For the last ten years of her life,
ever since she was a precocious damsel of twelve, brought to a premature
state of cultivation by an expensive forcing apparatus of governesses and
masters, she had been in the habit of assuring herself and her confidantes
that her father would never marry again. She had a very keen sense of the
importance of wealth, and from that tender age, of twelve or so upwards,
she had been fully aware of the diminution her own position would undergo
in the event of a second marriage, and the advent of a son to the house of
Granger. Governesses and maidservants had perhaps impressed this upon her
at some still earlier stage of her existence; but from this time upwards
she had needed nothing to remind her of the fact, and she had watched her
father with an unwearying vigilance.
More than once, strong-minded and practical as he was, she had seen him in
danger. Attractive widows and dashing spinsters had marked him for their
prey, and he had seemed not quite adamant; but the hour of peril had
passed, and the widow or the spinster had gone her way, with all her
munitions of war expended, and Daniel Granger still unscathed. This time it
was very different. Mr. Granger showed an interest in Clarissa which he had
never before exhibited in any member of her sex since he wooed and won the
first Mrs. Granger; and as his marriage had been by no means a romantic
affair, but rather a prudential arrangement made and entered upon by Daniel
Granger the elder, cloth manufacturer of Leeds and Bradford, on the one
part, and Thomas Talloway, cotton-spinner of Manchester, on the other part,
it is doubtful whether Miss Sophy Talloway had ever in her ante-nuptial
days engrossed so much of his attention.
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