G. was there, Fishy, to say the least of it!"
Jane Target was very fond of her mistress, and would as soon have doubted
that the sun was fire as suspected any flaw in Clarissa's integrity. She
had spoken her mind more than once upon this subject in the servants' hall,
and had put the bulky Jarvis to shame.
"Do, ma'am, eat something!" she pleaded, when she had poured out the tea.
"You had no dinner yesterday, and no tea, unless you had it in the nursery.
You'll be fit for nothing, if you go on like this."
Fit for nothing! The phrase roused Clarissa from her apathy. Too weak to
do battle for her right to the custody of her child, she thought; and
influenced by this idea, she struggled through a tolerable breakfast,
eating delicate _petite pains_ which tasted like ashes, and drinking strong
tea with a feverish eagerness.
The tea fortified her nerves; she got up and paced her room, thinking what
she ought to do.
Daniel Granger was going to take her child from her--that was
certain--unless by some desperate means she secured her darling to herself.
Nothing could be harder or more pitiless than his manner that morning. The
doors of Arden Court were to be shut against her.
"And I sold myself for Arden!" she thought bitterly. She fancied how the
record of her life would stand by-and-by, like a verse in those Chronicles
which Sophia was so fond of: "And Clarissa reigned a year and a half, and
did that which was evil"--and so on.
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