Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/362

352 to him,” Eleanor said; “I have a very particular reason for wishing him to remain in perfect ignorance of my present home.”

“To be sure, my dear,” answered Mrs. Lennard; “of course I won’t tell him if you don’t wish me to do so. And as to writing to him, I should no more think of doing so than of flying in the air, except just a civil note of a few lines to thank him for sending me news of Laura. He only writes to me once in six months or so, to tell me how my lost darling is, and though I’ve implored him again and again he won’t let me see her. ‘She is still little more than a child,’ he wrote in his last letter, ‘and I dread the effect of your influence upon her. It is out of no revengeful feeling that I keep your daughter apart from you. When her character is formed and her principles fixed, you shall know her.’ As if I was a wretch!” cried Mrs. Lennard in conclusion, “and should contaminate my own daughter.”

Eleanor smiled as she shook her head.

“Dear Mrs. Lennard,” she said, “your daughter is perhaps better off in the care of such a man as Gilbert Monckton. She is as kind-hearted and good-tempered as yourself, but she is rather weak, and—”

“And I’m weak, too. Yes, I quite understand you, Miss Villars. It is my misfortune to be weak-minded. I can’t say ‘no’ to people. The arguments of the person who talks to me last always seem so much stronger than those of the person who talked to me first. I take impressions quickly, and don’t take them deeply. I was touched to the heart by Gilbert Monckton’s kindness to my father, and I meant to marry him as I promised, and to be his true and obedient wife; and then when that poor silly Fred came all the way to Lausanne, and went on so about being ill-used and deserted, and wanted to commit suicide, I thought it was my duty to run away with Fred. I haven’t any opinions of my own you see, and I’m always ready to be influenced by the opinions of other people.”

Eleanor thought long and deeply over the story she had heard from Mrs. Lennard. This was the root of all Gilbert Monckton’s suspicions. He had been deceived, most cruelly, most unexpectedly, by a beautiful, childish creature in whose innocence he had implicitly believed. He had been fooled and hood-winked by a fair-haired angel whose candid azure eyes thathad [sic] seemed to beam upon him with all the brightness of truth. He had been deceived most egregiously, but he had not been deliberately betrayed; for up to the time of her treacherous desertion of her affianced lover, Margaret Ravenshaw had meant to be true to him. Unhappily Gilbert Monckton did not know this. It is difficult for the man who finds himself as cruelly jilted as he had been, not to believe that the false one has intended all along to turn traitor at the last. There had been no explanation between Margaret and the lawyer; and he was entirely ignorant of the manner of her flight. He only knew that she had left him; without a word to prepare him for the death-blow, without a line of regretful farewell to make his sorrow lighter to him. The frivolous, shallow woman had been unable to fathom the depth of the strong man’s love. Margaret Ravenshaw knew there was very little of the divine in her own nature, and she had never expected to inspire the mighty affection of a grand and noble soul. She was able to understand the love of Frederick Lennard, which was demonstrated by noisy protestations, and declared itself in long, schoolboy letters in which the young man’s doubtful orthography was blistered by his tears. But she could not understand the intensity of feelings that did not make themselves visible in any stereotyped fashion.

Unluckily for the harmony of creation, wise men do not always fall in love wisely. The wisest and the best are apt to be bound captive by some external charm, which they think must be the outward evidence of an inward grace; and Gilbert Monckton had loved this frivolous, capricious girl as truly as if she had been the noblest and greatest of womankind. So the blow that had fallen upon him was a very heavy one; and its most fatal effect was to transform a confiding nature into a suspicious one.

He argued as many men argue under the same circumstances. He had been deceived by one woman, ergo, all women were capable of deception. I don’t suppose the “Stranger” placed very much confidence in the Countess, or had by any means too high an opinion of Charlotte; and the best of men are apt to feel very much after the manner of Mrs. Haller’s husband.

It seemed very strange to Eleanor to be living with Gilbert Monckton’s first love. It was almost as if some one had arisen out of the grave; for she had looked upon that old story which she had heard hinted at by the Hazlewood gossips, as something so entirely belonging to the past, that the heroine of the romance must of necessity be dead.

And here she was, alive and merry, knowing no greater uneasiness than a vague dread of increasing plumpness, induced by French dinners. Here she was, the very reverse of the image that Eleanor had conjured up in her mind in association with Gilbert’s false love; a good-tempered, common-place, pretty, middle-aged woman. Mrs. Monckton felt a little pang of jealousy at the thought that her husband had once loved this woman so dearly. Her husband! Had she still the right to call him by that name? Had he not severed the link between them of his own free will? Had he not outraged her honour, insulted her truth by his base and unfounded suspicions? Yes! he had done all this, and yet Eleanor loved him! She knew the strength of her love now that she was away from him, and might perhaps never see his face looking at her in kindness again. She knew it now that her scheme of vengeance against Launcelot Darrell had failed, and left a great blank in her mind. She thought of her husband seriously now for the first time, and she knew that she loved him.

“Richard was right,” she thought again and again; “the purpose of my life was cruel and unwomanly. I had no right to marry Gilbert Monckton while my mind was full of angry thoughts. Richard was right. My poor father’s rest would be no more peaceful if I had made