The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

Author:M. E. Braddon [Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2005-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

"You are all that is good to me, much too good," she faltered. "I will call you Daniel, if you like. It is only a habit."

"It has such a cold sound, Clary. I know Daniel isn't a pretty name; but the elder sons of Grangers have been Daniels for the last two centuries. We were stanch Puritans, you know, in the days of old Oliver, and scriptural names became a fashion with us. Well, my dear, I'll leave you to dress for dinner. I'm very glad you like the rooms. Here are the keys of your jewel-cases; we must contrive to fill them by and by. You see I have no family diamonds to reset for you."

"You have given me more than enough jewelry already," said Clarissa. And indeed Mr. Granger had showered gifts upon her with a lavish hand during his brief courtship.

"Pshaw, child! only a few trinkets bought at random. I mean to fill those cases with something better. I'll go and change my coat. We dine half an hour earlier than usual to-day, Sophia tells me."

Mr. Granger retired to his dressing-room on the other side of the spacious bed-chamber, perhaps the very plainest apartment in the house, for he was as simple in his habits as the great Duke of Wellington; a room with a monster bath on one side, and a battered oak office-desk on the other—a desk that had done duty for fifty years or so in an office at Leeds—in one corner a well-filled gunstand, in another a rack of formidable-looking boots—boots that only a strong-minded man could wear.

When she was quite alone, Clarissa sat down in one of the windows of her boudoir, and looked out at the park. How well she remembered the prospect! how often she had looked at it on just such darksome autumnal evenings long ago, when she was little more than a child! This very room had been her mother's dressing-room. She remembered it deserted and tenantless, the faded finery of the furniture growing dimmer and duller year by year. She had come here in an exploring mood sometimes when she was quite a child, but she never remembered the room having been put to any use; and as she had grown older it had come to have a haunted air, and she had touched the inanimate things with a sense of awe, wondering what her mother's life had been like in that room—trying to conjure up the living image of a lovely face, which was familiar to her from more than one picture in her father's possession.

She knew more about her mother's life now; knew that there had been a blight upon it, of which a bad unscrupulous man had been the cause. And that man was the father of George Fairfax.

"Papa had reason to fear the son, having suffered so bitterly from the influence of the father," she said to herself; and then the face that she had first seen in the railway carriage shone before her once more, and her thoughts drifted away from Arden Court.

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