“If you were to have a dozen illnesses such as this,” he said, “they would not turn me from my purpose, or alter my determination. When I voluntarily took upon myself the custody of your life, Laura, I undertook that charge with the intention of accomplishing it as a sacred duty. I have faltered in that duty; for I suffered you to betroth yourself to a man whom I have never been able to trust. But it is not yet too late to repair that error. You shall never marry Launcelot Darrell.”
“Why not? If he didn’t commit a forgery, as Eleanor says he did, why shouldn’t I marry him?”
“Because he has never truly loved you, Laura. You admit that he was Eleanor’s suitor before he was yours? You admit that, do you not?”
Miss Mason pouted, and sobbed, and choked once or twice before she answered. Gilbert Monckton waited impatiently for her reply. He was about as fit to play the mentor as the young lady whom he had taken upon himself to lecture. He was blinded and maddened by passionate regret, cruel disappointment, wounded pride, every feeling which is most calculated to paralyse a man’s reasoning powers and transform a Solomon into a fool.
“Yes,” Laura gasped at last; “he did propose to Eleanor first, certainly. But, then, she led him on.”
“She led him on!” cried Mr. Monckton. “How?”
Laura looked at him with a perplexed expression of countenance, before she replied to this eager question.
“Oh, you know!” she said, after a pause; “I can’t exactly describe how she led him on, but she did lead him on. She walked with him, and she talked to him; they were always talking together and leaving me out of the conversation, which was very rude of them, to say the least, for if I wasn’t intellectual enough for them, and couldn’t quite understand what they were talking about—for Launcelot would talk metawhat’s its name? you know; and who could understand such conversation as that?—they might have talked about things I do understand, such as Byron and Tennyson. And then she took an interest in his pictures, and talked about chiaro—thingembob, and foreshortening, and middle distances, and things, just like an artist. And then she used to let him smoke in the breakfast parlour when she was giving me my music lessons; and I should like to know who could play cinquepated passages in time, with the smell of tobacco in their nose, and a fidgetty young man reading a crackling newspaper, and killing flies with his pocket handkerchief against the window. And then she sat for Rosalind in his picture. But, good gracious me, it’s no good going all over it; she led him on.”
Mr. Monckton sighed. There wasn’t much in what his ward had said, but there was quite enough. Eleanor and Launcelot had been happy and confidential together. They had talked of metaphysics, and literature, and poetry, and painting. The young artist had lounged away the summer mornings, smoking and idling, in Miss Vane’s society.
There was very little in all this, certainly, but quite as much as there generally is in the history of a modern love affair. The age of romance is gone, with tournaments, and troubadours, and knight errantry; and if a young gentleman now-a-days spends money in the purchase of a private box at Covent Garden, and an extra guinea for a bouquet, or procures tickets for a fashionable flower show, and is content to pass the better part of his mornings amidst the expensive litter of a drawing-room, watching the white fingers of his beloved in the messy mysteries of Decalcomanie, he may be supposed to be quite as sincerely devoted as if he were to plant his lady’s point-lace parasol cover in his helmet, and gallop away with a view to having his head split open in her service.
Mr. Monckton hid his face in his hands, and pondered over what he had heard. Yes, his ward’s foolish talk revealed to him all the secrets of his wife’s heart. He could see the pretty, sunny morning room, the young man lounging in the open window, with fluttering rose-leaves all about his handsome head. He could see Eleanor seated at the piano, making believe to listen to her pupil, and glancing back at her lover. He made the prettiest cabinet picture out of these materials for his own torment.
“Do you think Eleanor ever loved Launcelot Darrell?” he asked, by and by.
“Do I think so?” cried Miss Mason. “Why, of course I do; and that’s why she tries to persuade me not to marry him. I love her, and she’s very good to me,” Laura added, hastily, half-ashamed of having spoken unkindly of the friend who had been so patient with her during the last few days. “I love her very dearly; but if she hadn’t cared for Launcelot Darrell, why did she go against my marrying him?”
Gilbert Monckton groaned aloud. Yes, it must be so. Eleanor had loved Launcelot, and her sudden anger, her violent emotion, had arisen out of her jealousy. She was not a devoted daughter, nursing a dream of vengeance against her dead father’s foe; but a jealous and vindictive woman, bent upon avenging an infidelity against herself.
“Laura,” said Mr. Monckton, “call your maid, and tell her to pack your things without a moment’s delay.”
“But why?”
“I am going to take you abroad,—immediately.”
“Oh, good gracious! And Eleanor—”
“Eleanor will stay here. You and I will go to Nice, Laura, and cure ourselves of our follies—if we can. Don’t bring any unnecessary load of luggage. Have your most useful dresses and your linen packed in a couple of portmanteaus, and let all be ready in an hour’s time. We must leave Windsor by the four o’clock train.”
“And my wedding things—what am I to do with them?”
“Pack them up. Burn them, if you like,” answered Gilbert Monckton, leaving his ward to get over her astonishment as she best might.
He encountered her maid in the passage.
“Miss Mason’s portmanteau must be packed in