"I shan't want you, Trotter," she said. "Tell Jarvis to walk the horses
gently up and down. I shall not be very long."
The man bowed and obeyed, wondering what business his mistress could have
in such a dingy street, "on the Surrey side of the water, too," as he said
to his comrade.
Austin was out, but Mrs. Lovel was at home, and it was Mrs. Lovel whom
Clarissa had come chiefly to see. The same tawdrily-dressed maid admitted
her to the same untidy sitting-room, a shade more untidy to-day, where
Bessie Lovel was dozing in an easy-chair by the fire, while the two boys
played and squabbled in one of the windows.
Mrs. Granger, entering suddenly, radiant in golden-brown moire and sables,
seemed almost to dazzle the eyes of Austin's wife, who had not seen much
of the brighter side of existence Her life before her marriage had been
altogether sordid and shabby, brightness or luxury of any kind for her
class being synonymous with vice; and Bessie Stanford the painter's model
had never been vicious. Her life since her marriage had been a life of
trouble and difficulty, with only occasional glimpses of spurious kind of
brilliancy. She lived outside her husband's existence, as it were, and felt
somehow that she was only attached to him by external links, as a dog might
have been. He had a certain kind of affection for her, was conscious of
her fidelity, and grateful for her attachment; and there an end.
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