The blush, and a certain warmth in her tone, seemed to Sophia conclusive evidence of her hidden regard for this man. Miss Granger's heart beat a good deal faster than usual, and little jealous sparkles shone in her cold gray eyes. She had never admired any man so much as she had admired this brilliant young painter. Many men had paid her compliments; as the rich Mr. Granger's sole daughter and heiress, she had been gratified with no meagre share of mankind's worship; but no words ever spoken had sounded so sweet in her ears as those few civil speeches that Mr. Austin had found time to address to her during his visits to the Rue de Morny. And after having taken so much pleasure in his converse, and thought so much more about him than she would have considered it proper for any model villager to think about an individual of the opposite sex, it was a hard thing to find--first, that the base impostor had a wife; and secondly, that whatever illegitimate worship he might have to render, was to be offered at the shrine of Clarissa. "Indeed!" she exclaimed, with an air of extreme surprise. "You seemed on such very friendly terms with him, that I fancied you must really have known each other before, and that you had some motive for concealing the fact from papa." Clarissa blushed a deeper crimson at this homethrust, and bent a little lower over her drawing-board. It seemed a fortunate thing that she happened to be painting when Miss Granger opened her guns upon her in this manner. "He gives lessons, I believe; does he not?" asked Sophia. "Yes--I--I believe--I have heard so." "Do you know, I took it into my head that he might have been your drawing-master at Belforet." Clarissa laughed aloud at this suggestion. Miss Granger's persistent curiosity amused her a little, dangerous as the ground was. "Oh dear no, he was not our master at Belforet," she said. "We had a little old Swiss--such an ancient, ancient man--who took snuff continually, and was always talking about his _pays natal_ and Jean Jacques Rousseau. I think he had known Rousseau; and I am sure he was old enough to remember the night they locked him out of Geneva." Sophia was fairly posed; she had been on a false scent evidently, and yet she was sure there was something. That is how she shaped her doubts in her own mind--there was _something_. Warman thought so, she knew; and Warman was gifted with no ordinary amount of penetration.