orthodox manner, to the sound of wedding bells—Miss Granger's—who swears to love, honour, and obey Thomas Tillott, with a fixed intention to keep the upper hand over the said Thomas in all things. Yet these men who are so slavish as wooers are apt to prove of sterner mould as husbands, and life is all before Mrs. Tillott, as she journeys in chariot and posters to Scarborough for her unpretentious honeymoon, to return in a fortnight to a bran-new gothic villa on the skirts of Arden, where one tall tree is struggling vainly to look at home in a barren waste of new-made garden. And in the servants' hall and housekeeper's room at Arden Court there is rejoicing, as when the elder Miss Pecksniff went away from the little village near Salisbury.
For some there are no marriage bells—for Lady Geraldine, for instance, who is content to devote herself unostentatiously to the care of her sister's neglected children—neglected in spite of French and German governesses, Italian singing masters, Parisian waiting-maids, and half an acre or so of nursery and schoolroom—and to wider charities: not all unhappy, and thankful for having escaped that far deeper misery—the fate of an unloved wife.