Ormond."
Mr. Granger seated himself at the foot of the bed, a very little way from
Clarissa, taking possession of his child, as it were.
"Do you know, Mrs. Granger, that I have scarcely rested night or day since
you left Paris, hunting for my son?" he said. And this was the first time
he acknowledged his wife's presence by word or look.
Clarissa was silent. She had been betrayed, she thought--betrayed by her
own familiar friend; and Daniel Granger had come to rob her of her child.
Come what might, she would not part with him without a struggle.
After this, there came a weary time of anxious care and watching. The
little life trembled in the balance; there were harassing fluctuations, a
fortnight of unremitting care, before a favourable issue could be safely
calculated upon. And during all that time Daniel Granger watched his boy
with only the briefest intervals for rest or refreshment. Clarissa watched
too; nor did her husband dispute her right to a place in the sick-room,
though he rarely spoke to her, and then only with the coldest courtesy.
Throughout this period of uncertainty, Geraldine Challoner was faithful
to the duty she had undertaken; spending the greatest part of her life at
Clarissa's lodgings, and never wearying of the labours of the sick-room.
The boy grew daily fonder of her; but, with a womanly instinct, she
contrived that it should be Clarissa who carried him up and down the room
when he was restless--Clarissa's neck round which the wasted little arm
twined itself.
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