Well, my dear, I'll leave you to dress
for dinner. I'm very glad you like the rooms. Here are the keys of your
jewel-cases; we must contrive to fill them by and by. You see I have no
family diamonds to reset for you."
"You have given me more than enough jewelry already," said Clarissa. And
indeed Mr. Granger had showered gifts upon her with a lavish hand during
his brief courtship.
"Pshaw, child! only a few trinkets bought at random. I mean to fill those
cases with something better. I'll go and change my coat. We dine half an
hour earlier than usual to-day, Sophia tells me."
Mr. Granger retired to his dressing-room on the other side of the spacious
bed-chamber, perhaps the very plainest apartment in the house, for he was
as simple in his habits as the great Duke of Wellington; a room with a
monster bath on one side, and a battered oak office-desk on the other--a
desk that had done duty for fifty years or so in an office at Leeds--in
one corner a well-filled gunstand, in another a rack of formidable-looking
boots--boots that only a strong-minded man could wear.
When she was quite alone, Clarissa sat down in one of the windows of her
boudoir, and looked out at the park. How well she remembered the prospect!
how often she had looked at it on just such darksome autumnal evenings long
ago, when she was little more than a child! This very room had been her
mother's dressing-room.
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