M. E. Braddon

“ I don't suppose I'm worse than my neighbours. If I didn't go out, Clary, and keep myself in the minds of my patrons, I might rot in a garret. You don't know how soon a man is forgotten—even a man who has made his mark more positively than I have; and then you see, my dear, I like society, and have no taste for the domestic hearth, except for variety, once in a way, like dining on a bouillon after a week's high feeding. Yes, come what may, I shall stay in Paris—as long as I can."
There was something in the tone of the last words that alarmed Clarissa. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One may ride through a world of weariness in a barouche-and-pair. Clarissa had not found her husband's wealth by any means a perennial source of happiness, nor even the possession of Arden an unfailing consolation.
It was strange how this untidy painting-room of Austin's, with its tawdry dilapidated furniture—all of which had struck her with a sense of shabbiness and dreariness at first—had grown to possess a charm for her. In the winter gloaming, when the low wood fire glowed redly on the hearth, and made a flickering light upon the walls, the room had a certain picturesque aspect. ”

“ Lovel. "My poor Granger, you are farther gone than you suppose!"
"You can give me your solemn assurance upon one point, eh, Lovel?" said the master of Arden Court anxiously; "there is no one else in the case? Your daughter's heart is quite free? It is only a question as to whether I can win it?"
"Her heart is entirely free, and as pure as a child's. She is full of affection, poor girl, only yearning to find an outlet for it. She ought to make you a good wife, Daniel Granger. There is nothing against her doing so." ”

“ He had been waiting for such a meeting for a long time; waiting with a kind of sullen patience, knowing that it must come sooner or later, without any special effort of his; waiting with a strange mixture of feelings and sentiments—disappointed passion, wounded pride, mortified vanity, an angry sense of wrong that had been done to him by Clarissa's marriage, an eager desire to see her again, which was half a lover's yearning, half an enemy's lust of vengeance.
He was not a good man. Such a life as he had led is a life that no man can lead with impunity. ”

“ If I do not find happiness within the next five years, I am never likely to find it at all. At three-and-thirty a man has done with a heart, in a moral and poetic sense, and begins to entertain vague alarms on the subject of fatty degeneration."
Clarissa smiled faintly, as if the stranger's idle talk scarcely beguiled her from her own thoughts.
"You said you had been at Arden," she began rather abruptly; "then you must know papa."
"No, I have not the honour to know Mr. Lovel," with the same embarrassed air which he had exhibited before in speaking of Arden Court. ”

“ Daniel Granger wandered up and down the room for some minutes in a vague restless way, and then came to his wife's chair, and looked down at her very tenderly.
"My dear, I do wrong to worry you with reproaches," he said. "The mistake has been mine. From first to last, I have been to blame. I suppose in the wisest life there must always be some folly. Mine has been the hope that I could win your love. It has gone now, Clarissa; it is quite gone. Not even my child has given me a place in your heart."
She looked up at him again, with that look which expressed such a depth of remorse. ”

“ She thought Clarissa was too familiar with him, treated him too much with an air of perfect equality. A man who painted portraits for hire should be received, Miss Granger thought, as one would receive a superior kind of bootmaker.
More than once, in fact, in the course of that agreeable morning, Clarissa had for a moment forgotten that she was talking to Mr. Austin the painter, and not to her brother Austin Lovel. More than once an unconscious warmth or softness in her tone had made Miss Granger look up from her embroidery-frame with the eyes of wonder. ”

“ This was not much, but Clarissa was grateful even for so little.
"Thank you, papa," she said in a low voice; "I have been very anxious to please you."
"Yes, my dear, and I hope—nay, am sure—that your future conduct will give me the same cause for satisfaction; that you will act wisely, and settle the more difficult questions of life like a woman of sense and resolution. There are difficult questions to be solved in life, you know, Clary; and woe betide the woman who lets her heart get the better of her head!" ”

