early dinner, in a shady nook in the shrubbery, Laura lying on the ground, reading a novel, and Eleanor engaged in some needle-work achievement which was by-and-bye to be presented to the Signora; when the rustling leaves of the laurel screen that inclosed and sheltered their retreat, were parted, and the handsome face, the face which had looked worn and haggard last night, but which now had only an aristocratic air of languor, presented itself before them in a frame of dark and shining foliage.
“Good morning, or good afternoon, young ladies,” said Mr. Darrell, “for I hear that your habits at Hazlewood are very primitive, and that you dine at three o’clock. I have been looking for you during the last half-hour, in my anxiety to apologise for any alarm I may have given you last night. When the landless heir returns to his home, he scarcely expects to find two angels waiting for him on the threshold. I might have been a little more careful of my toilet, had I been able to foresee my reception. What luggage I had I left at Southampton.”
“Oh! never mind your dress, Mr. Darrell,” Laura answered gaily, “we are both so glad you have come home. Ain’t we, Eleanor? for our lives are so dreadfully dull here, though your mamma is very kind to us. But do tell us all about your voyage home, and your journey here on foot, and all the troubles you have gone through? Do tell us your adventures, Mr. Darrell?”
The young lady lifted her bright blue eyes with a languishing glance of pity; but suddenly dropped them under the young man’s glance. He looked from one to the other of the two girls, and then, strolling into the grassy little amphitheatre where they were sitting, flung himself into a rustic arm-chair, near the table at which Eleanor Vane sat at work.
Launcelot Darrell was a handsome likeness of his mother. The features which in her face were stern and hard, had in his an almost feminine softness. The dark eyes had a lazy light in them, and were half-hidden by the listless droop of the black lashes that fringed their full white lids. The straight nose, low forehead, and delicately moulded mouth, were almost classical in their physical perfection; but there was a want in the lower part of the face; the chin receded a little where it should have projected, the handsome mouth was weak and undecided in expression.
Mr. Darrell might have sat as a painter’s model for all the lovers in prose or poetry; but he would never have been mistaken for a hero or a statesman. He had all the attributes of grace and beauty, but not one of the outward signs of greatness. Eleanor Vane felt this want of power in the young man as she looked at him. Her rapid perception seized upon the one defect which marred so much perfection.
“If I had need of help against the murderer of my father,” the girl thought, “I would not ask this man to aid me.”
“And now, Mr. Darrell,” said Laura, throwing down her book, and settling herself for a flirtation with the prodigal son, “tell us all your adventures. We are dying to hear them.”
Launcelot Darrell shrugged his shoulders.
“What adventures, my dear Miss Mason?”
“Why, your Indian experiences, of course, and your journey home. All your romantic escapes, and thrilling perils, tiger-hunting, pig-sticking—that doesn’t sound romantic, but I suppose it is—lonely nights in which you lost yourself in the jungle, horrible encounters with rattle-snakes, brilliant balls at Government House—you see I know all about Indian life—rides on the race-course, flirtations with Calcutta belles.”
The young man laughed at Miss Mason’s enthusiasm.
“You know more about the delights of an Indian existence than I do,” he said, rather bitterly; “a poor devil who goes out to Calcutta with only one letter of introduction, and an empty purse, and is sent up the country, within a few days of his arrival, to a lonely station, where his own face is about the only white one in the neighbourhood, hasn’t very much chance of becoming familiar with Government House festivities, or Calcutta belles, who reserve their smiles for the favoured children of fortune, I can assure you. As to tiger-hunts and pig-sticking, my dear Miss Mason, I can give you very little information upon those points, for an indigo planter’s overseer, whose nose is kept pretty close to the grindstone, has enough to do for his pitiful stipend, and very little chance of becoming a Gordon Gumming or a Jules Gerard.”
Laura Mason looked very much disappointed.
“You didn’t like India, then, Mr. Darrell?” she said.
“I hated it,” the young man answered, between his set teeth.
There was so much suppressed force in Launcelot Darrell’s utterance of these three words, that Eleanor looked up from her work, startled by the young man’s sudden vehemence.
He was looking straight before him, his dark eyes fixed, his strongly marked eyebrows contracted, and a red spot burning in the centre of each pale and rather hollow cheek.
“But why did you hate India?” Laura asked, with unflinching pertinacity.
“Why does a man hate poverty and humiliation, Miss Mason? You might as well ask me that. Suppose we drop the subject. It isn’t a very agreeable one to me, I assure you.”
“But your voyage home,” pursued Laura, quite unabashed by this rebuff; “you can tell us your adventures during the voyage home.”
“I had no adventures. Men who travel by the overland route may have something to tell, perhaps: I came the cheapest and the slowest way.”
“By a sailing vessel?”
“Yes.”
“And what was the name of the vessel.”
“The Indus.”
“The Indus, that’s an easy name to remember. But of course you had all sorts of amusements on board; you played whist in the cuddy—what is the cuddy, by-the-bye?—and you got up private theatricals, and you started an amateur newspaper, or a magazine, and you crossed the line, and—”
