Take my advice, Mrs. Granger, and try to
be in Paris as soon as you can."
"I will," she answered fervently. "I would do anything to save him." She
looked at her watch, and rose from the seat under the hawthorn. "It is
nearly two o'clock," she said, "and I must go back to the house. You will
come to luncheon, of course?"
"Thanks--no. I have an engagement that will take me back to the town
immediately."
"But Mr. Granger will be surprised to hear that you have been here without
calling upon him."
"Need Mr. Granger hear of my coming?" George Fairfax asked in a low tone.
Clarissa flushed scarlet.
"I have no secrets from my husband, Mr. Fairfax," she said, "even about
trifles."
"Ten thousand pardons! I scarcely want to make my presence here a secret;
but, in short, I came solely to speak to you about a subject in which I
knew you were deeply interested, and I had not contemplated calling upon
Mr. Granger."
They were walking slowly up the grassy slope as they talked; and after this
there came a silence, during which Clarissa quickened her pace a little,
George Fairfax keeping still by her side. Her heart beat faster than its
wont; and she had a vague sense of danger in this man's presence--a sense
of a net being woven round her, a lurking suspicion that this apparent
interest in her brother veiled some deeper feeling.
They came out of the hollow, side by side, into a short arcade of flowering
limes, at the end of which there was a broad sweep of open grass.
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