"It is quite unimportant to us."
He waived the subject away, as he might have done if it had been some small
operation in commerce altogether unworthy of his notice; but in his secret
heart he kept the memory of his wife's embarrassed manner. He had not
forgotten the portfolio of drawings among which the likeness of George
Fairfax figured go prominently. It had seemed a small thing at the
time--the merest accident; one head was as good to draw as another, and so
on--he had told himself; but he knew now that his wife did not love him,
and he wanted to know if she had ever loved any one else.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXX.
THE HEIR OF ARDEN.
Clarissa wrote to her brother--a long letter full of warmth and tenderness,
with loving messages for his children, and even for the wife who was so
much beneath him. She enclosed three ten-pound notes, all that remained
to her of a quarter's pin-money; and O, how bitterly she regretted the
frivolous extravagances that had reduced her exchequer to so low a
condition! Toward the close of her letter she came to a standstill. She had
begged Austin to write to her, to tell her all he could about himself,
his hopes, his plans for the future; but when it came to the question of
receiving a letter from him she was puzzled. From the first day of her
married life she had made a point of showing all her letters to her
husband, as a duty, just as she had shown them to her father; who had very
rarely taken the trouble to read them, by the way.
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