pleases me to let them think so. Why, there is that, and in due course discover how very little never a day that yonder trader's carriage, pass-esteem has to do with matrimony. If you mean ing my windows, does not seem to drive over my that you would like to marry some penniless body; not a sound of a woodman's axe or a car- wretch of a curate, or some insolvent ensign in penter's hammer in the place that was mine the line, for love, I can only say that the day of that does not go straight home to my heart!" your marriage will witness our final parting. "Oh papa, papa!" should not make any outrageous fuss or useless opposition, rely upon it. I should only wish you good-by. "Hush, girl! I can accept pity from no one -from you least of all." Clarissa smiled faintly at this speech. I She ex "Not from me, papa-your own child?" "Not from you, because your mother's reck-pected so little from her father that his hardest less extravagance was the beginning of my ruin. words did not wound her very deeply, nor did I might have been a different man but for her. they extinguish that latent hope, "He will love My marriage was fatal, and in the end, as you me some day.' see, has wrecked me. "But even if my mother was to blame, papa -as she may have been-I can not pretend to deny the truth of what you say, being so completely ignorant of our past history-you can not be so cruel as to hold me guilty ?" "You are too like her, Clarissa," Mr. Lovel answered, in a strange tone. "But I do not want to speak of these things. It is your fault; you had no right to talk of Arden. That subject always raises a devil in me. He paced the room backward and forward for a few minutes in an agitated way, as if trying to stifle some passion raging inwardly. He was a man of about fifty, tall and slim, with a distinguished air, and a face that must once have been very handsome, but perhaps, at its best, a little effeminate. The face was careworn now, and the delicate features had a pinched and drawn look, the thin lips a half-cynical, half-peevish expression. It was not a pleasant countenance, in spite of its look of high birth; nor was there any likeness between Marmaduke Lovel and his daughter. His eyes were light blue, large, and bright, but with a cold look in them-a coldness which, on very slight provocation, intensified into cruelty; his hair pale auburn, crisp, and curling closely round a high but somewhat narrow forehead. He came back to the breakfast-table presently, and seated himself in his easy-chair. He sipped a cup of coffee, and trifled listlessly with a morsel of dried salmon. 66 "I have no appetite this morning," he said at last, pushing his plate away with an impatient gesture; nor is that kind of talk calculated to improve the flavor of a man's breakfast. How tall you have grown, Clarissa, a perfect woman; remarkably handsome, too! Of course you know that, and there is no fear of your being made vain by any thing I may say to you. All young women learn their value soon enough. You ought to make a good match, a brilliant match, if there were any chance for a girl in such a hole as this. Marriage is your only hope, remember, Clarissa. Your future lies between that and the drudgery of a governess's life. You have received an expensive education-an education that will serve you in either case; and that is all the fortune I can give you." "I hope I may marry well, papa, for your sake; but-" "Never mind me. You have only yourself to think about." "But I never could marry any one I did not esteem, if the match were ever such a brilliant one.' "Of course not. All school-girls talk like "I hope I may never be so imprudent as to lose you forever, like that, papa. must shut my heart resolutely against curates. "If bad reading is an abomination to you, you have only to open your ears. I have some confidence in you, Clary," Mr. Lovel went on, with a smile that was almost affectionate. "You look like a sensible girl; a little impulsive, I dare say; but knowledge of the world-which is an uncommonly hard world for you and me-will tone that down in good time. You are accomplished, I hope. Madame Marot wrote me a most flourishing account of your attainments; but one never knows how much to believe of a school-mistress's analysis." "I worked very hard, papa; all the harder because I was so anxious to come home; and I fancied I might shorten my exile a little by being very industrious." 