Then, in an evil hour, as she thought, there came their final
parting. How well she remembered her brother loitering on the broad terrace
in front of Arden Court, in the dewy summer morning, waiting to bid her
good-bye! How passionately she had clung to him in that farewell embrace,
unable to tear herself away, until her father's stern voice summoned her to
the carriage that was to take her on the first stage of her journey!
"Won't you come to the station with us, Austin?" she pleaded.
"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. O, Austin, Austin, is this the end of all our summer
days in Arden woods long ago!"
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV.
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.
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