"Why not?" asked her father bluntly.
"One can scarcely explain that kind of thing. She is too frivolous for me to get on very well with her. She takes no real interest in my poor, in spite of her connection with Arden, or in church music. I think she hardly knows one Te Deum from another."
"She is rather a nice girl, though," said the Captain, who would fain be loyal to Clarissa, yet for whom the good opinion of such an heiress as Miss Granger could not be a matter of indifference—there was always the chance that she might take a fancy to him, as he put it to his brother-officers, and what a lucky hit that would be! "She's a nice girl," he repeated, "and uncommonly pretty."
"I was not discussing her looks, Captain Westleigh," replied Miss Granger with some asperity; "I was talking of her ideas and tastes, which are quite different from mine. I am sorry you let Lady Laura persuade you to dance with a girl like that, papa. You may have offended old friends, who would fancy they had a prior claim on your attention."
Mr. Granger laughed at this reproof.
"I didn't think a quadrille was such a serious matter, Sophy," he said. "And then, you see, when a man of my age does make a fool of himself, he likes to have the prettiest girl in the room for his partner."
Miss Granger made an involuntary wry face, as if she had been eating something nasty. Mr. Granger gave a great yawn, and, as the rooms by this time were almost empty, made his way to Lady Laura in order to offer his congratulations upon her triumph before retiring to rest.
For once in a way, the vivacious châtelaine of Hale Castle was almost cross.
"Do you really think the ball has gone off well?" she asked incredulously. "It seems to me to have been an elaborate failure." She was thinking of those two whom she had surprised tête-à-tête in the balcony, and wondering what George Fairfax could have been saying to produce Clarissa's confusion. Clarissa was her protégée, and she was responsible to her sister Geraldine for any mischief brought about by her favourite.
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