66 Humph! You give yourself a good character. You sing and play, I suppose?" "Yes, papa. But I am fonder of art than of music." "Ah! art is very well as a profession; but amateur art-French plum-box art-is worse than worthless. However, I am glad you can amuse yourself somehow; and I dare say, if you have to turn governess by-and-by, that sort of thing will be useful. You have the usual smattering of languages, of course ?" "Yes, papa. 66 We read German and Italian on alternate days at Madame Marot's." "I promessi Sposi, and so on, no doubt. There is a noble Tasso in the book-case yonder, and a fine old Petrarch, with which you may keep up your Italian. You might read a little to me of an evening sometimes. I should not mind it much." "And I should like it very much, papa," Clarissa answered, eagerly. She was anxious for any thing that could bring her father and herself together-that might lessen the gulf between them, if by ever so little. And in this manner Miss Lovel's life began in her new home. No warmth of welcome, no word of fatherly affection, attended this meeting between a father and daughter who had not met for six years. Mr. Lovel went back to his books as calmly as if there had been no ardent, impetuous girl of eighteen under his roof, leaving Clarissa to find occupation and amusement as best she might. He was not a profound student; a literary trifler rather, caring for only a limited number of books, and reading those again and again. Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," Southey's "Doctor," Montaigne, and Swift, he read continually. He was a collector of rare editions of the classics, and would dawdle over a Greek play, edited by some learned German, "What!" cried her father, vehemently; "have you not been forbidden to mention that name in my hearing? Unlucky girl, you seem to have been born on purpose to outrage and pain me." 'Forgive me, papa; it shall be the last time. But oh, is there no hope that you will ever par for a week at a time, losing himself in the pro- Clarissa's first day at Mill Cottage was a very fair sample of the rest of her life. She found that she must manage to spend existence almost entirely by herself that she must expect the smallest amount of companionship from her father. "This is the room in which I generally sit," her father said to her that first morning after breakfast; "my books are here, you see, and the aspect suits me. The drawing-room will be almost entirely at your disposal. We have occasional callers, of course; I have not been able to make these impervious country people comprehend that I don't want society. They sometimes pester me with invitations to dinner, which no doubt they consider an amazing kindness to a man in my position; invitations which I make a point of declining. It will be different with you, of course; and if any eligible people-Lady Laura Armstrong or Mrs. Renthorpe-should like to take you up, I shall not object to your seeing a little society. You will never find a rich husband at Mill Cottage." 66 I Please do not speak of husbands, papa. don't want to be married, and I shouldn't care to go into society without you." "Nonsense, child; you will have to do what is best for your future welfare. Remember that my death will leave you utterly unprovided for -absolutely penniless.' "I hope you may live till I am almost an old woman, papa.' "Not much chance of that; and even if I did, I should not care to have you on my hands all that time. A good marriage is the natural prospect of a good-looking young woman, and I shall be much disappointed if you do not marry well, Clarissa." The pale, cold blue eyes looked at her with so severe a glance, as Mr. Lovel said this, that the girl felt she must expect little mercy from her father if her career in life did not realize his hopes. "In short," he continued, "I look to you to redeem our fallen fortunes. I don't want the name of Lovel to die out in poverty and obscurity. I look to you to prevent that, Clarissa." "Papa," said Clarissa, almost trembling as she spoke, "it is not to me that you should look for that. What can a girl do to restore a name that has fallen into obscurity? Even if I were to marry a rich man, as you say, it would only be to take another name, and lose my own identity in that of my husband. It is only a son who can redeem his father's name. There is some one else to whom you must look-” B "Pardon!" echoed Mr. Lovel, with a bitter laugh; "it is no question of pardon. I have erased that person's image from my mind. So far as I am concerned, there is no such man in the world. Pardon! You must induce me to reinstate him in my memory again before you ask me to pardon. "And that can never be, papa ?" The tone of that one word annihilated hope in Clarissa's mind. She had pushed the question to its utmost limit, at all hazards of offending her father. What was it that her brother Austin had done to bring upon himself this bitter sentence of condemnation? She remembered him in his early manhood, handsome, accomplished, brilliant; the delight and admiration of every one who knew him, except her father. Recalling those days, she remembered that between her father and Austin there had never been any show of affection. The talents and brilliant attributes that had won admiration from others seemed to have no charm in the father's eye. Clarissa could remember many a sneering speech of Mr. Lovel's, in which he had made light of his son's cleverness, denouncing his varied accomplishments as trivial and effeminate, and asking if any Englishman ever attained an honorable distinction by playing the piano or modeling in clay. "I would rather have my son the dullest plodder that ever toiled at the bar, or droned bald platitudes from