"Or give you back Arden Court?" suggested Lady Laura, smiling.
"Ah, that is the wildest dream of all! But I would not even ask Providence for that. I would be content, if my father loved me; if we were only a happy united family."
"Don't you think your father would be a changed man, if he could get back his old home somehow? The loss of that must have soured him a good deal."
"I don't know about that. Yes, of course that loss does weigh upon his mind; but even when we were almost children he did not seem to care much for my brother Austin or me. He was not like other fathers."
"His money troubles may have oppressed him even then. The loss of Arden Court might have been a foreseen calamity."
"Yes, it may have been so. But there is no use in thinking of that. Even if papa were rich enough to buy it, Mr. Granger would never sell the Court."
"Sell it!" repeated Lady Laura, meditatively; "well, perhaps not. One could hardly expect him to do that--a place for which he has done so much. But one never knows what may happen; I have really seen such wonderful changes come to pass among friends and acquaintances of mine, that scarcely anything would astonish me--no, Clary, not if I were to see you mistress of Arden Court."
And then Lady Laura kissed her protégée once more with effusion, and anon dipped her brush in the carmine, and went on with the manipulation of a florid initial in her Missal--a fat gothic M, interlaced with ivy-leaves and holly.
"You haven't asked me who the people are that I am expecting this afternoon," she said presently, with a careless air.
"My dear Lady Laura, if you were to tell me their names, I don't suppose I should be any wiser than I am now. I know so few people."
"But you do know these--or at least you know all about them. My arrivals to-day are Mr. and Miss Granger."
Clarissa gave a faint sigh, and bent a little lower over her work.
"Well, child, are you not surprised? have you nothing to say?" cried Lady Laura, rather impatiently.
"I--I daresay they are very nice people," Clarissa answered, nervously. "But the truth is--I know you must despise me for such folly--I cannot help associating them with our loss, and I have a kind of involuntary dislike of them. I have never so much as seen them, you know--not even at church; for they go to the gothic chapel which Mr. Granger has built in his model village, and never come to our dear little church at Arden; and it is very childish and absurd of me, no doubt, but I don't think I ever could like them."