Am I so utterly obnoxious to you?"
"You are not at all obnoxious to me; but I am really anxious to rejoin my
party. My husband will begin to wonder what has become of me. Ah, there is
my stepdaughter coming to look for me."
Yes, there was Miss Granger, slowing advancing towards them. She had been
quite in time to see George Fairfax's entreating gestures, his pleading
air. She approached them with a countenance that would have been quite as
appropriate to a genteel funeral--where any outward demonstration of grief
would be in bad taste--as it was to Mr. Wooster's fete, a countenance
expressive of a kind of dismal resignation to the burden of existence in a
world that way unworthy of her.
"I was just coming back to the river, Sophia," Mrs. Granger said, not
without some faint indications of embarrassment. "I'm afraid Mr.--I'm
afraid Daniel must have been looking for me."
"Papa _has_ been looking for you," Miss Granger replied, with unrelenting
stiffness.--"How do you do, Mr. Fairfax?" shaking hands with him in a
frigid manner.--"He quite lost the last race. When I saw that he was
growing really anxious, I suggested that he should go one way, and I the
other, in search of you. That is what brought me here."
It was as much as to say, Pray understand that I have no personal interest
in your movements.
"And yet I have not been so very long away," Clarissa said, with a
deprecating smile.
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