a pulpit, than the most brilliant drawing-room idler whose amateur art and amateur music ever made him the fashion of a single season, to leave him forgotten in the next. I utterly despise an accomplished man." Austin Lovel had let such speeches as this go by him with a languid indifference that testified at once to his easy temper and his comfortable disregard of his father's opinion. He was fond of his little sister Clary, in rather a careless way, and would suffer her companionship, juvenile as she was at that time, with perfect good-nature, allowing her to spoil his drawing-paper with her untutored efforts, and even to explore the sacred mysteries of his color-box. In return for this indulgence the girl loved him with intense devotion, and believed in him as the most brilliant of mankind. Clarissa Lovel recalled those departed days now with painful tenderness. How kind and gracious Austin had been to her! How happy they had been together! sometimes wandering for a whole day in the park and woods of Arden, he with his sketching apparatus, she with a volume of Sir Walter Scott, to read aloud to him while he sketched, or to read him to sleep with very often. And then what delight it had been to sit by his side while he lay at full length upon the mossy turf, or half buried in fern-to sit by him, supremely happy, reading or drawing, and looking up from her occupation every now and then to glance at the sleeper's handsome face in loving admiration. Those days had been the happiest of her life. When Austin left Arden he seemed always to had Mr. Lovel been minded to keep himself aloof carry away the brightness of her existence with from his daughter. This being so, he tolerated him; for without him her life was very lonely-her, treating her with a kind of cold politeness, a singularly joyless life for one so young. Then, which might have been tolerably natural in some in an evil hour, as she thought, there came their guardian burdened with the charge of a ward he final parting. How well she remembered her did not care for. They rarely met until dinnerbrother loitering on the broad terrace in front of time, Clarissa taking her breakfast about three Arden Court, in the dewy summer morning, hours before her father left his room. But at waiting to bid her good-by! How passionately seven they dined together, and spent the long she had clung to him in that farewell embrace, winter evenings in each other's company, Clarissa unable to tear herself away until her father's being sometimes permitted to read aloud in Gerstern voice summoned her to the carriage that man or Italian, while her father lay back in his was to take her on the first stage of her journey! easy-chair, smoking his meerschaum, and taking "Won't you come to the station with us, Aus- the amber mouth-piece from his lips now and tin ?" she pleaded. then to correct an accent or murmur a criticism on the text. Sometimes, too, Mr. Lovel would graciously expound a page or two of a Greek play, or dilate on the subtilty of some learned foot-note, for his daughter's benefit, but rather with the air of one gentleman at his club inviting the sympathy of another than with the tone of a father instructing his child. "No, Clary," her brother answered, with a glance at her father. "He does not want me. And so they had parted; never to meet any more upon this earth, perhaps, Clarissa said to herself, in her dismal reveries to-day. "That stranger in the railway carriage spoke of his having emigrated. He will live and die far away, perhaps on the other side of the earth, and I shall never see his bright face again. Oh, Austin, Austin is this the end of all our summer days in Arden woods long ago?" CHAPTER IV. 66 CLARISSA IS TAKEN UP." FOR Some time there was neither change nor stir in Clarissa Lovel's new life. It was not altogether an unpleasant kind of existence, perhaps, and Miss Lovel was inclined to make the best of it. She was very much her own mistress, free to spend the long hours of her monotonous days according to her own pleasure. Her father exacted very little from her, and received her dutiful attentions with an air of endurance which was not particularly encouraging. But Clarissa was not easily disheartened. She wanted to win her father's affection; and again and again, after every new discouragement, she told herself that there was no reason why she should not ultimately succeed in making herself as dear to him as an only daughter should be. It was only a question of time and patience. There was no reason that he should not love her, no possible ground for his coldness. It was his nature to be cold, perhaps; but those cold natures have often proved capable of a single strong attachment. What happiness it would be to win this victory of love! "We stand almost alone in the world," she said to herself. "We have need to be very dear to each other." So, though the time went by, and she made no perceptible progress toward this happy result, Clarissa did not despair. Her father tolerated her, and even this was something; it seemed a great deal when she