"That's right, dear!" cried Lady Laura, with a pleased look. "I knew that you would come out of the business well, in spite of everything. Of course you can care nothing for this foolish fellow; but I know Geraldine's sensitive nature so well, and that if she had the faintest suspicion of George's conduct, the whole thing would be off for ever--an attachment of many years' standing, think of that, Clary! Now I want you to promise me that, come what may, you will give Mr. Fairfax no encouragement. Without encouragement this foolish fancy will die out very quickly. Of course, if it were possible you could care for him, I would not come here to ask you such a thing as this. You would have a right to consider your own happiness before my sister's. But as that is out of the question, and the man is almost a stranger to you----" "Out of the question--almost a stranger." Clarissa remembered that night in the railway carriage, and it seemed to her as if she and George Fairfax had never been strangers. "It is so easy for you to give me this promise. Tell me now, Clary dear, that you will not have anything to say to him, if he should contrive to see you again." "I will not, Lady Laura." "Is that a promise, now, Clarissa?" "A most sacred promise." Lady Armstrong kissed her young friend in ratification of the compact. "You are a dear generous-minded girl," she said, "and I feel as if I had saved my sister's happiness by this bold course. And now tell me what you have been doing since you left us. Have you seen anything more of the Grangers?" Questioned thus, Clarissa was fain to give her friend some slight account of her day at Arden. "It must have affected you very much to see the old place. Ah, Clary, it is you who ought to be mistress there, instead of Miss Granger!" Clarissa blushed, remembering that awkward avowal of Daniel Granger's. "I am not fit to be mistress of such, a place," she said. "I could never manage things as Miss Granger does." "Not in that petty way, perhaps. I should not care to see you keeping accounts and prying into grocery-lists as she does. You would govern your house on a grander scale. I should like to see you the owner of a great house." "That is a thing you are never likely to see, Lady Laura." "I am not so sure of that. I have an idea that there is a great fortune lying at your feet, if you would only stoop to pick it up. But girls are so foolish; they never know what is really for their happiness; and if by any chance there should happen to be some passing folly, some fancy of the moment, to come between them and good fortune, everything is lost."