The dinner in Clarges-street was a very quiet affair. George Fairfax was the only visitor, and the Grangers were "due" at an evening party. He learned with considerable annoyance that they were to leave London at the end of that week, whereby he could have little opportunity of seeing Clarissa. He might have followed her down to Yorkshire, certainly; but such a course would have been open to remark, nor would it be good taste for him to show himself in the neighbourhood of Hale Castle while Geraldine Challoner was there. He had an opportunity of talking confidentially to Clarissa once after dinner, when Mr. Granger, who had not fairly finished his nap in the railway-carriage, had retired to a dusky corner of the drawing-room and sunk anew into slumber, and when Miss Granger seemed closely occupied in the manufacture of an embroidered pincushion for a fancy fair. Absorbing as the manipulation of chenille and beads might be, however, her work did not prevent her keeping a tolerably sharp watch upon those two figures by the open piano: Clarissa with one hand wandering idly over the keys, playing some random passage, _pianissimo_, now and then; George Fairfax standing by the angle of the piano, bending down to talk to her with an extreme earnestness. He had his opportunity, and he knew how to improve it. He was talking of her brother. That subject made a link between them that nothing else could have made. She forgot her distrust of George Fairfax when he spoke with friendly interest of Austin. "Is the wife _very_ vulgar?" Clarissa asked, when they had been talking some time. "Not so especially vulgar. That sort of thing would be naturally toned down by her association with your brother. But she has an unmistakable air of Bohemianism; looks like a third-rate actress, or dancer, in short; or perhaps an artist's model. I should not wonder if that were her position, by the way, when your brother fell in love with her. She is handsome still, though a little faded and worn by her troubles, poor soul! and seems fond of him." "I am glad of that. How I should like to see him, and the poor wife, and the children--my brother's children! I have never had any children fond of me." She thought of Austin in his natural position, as the heir of Arden Court, with his children playing in the old rooms--not as they were now, in the restored splendour of the Middle Ages, but as they had been in her childhood, sombre and faded, with here and there a remnant of former grandeur. Mr. Granger woke presently, and George Fairfax wished him good-night. "I hope we shall see you at the Court some day," Clarissa's husband said, with a kind of stately cordiality. "We cannot offer you the numerous attractions of Hale Castle, but we have good shooting, and we generally have a houseful in September and October."