"My sisters Emily and Louisa will make two more," she said; "and that
pretty little Miss Trellis, Admiral Trellis's daughter, will be the
sixth--I shall have only six. We'll have a grand discussion about the
dresses to-morrow morning. I should like to strike out something original,
if it were possible. We shall see what Madame Albertine proposes. I have
written to ask her for her ideas; but a milliner's ideas are so _bornees._"
Lady Laura had obtained permission from her sister to enlist Clarissa in
the ranks of the bridesmaids.
"It would look so strange to exclude a pretty girl like that," she said.
Whereupon Geraldine had replied rather coldly that she did not wish to do
anything that was strange, and that Miss Lovel was at liberty to be one of
her bridesmaids. She had studiously ignored the confession of jealousy made
that night in her sister's dressing-room; nor had Laura ever presumed to
make the faintest allusion to it. Things had gone so well since, and there
seemed nothing easier than to forget that unwonted outbreak of womanly
passion.
Clarissa heard the approaching marriage discussed with a strange feeling, a
nameless undefinable regret. It seemed to her that George Fairfax was the
only person in her small world who really understood her, the only man
who could have been her friend and counsellor. It was a foolish fancy, no
doubt, and had very little foundation in fact; but, argue with herself as
she might against her folly, she could not help feeling that this marriage
was in somewise a calamity for her.
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