remembered her childhood at Arden, in which she had never known what it was to be in her father's society for an hour at a time, and when, but for chance meetings in corridors and on staircases, she would very often have lived for weeks under the same roof with him without seeing his face or hearing his voice. Now it was all different; she was a woman now, and Mill Cottage was scarcely large enough to accommodate two separate existences, even Sometimes, but very rarely, they had company. Mr. Oliver and his wife would dine with them occasionally, or the vicar of Arden, a grave bachelor of five-and-thirty, would drop in to spend an hour or two of an evening. But besides these they saw scarcely any one. The small professional men of Holborough Mr. Lovel held in supreme contempt-a contempt of which those gentlemen themselves were thoroughly aware. The county people whom he had been accustomed to receive at Arden Court he shrank from with a secret sense of shame in these days of his fallen fortunes. He had therefore made for himself a kind of hermit life at Mill Cottage; and his acquaintance had come, little by little, to accept this as his established manner of existence. They still called upon the recluse occasionally, and sent him cards for their state dinners, averse from any neglect of a man who had once occupied a great position among them; but they were no longer surprised when Mr. Lovel pleaded his feeble health as a reason for declining their hospitality. A very dull life for a girl, perhaps; but for Clarissa it was not altogether an unhappy life. She was at an age when a girl can make an existence for herself out of bright young fancies and vague, deep thoughts. There was that in her life just now which fades and perishes with the passing of years; a subtile, indescribable charm; a sense of things beyond the common things of daily life. If there had been a closer bond of union between her father and herself, if there had not been that dark cloud upon her brother's life, she might have made herself entirely happy; she might almost have forgotten that Arden was sold, and a vulgar mercantile stranger lord of those green slopes and broad, ancient terraces she loved so well. 66 As it was, the loneliness of her existence troubled her very little. She had none of that eager longing for society" or "fashion" wherewith young ladies who live in towns are apt to inoculate one another. She had no desire to shine, no consciousness of her own beauty; for the French girls at Madame Marot's had been careful not to tell her that her pale patrician face was beautiful. She wished for nothing but to win her father's love, and to bring about some kind of reconciliation between him and Austin. So the autumn deepened into winter, and the winter brightened into early spring, without bringing any change to her life. She had her color-box and her easel, her books and piano, for her best companions; and if she did not make any obvious progress toward gaining her father's affection, she contrived, at any rate, to avoid rendering her presence in any way obnoxious to him. strongs were said to be a very happy couple; and if the master of Hale Castle was apt to seem something of a cipher in his own house, the house was an eminently agreeable one, and Lady Laura popular with all classes. Her husband adored her, and had surrendered his judgment to her guidance with a most supreme faith in her infallibility. Happily she exercised her power with that subtile tact which is the finest gift of woman; and his worst enemies could scarcely call Frederick Armstrong a hen-pecked husband. The spring and early summer brought no change to Clarissa's life. She had been at home for the greater part of a year, and in all that time one day had resembled another almost as closely as in the scholastic monotony of existence at Madame Marot's. And yet the girl had Two or three times in the course of the winter Mrs. Oliver gave a little musical party, at which Clarissa met the small gentry of Holborough, who pronounced her a very lovely girl, and pitied her because of her father's ruined fortunes. To her inexperience these modest assemblies seemed the perfection of gayety; and she would fain have accepted the invitations that followed them from the wives of Holborough bankers and law-shaped no complaint about the dullness of this yers and medical men to whom she had been introduced. Against this degradation, however, Mr. Lovel resolutely opposed himself. "No, Clarissa," he said, sternly; "you must enter society under such auspices as I should wish, or you must be content to remain at home. I can't have a daughter of mine hawked about in that petty Holborough set. Lady Laura will be at the Castle by-and-by, I dare say. If she chooses to take you up she can do so. Pretty girls are always at par in a country house, and at the Castle you would meet people worth knowing. Clarissa sighed. Those cordial Holborough gentry had been so kind to her, and this exclusiveness of her father's chilled her somehow. It seemed to add a new bitterness to their poverty -to that