“ Was it so great a sin if the friendship of George Fairfax was dear to her? if the few happy hours of her life were those she spent in his company? But such special pleading as this was the poorest sophistry; at heart she was conscious that it was so. A woman has a double conscience, as it were—a holy of holies within the temple of her mind, to which falsehood cannot enter. She may refuse to lift the screen, and meet the truth face to face; but it is there—not to be extinguished—eternal, immutable; the divine lamp given for her guidance, if only she will not withdraw herself from its light. ”

“ So the wedding was performed as simply as if Miss Lovel had been uniting her fortunes with those of some fledgling of the curate species. There were only two bridesmaids—Miss Granger, who performed the office with an unwilling heart; and Miss Pontifex, a flaxen-haired young lady of high family and no particular means, provided for the occasion by Mrs. Oliver, at whose house she and Clarissa had become acquainted. There was a breakfast, elegant enough in its way—for the Holborough confectioner had been put upon his mettle by Mrs. Oliver—served prettily in the cottage parlour. ”

“ She nursed her father with extreme tenderness. He was not confined to his room for any length of time, but was weak and ill throughout the bleak wintry months, with a racking cough and a touch of low fever, lying prostrate for the greater part of the day on a sofa by the fire, and only brightening a little in the evening when Mr. Granger paid his accustomed visit. Clarissa tended him all through these melancholy days, when the rain beat against the windows and the dull gray sky looked as if it would never more be illuminated by a gleam of sunshine ”

“ Men have won their wives after marriage."
"I am too old to try my hand at that," replied Mr. Granger, with a bitter smile. He was mentally comparing himself with George Fairfax, the handsome soldier, with that indescribable charm of youth and brightness about him.
"If you were a younger man, I would hardly recommend such a separation," Mr. Lovel went on coolly; "but at your age—well, existence is quite tolerable without a wife; indeed there is a halcyon calm which descends upon a man when a woman's influence is taken out of his life, that is, perhaps, better than happiness. ”

“ To keep faith with Geraldine, whatsoever misery it may bring upon both of us? I am not one of those saints who think of everybody's happiness before their own, Clarissa. I am very human, with all humanity's selfishness. I want to be happy. I want a wife for whom I can feel something more than a cold well-bred liking. I did not think that it was in me to feel more than that. I thought I had outlived my capacity for loving, wasted the strength of my heart's youth on worthless fancies, spent all my patrimony of affection ”

“ It was scarcely strange that she should be completely happy in a life so different from her dull existence at home. The freshness and beauty of all these pleasant things would be worn off in time, no doubt, and she would become just like those other young women, with their experience of many seasons, and their perpetual complaint of being bored; but just now, while the freshness lasted, everything delighted her.
Clarissa had been more than six weeks at the Castle, while other visitors had come and gone, and the round of country-house gaieties had been unbroken. ”

“ Granger glanced at his own reflection in a glass over a buffet, as he paced to and fro. The figure that he saw there bore no sign of age. It was a relief to him to discover that—a thing he had never thought of till that moment.
"Why should she not love me?" he asked himself. "Are youth and a handsome face the only high-road to a woman's heart? I can't believe it. Surely constancy and devotion must count for something. Is there another man in the world who would love her as well as I? ”

“ I was not always what you have known me, Clarissa,—a worn-out machine, dawdling away the remnant of a wasted existence. I once had hopes and passions like the rest of mankind—perhaps more ardent than the most. Your mother was the loveliest and most fascinating woman I ever met, and from the hour of our first meeting I had but one thought—how I should win her for my wife. It was not a prudent marriage. She was my equal by birth; but she was the daughter of a ruined spendthrift, and had learnt extravagance and recklessness in her very nursery. ”

“ Everything was successful; Miss Granger's prophecy of cold weather was happily unfulfilled. The night was unusually still and sultry, a broad harvest moon steeping terraces and gardens in tender mellow light; not a breath to stir the wealth of blossoms, or to flutter the draperies of the many windows, all wide open to the warm night—a night of summer at the beginning of autumn.
Clarissa found herself in great request for the dances, and danced more than she had done since the days of her schoolgirl waltzes and polkas in the play-room at Belforêt. ”