It was a fat little childish hand, but there were rings glittering upon it, small as it was.
“I think I shall like you very much,” Laura Mason whispered. “Do you think you shall like me?”
She looked up into Eleanor’s face, with an entreating expression in her blue eyes; they were really blue eyes, a bright forget-me-not, or turquoise blue, as different as possible to the clear gray of Eleanor’s eyes, which was for ever changing, sometimes purple, sometimes brown, sometimes black.
How could Miss Vane reply to this childish question, except in the affirmative? She had every inclination to love the babyish young lady, who was so ready to cling to her and confide in her. She had expected to find a haughty young heiress who would have flaunted her wealth before her penniless companion. But she had another reason for inclining tenderly towards this girl. She remembered what Mr. Monckton had said to her in the railway carriage.
“However friendless or desolate you may be, you can never be so friendless and desolate as she is.”
She pressed the hand that clung to hers, and said, gravely:
“I’m sure I shall love you, Miss Mason, if you’ll let me.”
“And you’ll not be dreadful about triplets, and arpeggios, and cinquepaced passages,” the young lady said, piteously. “I don’t mind music a bit, in a general way, you know; but I never could play triplets in time.”
She led the way into a sitting-room under the verandah, as she talked. Eleanor went with her, hand-in-hand, and Mr. Monckton followed, keeping an attentive watch upon the two girls.
The sitting-room was, like the exterior of the cottage, very irregular and very pretty. It stood at one end of the house, and there were windows upon three sides of the room,—an oriel at the end opposite the door, a bay opening on to the verandah, and three latticed windows with deep oaken seats upon the other side.
The furniture was pretty, but very simple and inexpensive. The chintz curtains and chair-covers were sprinkled with rose-buds and butterflies; the chairs and tables were of shining maple-wood, and there was a good supply of old china arranged here and there upon brackets and cabinets of obsolete form. The pale cream-coloured walls were hung with a few prints and water-coloured sketches; but beyond this the chamber had no adornments.
Laura Mason led Eleanor to one of the window-seats, where a litter of fancy-work, and two or three open books tumbled carelessly here and there amongst floss-silks and Berlin wools and scraps of embroidery, gave token of the young lady’s habits.
“Will you take off your things here,” she said, “or shall I show you your own room at once? It’s the blue room, next to mine. There’s a door between the two rooms, so we shall be able to talk to each other whenever we like. How dreadfully you must want something to eat after your journey! Shall I ring for cake and wine, or shall we wait for tea? We always drink tea at seven, and we dine very early; not like Mr. Monckton, who has a grand late dinner every evening.”
The lawyer sighed.
“Rather a desolate dinner, sometimes, Miss Mason,” he said, gravely; “but you remind me that I shall be hardly in time for it, and my poor housekeeper makes herself wretched when the fish is spoiled.”
He looked at his watch.
“Six o’clock, I declare; good-bye, Laura; good-bye, Miss Vincent. I hope you will be happy at Hazlewood.”
“I am sure I shall be happy with Miss Mason,” Eleanor answered.
“Indeed!” exclaimed Mr. Monckton, elevating his straight black eyebrows, “is she so very fascinating, then? I’m sorry for it,” he muttered under his breath as he walked away after shaking hands with the two girls.
They heard the phaeton driving away three minutes afterwards.
Laura Mason shrugged her shoulders with an air of relief.
“I’m glad he’s gone,” she said.
“But you like him very much. He’s very good, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, very, very good, and I do like him. But I’m afraid of him, I think, because he’s so good. He always seems to be watching one and finding out one’s faults. And he seems so sorry because I’m frivolous, and I can’t help being frivolous when I’m happy.”
“And are you always happy?” Eleanor asked. She thought it very possible that this young heiress, who had never known any of those bitter troubles which Miss Vane had found associated with “money matters,” might indeed be always happy. But Laura Mason shook her head.
“Always, except when I think,” she said; “but when I think about papa and mamma, and wonder who they were, and why I never knew them, I can’t help feeling very unhappy.”
“They died when you were very young, then?” Eleanor said.
Laura Mason shook her head with a sorrowful gesture.
“I scarcely know when they died,” she answered; “I know that I can remember nothing about them; the first thing I recollect is being with a lady, far down in Devonshire—a lady who took the charge of several little girls. I stayed with her till I was ten years old, and then I was sent to a fashionable school at Bayswater, and I stayed there till I was fifteen, and then I came here, and I’ve been here two years and a-half. Mr. Monckton is my guardian, you know, and he says I am a very lucky girl, and will have plenty of money by-and-by; but what’s the use of money if one has no relations in all the wide world? and he tells me to attend to my education, and not to be frivolous, or care for dress and jewellery, but to try and become a good woman. He talks to me very seriously, and almost frightens me sometimes with his grave manner; but, for all that, he’s very kind, and lets me have almost everything I ask him for. He’s tremendously rich himself,