poverty, by-the-way, of which she had scarcely felt the sharp edges yet a while. Things went very smoothly at Mill Cottage. Her father lived luxuriously after his quiet fashion. One of the best wine-merchants at the West End of London supplied his claret; Fortnum and Mason furnished the condiments and foreign rarities which were essential for his breakfast - table. There seemed never any lack of money, or only when Clarissa ventured to hint at the scantiness of her school wardrobe, on which occasion Mr. Lovel looked very grave, and put her off with two or three pounds to spend at the Holborough draper's. "I should want so many new clothes if I went to the Castle, papa," she said, rather sadly, one day when her father was talking of Lady Laura Armstrong; but Mr. Lovel only shrugged his shoulders. "A young woman is always well dressed in a white muslin gown," he said, carelessly. "I dare say a few pounds would get you all you want." The Castle was a noble old place at Hale, a village about six miles from Holborough. It had been the family seat of the Earl of Roxham ever since the reign of Edward VI.; but, on the Roxham race dying out, some fifty years before this, had become the property of a certain Mr. Armstrong, a civilian who had made a great fortune in the East in an age when great fortunes were commonly made by East Indian traders. His only son had been captain in a crack regiment, and had sold out of the army after his father's death in order to marry Lady Laura Challoner, second daughter of the Earl of Calderwood, a nobleman of ancient lineage and decayed fortunes, and to begin life as a country gentleman under her wise governance. The Arm tranquil routine even in her inmost unspoken thoughts. She was happy, after a quiet fashion. She had a vague sense that there was a broader, grander kind of life possible to womanhood-a life as different from her own as the wide waste of sea which she looked across sometimes from the downs beyond Holborough was different from the placid mill-stream that bounded her father's orchard. But she had no sick, fretful yearning for that wider life. To win her father's affection, to see her brother restored to his abandoned home-these were her girlish dreams and simple, unselfish hopes. In all the months Clarissa Lovel had spent at Mill Cottage she had never crossed the boundary of that lost domain she loved so well. There was a rustic bridge across the mill-stream, and a wooden gate opening into Arden woods. Clarissa very often stood by this gate, leaning with folded arms upon the topmost bar, and looking into the shadowy labyrinth of beech and pine, with sad, dreamy eyes, but she never went through beyond the barrier. Honest Martha asked her more than once why she never walked in the wood, which was so much pleasanter than the dusty high-road, or even Arden common, an undulating expanse of heathy waste beyond the village, where Clarissa would roam for hours on the fine spring days, with a sketch-book under her arm. The friendly peasant woman could not understand that obstinate avoidance of a beloved scene-that sentiment which made her lost home seem to Clarissa a thing to shrink from as she might have shrunk from beholding the face of the beloved dead. It was bright midsummer weather, a glorious, prolific season, with the thermometer ranging between seventy and eighty, when Lady Laura Armstrong did at last make her appearance at Mill Cottage. The simple, old-fashioned garden was all aglow with roses; the house half hidden beneath the luxuriance of foliage and flowers-a great magnolia on one side climbing up to the dormer-windows; on the other, pale monthly roses, and odorous golden and crimson tinted honeysuckle. Lady Laura was in raptures with the place. She found Clarissa sitting in a natural arbor made by a group of old hawthorns and a wild plum-tree, and placed herself at once upon a footing of perfect friendliness and familiarity with the girl. Mr. Lovel was out-a rare occurrence. He had gone for a stroll through the village with Ponto. "And why are you not with him?" asked Lady Laura, who, like most of these clever, managing women, had a knack of asking questions. "You must be a better companion than Ponto." 66 Papa does not think so. He likes walking alone. He likes to be quite free to dream about his books, I fancy, and it bores him rather to have to talk.' "Not a very lively companion for you, I fear. Why, child, how dismal your life must be!" 66 Oh no; not dismal. It is very quiet, of course; but I like a quiet life." "But you go to a good many parties, I suppose, in Holborough and the neighborhood? I know the Holborough people are fond of giving parties, and are quite famous for croquet.' “No, Lady Laura; papa won't let me visit any one at Holborough, except my uncle and aunt, the Olivers." "Yes; I know the Olivers very well indeed. Remarkably pleasant people." "And I don't even know how to play croquet. "Why, my poor benighted child, in what a state of barbarism this father of yours is bringing you up! How are you ever to marry and take your place in the