Clarissa gave a little sigh—half pain, half rapture. What chance had she of ever treading that illustrious soil, of ever emerging from the bondage of her dull life? She glanced across the room to the distant spot where Lady Geraldine and George Fairfax sat playing chess. He had been there. She remembered his pleasant talk of his wanderings, on the night of their railroad journey.
"Who would not like to see Greece?" she said.
"Yes, of course," Mr. Granger answered in his most prosaic way. "It's a country that ought to be remarkably interesting; but unless one is very well up in its history, one is apt to look at everything in a vague uncertain sort of manner. A mountain here, and a temple there—and then the guides and that kind of people contrive to vulgarise everything somehow; and then there is always an alarm about brigands, to say nothing of the badness of the inns. I really think you would be disappointed in Greece, Miss Lovel."
"Let me keep my dream," Clarissa answered rather sadly "I am never likely to see the reality."
"You cannot be sure of that; at your age all the world is before you."
"You have read Grote, of course, Miss Lovel?" said Miss Granger, who had read every book which a young lady ought to have read, and who rather prided herself upon the solid nature of her studies.
"Yes, I have read a good deal of Grote," Clarissa replied meekly.
Miss Granger looked at her as if she rather doubted this assertion, and would like to have come down upon her with some puzzling question about the Archons or the Areopagus, but thought better of it, and asked her father if he had been talking to Mr. Purdew.
Mr. Purdew was a landed gentleman of some standing, whose estate lay near Arden Court, and who had come with his wife and daughters to Lady Laura's ball.
"He in sitting over there, near the piano," added Sophia; "I expected to find you enjoying a chat with him."