Sophia was capricious in
this, sometimes listening eagerly, at other times suppressing Miss Warman
with a high hand.
So Clarissa had, unawares, an enemy within her gates, and could turn
neither to the right nor to the left without her motives for so turning
becoming the subject of a close and profound scrutiny. It is hard to say
what shape Miss Granger's doubts assumed. If put into the witness-box and
subjected to the cross-examination of a popular queen's-counsel, she
would have found it very difficult to give a substance or a form to her
suspicions. She could only have argued in a general way, that Mrs. Granger
was frivolous, and that any kind of wrong-doing might be expected from so
light-minded a person.
It was the beginning of June, and West-end London was glorious with the
brief brilliancy of the early summer. All the Mayfair balconies were bright
with, flowers, and the Mayfair knockers resounded perpetually under the
hand of the archetypal Jeames. The weather was unusually warm; the most
perfect weather for garden-parties, every one declared, and there were
several of these _al fresco_ assemblies inscribed in Mrs. Granger's
visiting-book: one at Wimbledon; another as far afield as Henley-on-Thames,
at a villa whose grounds sloped down to the river.
This Henley party was an affair in which Lady Laura Armstrong was
particularly interested. It was given by a bachelor friend of her
husband's, a fabulously rich stockbroker; and it was Lady Laura who had
brought the proprietor of the villa to Clarges-street, and who had been
instrumental in the getting-up of the fete.
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