"Tired of this kind of life! Did ever any one hear of such a girl! I really think there are some people who would be tired of Paradise. Why, child, it is the making of you to be here! If I were as rich as--as that fellow Granger, for instance; confound Croesus!--I couldn't give you a better chance. You must stay here as long as that good-natured Lady Laura likes to have you; and I hope you'll have booked a rich husband before you come home. I shall be very much disappointed if you haven't." "I wish you would not talk in that way, papa; nothing would ever induce me to marry for money." "_For_ money; no, I suppose not," replied Mr. Lovel testily; "but you might marry a man _with_ money. There's no reason that a rich man should be inferior to the rest of his species. I don't find anything so remarkably agreeable in poor men." "I am not likely to marry foolishly, papa, or to offend you in that way," Clarissa answered with a kind of quiet firmness, which her father inwardly execrated as "infernal obstinacy;" "but no money in the world would be the faintest temptation to me." "Humph! Wait till some Yorkshire squire offers you a thousand a year pin-money; you'll change your tone then, I should hope. Have you seen anything of that fellow Granger, by the way?" "I have seen a good deal of Mr. and Miss Granger, papa. They have been staying here for a fortnight, and are here now." "You don't say so! Then I shall be linked into an intimacy with the fellow. Well, it is best to be neighbourly, perhaps. And how do you like Mr. Granger?" "He is not a particularly unpleasant person, papa; rather stiff and matter-of-fact, but not ungentlemanly; and he has been especially polite to me, as if he pitied me for having lost Arden." In a general way Mr. Lovel would have been inclined to protest against being pitied, either in his own person or that of his belongings, by such a man as Daniel Granger. But in his present humour it was not displeasing to him to find that the owner of Arden Court had been especially polite to Clarissa. "Then he is really a nice fellow, this Granger, eh, Clary?" he said airily. "I did not say nice, papa." "No, but civil and good-natured, and that kind of thing. Do you know, I hear nothing but praises of him about Arden; and he is really doing wonders for the place. Looking at his work with an unjaundiced mind, it is impossible to deny that. And then his wealth!--something enormous, they tell me. How do you like the daughter, by the way?" This question Mr. Lovel asked with something of a wry face, as if the existence of Daniel Granger's daughter was not a pleasing circumstance in his mind. "Not particularly, papa. She is very good, I daresay, and seems anxious to do good among the poor; and she is clever and accomplished, but she is not a winning person. I don't think I could ever get on with her very well." "That's a pity, since you are such near neighbours."