only to be guessed by the expression of his face, as the voice in which he spoke was scarcely above a whisper.
The three ladies crossed the hall and went into the drawing-room. Eleanor had no need to confirm her sudden recognition of the Frenchman by any second scrutiny of his face. She sat down near the broad hearth, and began to think how this man’s unlooked-for coming might affect the fulfilment of her purpose. Would he be likely to thwart her? or could he not, perhaps, be induced to help her?
“I must talk to Richard,” she thought. “He knows the world better than I do. I am almost as much a child as Laura.”
While Mrs. Monckton sat looking absently at the fire, and trying to imagine how the advent of the Frenchman might be made subservient to the scheme of her life, Miss Mason burst into a torrent of panegyric upon the stranger’s appearance.
“He’s such a good-natured-looking dear,” she exclaimed, “with curly hair and a mustache just like the Emperor’s; and the idea of my frightening myself so about him, and thinking he was a dreadful creature in a slouched hat, and with his coat collar turned up to hide his face, come to arrest Launcelot for some awful crime. I’m not a bit frightened now, and I hope Launcelot will bring him in to tea. The idea of his being a foreigner, too. I think foreigners are so interesting. Don’t you, Nelly?”
Eleanor Monckton looked up at the sound of her name. She had not heard a word that Laura had said.
“What, dear?” she asked, listlessly.
“Don’t you think foreigners interesting, Nelly?” repeated the young lady.
“Interesting? No.”
“What; not Frenchmen?”
Mrs. Monckton gave a faint shiver.
“Frenchmen!” she said. “No, I don’t like them, I— How do I know, Laura? baseness and treachery belong to no peculiar people, I suppose.”
Mr. Monckton and the scene-painter came into the drawing-room at this moment, followed pretty closely by Launcelot Darrell.
“What have you done with your friend, Darrell?” Gilbert Monckton asked, with a look of surprise.
“Oh, he’s gone,” the young man answered indifferently.
“You’ve let him go, without asking him to rest, or take some refreshment?”
“Yes, I contrived to get rid of him.”
“We don’t usually ‘contrive to get rid’ of people when they come here on a wet winter night,” said Mr. Monckton. “You’ll give Tolldale Priory a name for inhospitality, I fear. Why didn’t you ask your friend to stop?”
“Because I didn’t care to introduce him to you,” Launcelot Darrell answered coolly; “I never said he was a friend of mine. He’s only an acquaintance, and a very intrusive acquaintance. He had no right to ferret out my whereabouts, and to come down here after me. A man doesn’t want past associations forced upon him, however agreeable they may have been.”
“And still less when those associations are disagreeable. I understand. But who is this man?”
“He’s a Frenchman, a commis voyageur, or something of that kind; by no means a distinguished acquaintance. He’s a good fellow, in his own particular fashion, and would go out of his way to do me a service, I dare say; but he’s rather too fond of absinthe, or brandy, or any other spirit he can get hold of.”
“You mean that he is a drunkard,” said Mr. Monckton.
“I don’t say that. But I know that the poor devil has had more than one attack of delirium tremens in the course of his life. He’s over here in the interests of a patent mustard, I believe, lately invented by some great Parisian gastronomer.”
“Indeed; and where did you make his acquaintance?”
The same crimson hue that had mounted to Mr. Darrell’s forehead when the Frenchman’s card was handed to him, dyed his face now, and he hesitated for a few moments before replying to Gilbert Monckton’s straight question. But he recovered himself pretty quickly, and answered with his accustomed carelessnes of manner:
“Where did I know him? Oh, in London, of course. He was an inhabitant of that refuge for the destitute of all nations, some years ago, while I was sowing my wild oats there.”
“Before you went to India?”
“Yes, of course before I went to India.”
Mr. Monckton looked sharply at the young man’s face. There were moments when the lawyer’s prudence, when the conscientious scruples of an honest man got the better of the husband’s selfish fears; and in those moments Gilbert Monckton doubted whether he was doing his duty towards his ward in suffering her to marry Launcelot Darrell.
Was the young man worthy of the trust that was to be confided to him? Was he a fitting husband for an inexperienced and frivolous girl?
Mr. Monckton could only answer this question in one way. He could only satisfy his conscience by taking a cynical view of the matter.
“Launcelot Darrell is as good as other young men, I dare say,” he argued. “He’s good-looking, and conceited, and shallow, and idle; but the poor little girl has chosen to fall in love with him, and if I come between them, and forbid this marriage, and make the silly child unhappy by forcing my choice upon her, I may be quite as much mistaken as she, and after all marry her to a bad man. I may just as well let her draw her own number in the great lottery, and trust to Providence for its being a lucky one.”
But to-night there was something in Launcelot Darrell’s manner which aroused a vague suspicion in the breast of the lawyer.
“Then your friend, the commis voyageur, has gone back to Windsor, I suppose?” he said.
“No; I couldn’t very well avoid giving him a shelter, as he chose to come, though he came uninvited. I sent him back to Hazlewood with a few lines addressed to my mother, who will do her best to make him comfortable, I dare say. Poor soul, she would scarcely refuse to shelter a