Do let
me come home to Arden for this one year. I don't think my schoolfellows
believe me when I talk of home, and the gardens, and the dear old park. I
have seen it in their faces, and you cannot think how hard it is to bear.
And I want to see you, papa. You must not fancy that, because I speak of
these things, I am not anxious for that. I do want to see you very much.
By-and-by, when I am grown up, I shall seem a stranger to you."
To this letter, and to many such, letters, Mr. Lovel's reply was always the
same. It did not suit his convenience that his only daughter should return
to England until her education was completed. Perhaps it would have suited
him better could she have remained away altogether; but he did not say as
much as that; he only let her see very clearly that there was no pleasure
for him in the prospect of her return.
And yet she was glad to go back. At the worst it was going home. She told
herself again and again, in those meditations upon her future life which
were not so happy as a girl's reveries should be,--she told herself that
her father must come to love her in time. She was ready to love him so much
on her part; to be so devoted, faithful, and obedient, to bear so much from
him if need were, only to be rewarded with his affection in the end.
So at eighteen years of age Clarissa Lovel's education was finished, and
she came home alone from a quiet little suburban village just outside
Paris, and having arrived to-night at the Great Northern Station, King's
Cross, had still a long journey before her.
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