Laura’s romantic infatuation only made Eleanor more impatient for the coming of that hour in which she should be able to denounce Launcelot Darrell as a cheat and a traitor.
“He shall be disinherited, and through me,” she thought. “He shall be cast off by the woman who has loved him, and through me. And when he suffers most, I will be as pitiless to his sufferings, as he was pitiless to the old man whom he cheated and abandoned to despair.”
A fortnight passed after Eleanor’s arrival at the Priory before she had any opportunity of seeing Launcelot Darrell. She had proposed going to Hazlewood several times, but upon each occasion Mr. Monckton had contrived to interpose some objection to her visit. She began to despair of entering upon the silent struggle with her father’s destroyer. It seemed as if she had come to Tolldale for no purpose. In her impatience she dreaded that Maurice de Crespigny would die, leaving his fortune to his nephew. She knew that the old man’s life hung by a slender thread, which at any moment might be severed.
But at last the opportunity she had so anxiously awaited arrived unexpectedly, not brought about by any scheming or foresight upon her part. Laura had been a few days at the Priory, and the two girls were walking in one of the sheltered pathways of the old-fashioned garden, waiting for Gilbert Monckton’s arrival, and the clanging summons of the great dinner-bell.
The October sunshine was bright and pleasant, the autumn flowers enlivened the dark luxuriance of the garden with their gaudy splendour. The tall hollyhocks waved in the breeze.
The two girls had walked up and down the smooth gravel path for some time in silence. Eleanor was absorbed in her own thoughts, and even Laura could not talk for ever without encouragement.
But presently this latter young lady stopped with a blush and a start, clasping her hand tightly about her companion’s wrist. At the other end of the sheltered walk, amongst the flickering patches of sunshine that trembled on the filbert-trees, she had perceived Launcelot Darrell advancing towards them.
Eleanor looked up.
“What is the matter, Laura?” she asked.
In the next moment she recognised Mr. Darrell. The chance had come at last.
The young man advanced to meet Mrs. Monckton and her companion. He was pale, and had a certain gravity in his face expressive of some hidden sorrow. He had been in love with Eleanor Vane, after his own fashion, and was very much disposed to resent her desertion of him. His mother had told him the reason of that desertion very frankly, after Eleanor’s marriage.
“I come to offer you my congratulations, Mrs. Monckton,” he said, in a tone which was intended to wound the young wife to the quick, but which, like everything else about this young man, had a certain spuriousness, a tone of melodrama that robbed it of all force. “I should have accompanied my mother when she called on you the other day—but—”
He paused abruptly, looking at Laura with an air of ill-concealed vexation.
“Can I speak to you alone, Mrs. Monckton?” he asked; “I have something particular to say to you.”
“But you can say it before Laura, I suppose?”
“No, not before Laura, or before any one. I must speak to you alone.”
Miss Mason looked at the object of her admiration with a piteous expression in her childish face.
“How cruel he is to me,” she thought; “I do believe he is in love with Eleanor. How wicked of him to be in love with my guardian’s wife.
Mrs. Monckton did not attempt to refuse the privilege which the young man demanded of her.
“I am quite willing to hear anything you may have to say to me,” she said.
“Oh, very well!” cried Laura. “I’m sure I’ll go away if you want to talk about secrets that I musn’t hear. Only I don’t see how you can have any secrets. You haven’t known Mr. Darrell a day longer than I have, Eleanor, and I can’t imagine what he can have to say to you.”
After this protest Miss Mason turned her back upon her companions, and ran away towards the house. She shed a few silent tears behind the shelter of a great clump of chrysanthemums.
“He doesn’t care for me a bit,” she muttered, as she dried her eyes; “Mrs. Darrell is a wicked old storyteller. I feel just as poor Gulnare must have felt when the Corsair was so rude to her, after she’d committed a murder for his sake.”
Eleanor and Launcelot left the sheltered pathway, and walked slowly across the broad lawn towards an old sundial, quaint in shape, and covered with the moss that had slowly crept over the gray stonework. Here the young man stopped, lounging against the mossgrown pedestal and resting his elbow upon the broken dial.
“I have come here to-day to tell you that you have treated me very ill, Eleanor Monckton,” he said.
The young wife drew herself up proudly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean that you jilted me.”
“Jilted you!”
“Yes. You played fast and loose with me. You listened to my declaration of love. You suffered me to believe that you loved me.”
“Mr. Darrell!”
“You did more, Eleanor,” cried the young man, passionately; “you did love me. This marriage with Gilbert Monckton, a man twenty years your senior, is a marriage prompted by base and mercenary motives. You loved me, Eleanor; your silence admitted it that day, if your words did not. You had no right to be cajoled by my mother; you had no right to leave Hazlewood without a word of explanation to me. You are falsehearted and mercenary, Mrs. Monckton; and you have married this man here because he is the owner of a fine house, and can give you money to spend upon your womanly caprices—your selfish vanities.”
He pointed scornfully to her silk dress as he spoke, and to the golden trinkets that glittered at her waist.