world? And with your advantages, too! What can the man be dreaming about? I shall talk to him very seriously. We are quite old friends, you know, my dear, and I can venture to say what I like to him. You must come to me immediately. I shall have a houseful of people in a week or two, and you shall have a peep at the gay world. Poor little prison flower-no wonder you look thoughtful and pale! And now show me your garden, please, Miss Lovel. We can stroll about till your father comes home. I mean to talk to him at once. Energy was one of the qualities of her own character for which Laura Armstrong especially valued herself. She was always doing something or other which she was not actually called upon by her own duty or by the desire of other people to do, and she was always eager to do it "at once. She had come to Mill Cottage intending to show some kindness to Clarissa Lovel, whose father and her own father, the Earl of Calderwood, had been firm friends in the days when the master of Arden entertained the county; and Clarissa's manner and appearance having impressed her most favorably, she was eager to do her immediate service-to have her at the Castle, and show her to the world, and get her a rich husband if possible. In honest truth this Lady Laura Armstrong was a kindly disposed, sympathetic woman, anxious to make the best of the opportunities which Providence had given her with so lavish a hand, and to do her duty toward her less fortunate neighbors. The office of Lady Bountiful, the position of patroness, suited her humor. Her active, frivolous nature, which spurned repose, and yet never rose above trifles, found an agreeable occupation in the exercise of this kind of benign influence upon other people's lives. Whether she would have put herself seriously out of the way for the benefit of any of these people to whom she was so unfailingly beneficent was a question which circumstances had never yet put to the test. Her benevolence had so far been of a light, airy kind, which did not heavily tax her bodily or mental powers, or even the ample resources of her purse. She was a handsome woman, after a fair, florid, rather redundant style of beauty, and was profoundly skilled in all those arts of costume and decoration by which such beauty is improved. A woman of middle height, with a fine figure, a wealth of fair hair, and an aquiline nose of the true patrician type, her admirers said. The mouth was rather large, but redeemed by a set of flashing teeth and a winning smile; the chin inclined to be of that order called "double;" and indeed a tendency to increasing stoutness was one of the few cares which shadowed Lady Laura's path. She was five-and-thirty, and had only just begun to tell herself that she was no longer a girl. She got on admirably with Clarissa, as she informed her husband afterward when she described the visit. The girl was fascinated at once by that frank, cordial manner, and was quite ready to accept Lady Laura for her friend, ready to be patronized by her, even, with no sense of humiliation, no lurking desire to revolt against the kind of sovereignty with which her new friend took possession of her. Mr. Lovel came strolling in by-and-by with his favorite tan setter, looking as cool as if there were no such thing as blazing midsummer sunshine, and found the two ladies sauntering up and down the grassy walk by the mill-stream, under the shadow of gnarled old pear and quince trees. He was charmed to see his dear Lady Laura. Clarissa had never known him so enthusiastic or so agreeable. It was quite a new manner which he put on the manner of a man who is still interested in life. Lady Laura began almost at once with her reproaches. How could he be so cruel to this dear child? How could he be so absurd as to bury her alive in this way? " She visits no one, I hear," cried the lady"positively no one.' 66 Humph! she has been complaining, has she?" said Mr. Lovel, with a sharp glance at his daughter. "Complaining! Oh no, papa! I have told Lady Laura that I do not care about gayety, and that you do not allow me to visit." "Aut Cæsar aut nullus-the best or nothing. I don't want Clarissa to be gadding about to all the tea-drinkings in Holborough; and if I let her go to one house, I must let her go to all." "But you will let her come to me?" "That is the best, my dear Lady Laura. Yes, of course she may come to you whenever you may please to be troubled with her." "Then I please to be troubled with her immediately. I should like to carry her away with me this afternoon if it were possible; but I suppose that can't be there will be a trunk to be packed, and so on. When will you come to me, Miss Lovel? Do you know, I am strongly tempted to call you Clarissa?" "I should like it so much better," the girl answered, blushing. "What! may I? Then I'm sure I will. It's such a pretty name, reminding one of that old novel of Richardson's, which every body quotes and no one ever seems to have read. When will you come, Clarissa ?" "Give her a week," said her father; "she'll want a new white muslin gown, I dare say: |