"But there was all the time before dinner, papa. She showed us her cottages--O, how I pitied the poor people! though I daresay she is kind to them, in her way; but imagine any one coming in here and opening all our cupboards, and spying out cobwebs, and giving a little shriek at the discovery of a new loaf in our larder. She found out that one of her model cottagers had been eating new bread. She said it gave her quite a revulsion of feeling. And then when we went home she showed me her account-books and her medicine-chest. It was very tiring." "Poor child! and this young woman will have Arden Court some day--unless her father should marry again." Clarissa's pale face flamed with sudden crimson. "Which he is pretty sure to do, sooner or later," continued Mr. Lovel, with an absent meditative air, as of a man who discusses the most indifferent subject possible. "I hope he may. It would be a pity for such a place to fall into such hands. She would make it a phalanstery, a nest for Dorcas societies and callow curates." "But if she does good with her money, papa, what more could one wish?" "I don't believe that she would do much good. There is a pinched hard look about the lower part of her face which makes me fancy she is mean. I believe she would hoard her money, and make a great talk and fuss about nothing. Yes, I hope Granger will marry again. The house is very fine, isn't it, since its renovation?" "It is superb, papa. Dearly as I love the place, I did not think it could be made so beautiful." "Yes, and everything has been done in good taste, too," Mr. Lovel went on, in rather a querulous tone. "I did not expect to see that. But of course a man of that kind has only to put himself into the hands of a first-class architect, and if he is lucky enough to select an architect with an artistic mind, the thing is done. All the rest is merely a question of money. Good heavens, what a shabby sordid hole this room looks, after the place we have come from!" The room was not so bad as to merit that look of angry disgust with which Mr. Lovel surveyed it. Curtains and carpet were something the worse for wear, the old-fashioned furniture was a little sombre; but the rich binding of the books and a rare old bronze here and there redeemed it from commonness--poor jetsam and flotsam from the wreck of the great house, but enough to give some touch of elegance to meaner things. "O, papa," Clarissa cried reproachfully, "the room is very nice, and we have been peaceful and happy in it. I don't suppose all the splendour of Arden would have made us much happier. Those external things make so little difference." She thought of those evenings at Hale Castle, when George Fairfax had abandoned her to pay duty to his betrothed, and of the desolation of spirit that had come upon her in the midst of those brilliant surroundings. Her father paced the little room as if it had been a den, and answered her philosophic remonstrance with an exclamation of contempt.