They
went into the small dining-room. The luncheon bell had rung a quarter of
an hour ago, and Miss Granger was waiting for her parents, with an air of
placid self-abnegation, by an open window.
There was a good deal of talk during luncheon, but the chief talker was
George Fairfax. Clarissa was grave and somewhat absent. She was thinking of
her brother Austin, and the gloomy account of him which she had just heard.
It was hardly a surprise to her. His letters had been few and far between,
and they had not been hopeful, or, at the best, brightened by only a flash
of hopefulness, which was more like bravado, now and then. His necessity
for money, too, had seemed without limit. She was planning her campaign.
Come what might, she must contrive some means of being in Paris before
long. Mr. Fairfax was going on to Carlsruhe, that was an advantage; for
something in his manner to-day had told her that he must always be more or
less than her friend. She had a vague sense that his eagerness to establish
a confidence between her and himself was a menace of danger to her.
"If I can only go to Austin myself," she thought, "there need be no
intermediary."
Luncheon was over, and still Mr. Fairfax lingered--strangely indifferent
to the waning of an afternoon which seemed peculiarly advantageous for
fly-fishing, Mr. Granger thought. They went into the drawing-room, and Mr.
Fairfax dawdled an hour away talking of Lyvedon, and giving a serio-comic
description of himself in the novel character of a country gentleman.
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