Fairfax kept aloof from Clarissa. They; walked together in the gardens for
a couple of hours next morning; and George Fairfax pressed the question of
his marriage with such a show of earnestness and warmth, that Geraldine's
rebellious pride was at once solaced and subdued, and she consented to
agree to any arrangement he and Lady Laura might make.
"My sister is so much more practical than I am," she said, "and I would
really rather leave everything to her and to you."
Lightly as she tried to speak of the future, she did on this occasion allow
her lover to perceive that he was indeed very dear to her, and that the
coldness which had sometimes wounded him was little more than a veil
beneath which a proud woman strove to hide her deepest feelings. Mr.
Fairfax rather liked this quality of pride in his future wife, even if it
were carried so far as to be almost a blemish. It would be the surest safe
guard of his home in the time to come. Such women are not prone to petty
faults, or given to small quarrels. A man has a kind of security from
trivial annoyances in an alliance with such a one.
It was all settled, therefore, in that two hours' stroll in the sunny
garden, where the roses still bloomed, in some diminution of their
midsummer glory, their sweetness just a little over powered by the spicy
odour of innumerable carnations, their delicate colours eclipsed here and
there by an impertinent early dahlia.
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