In that luxurious morning-room of Lady Laura's Clarissa generally spent the first two hours after breakfast. Here the children used to come with French and German governesses, in all the freshness of newly-starched cambric and newly-crimped tresses, to report progress as to their studies and general behaviour to their mother; who was apt to get tired of them in something less than a quarter of an hour, and to dispatch them with kisses and praises to the distant schoolrooms and nurseries where these young exotics were enjoying the last improvements in the forcing system.
Geraldine Challoner would sometimes drop into this room for a few minutes at the time of the children's visit, and would converse not unkindly with her nephews and nieces; but for her sister's accomplishments she displayed a profound indifference, not to say contempt. She was not herself given to the cultivation of these polite arts--nothing could ever induce her to sing or play in public. She read a good deal, but rarely talked about books--it was difficult indeed to say what Lady Geraldine did talk about--yet in the art of conversation, when she chose to please, Geraldine Challoner infinitely surpassed the majority of women in her circle. Perhaps this may have been partly because she was a good listener; and, in some measure, on account of that cynical, mocking spirit in which she regarded most things, and which was apt to pass for wit.
Clarissa had been a month at Hale Castle already; but she stayed on at the urgent desire of her hostess, much too happy in that gay social life to oppose that lady's will.
"If you really, really wish to have me, dear Lady Laura," she said; "but you have been so kind already, and I have stayed so long, that I begin to feel myself quite an intruder."
"You silly child! I do really, really wish to have you. I should like to keep you with me always, if I could. You suit me so much better than any of my sisters; they are the most provoking girls in the world, I think, for being uninterested in my pursuits. And your Italian is something wonderful. I have not opened my dictionary since we have been reading together. And beyond all that, I have a very particular reason for wishing you to be here next month."