Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/476

468 employed in cording Eleanor’s boxes. She had two trunks now, and had a wardrobe that seemed to her magnificent, so liberally had Mrs. Bannister bestowed her cast-off dresses upon her half-sister.

So the last night passed away, the April morning came, and Eleanor’s new life began.

was not to go down to Berkshire alone. The beginning of her new life, that terrible beginning which she so much dreaded, was to make her acquainted with new people.

She had received the following communication from Mrs. Darrell.

“Hazlewood, April 3rd, 1855.

“Madam,

“As it would of course be very improper for a young lady of your age to travel alone, I have provided against that contingency.

“My friend, Mr. Monckton, has kindly promised to meet you in the first-class waiting-room at the Great Western Station, at three o’clock on Monday afternoon. He will drive you here on his way home.

“I am, Madam, “Yours faithfully, “”

Eliza Picirillo worked harder upon a Monday than on any other day in the week. She left the Pilasters immediately after an early breakfast, to go upon a wearisome round amongst her pupils. Richard was in the thick of the preparations for a new piece, so poor Eleanor was obliged to go alone to the station, to meet the stranger who had been appointed as her escort to Hazlewood.

She quite broke down when the time came for bidding farewell to her old friend. She clung about the Signora, weeping unrestrainedly for the first time.

“I can’t bear to go away from you,” she sobbed piteously, “I can’t bear to say good-bye.”

“But my love,” the music-mistress answered tenderly, “if you really don’t wish to go—”

“No, no, it isn’t that. I feel that I must go—that—”

“And I too, my dear girl. I believe you would do very wrong in refusing this situation. But Nelly, my darling, remember that this is only an experiment. You may not be happy at Hazlewood. In that case you will not fail to remember that your home is always here; that come to it when you may, you will never fail to find a loving welcome; and that the friends you leave behind you here are friends whom nothing upon earth can ever estrange from you. Remember this, Eleanor.”

“Yes, yes, dear, dear Signora.”

“If I could have gone with her to the station, I shouldn’t have cared so much,” Richard murmured despondently, “but the laws of Spavin and Cromshaw are as the laws of Draco. If I don’t get on with the Swiss châlet and moonlit Alpine peaks, the new piece can’t come out on Monday.”

So poor Eleanor went to the station alone, and was overcharged by the cabman who carried the two trunks which Richard had neatly addressed to Miss Vincent, Hazlewood, Berks.

She was received by a civil porter, who took charge of her luggage while she went to the waiting-room to look for the stranger who was to be her escort.

She was no more a coquette than she had been nearly two years before, when she travelled alone between London and Paris, and she was prepared to accept the services of this stranger quite as frankly as she had accepted the care and protection of the elderly gentleman who had taken charge of her upon that occasion.

But how was she to recognise the stranger. She could not walk up to every gentleman in the waiting-room, to ask him if he were Mr. Monckton.

She had in almost all her wanderings travelled in second-class carriages, and waited in second-class waiting-rooms. She shrank back, therefore, rather timidly upon the threshold of the spacious carpeted saloon, and looked a little nervously at the occupants of that gorgeous chamber. There was a group of ladies near the fire-place, and two or three gentlemen in different parts of the room. One of these gentlemen was a little man with gray hair and a red face; the other was very young and very sandy; the third was a tall man of about forty, with close-cut black hair, and a square massive face and head, not exactly a handsome face, perhaps, but a countenance not easily to be overlooked.

This tall man was standing near one of the windows, reading a newspaper. He looked up as Eleanor pushed open the swinging door.

“I wonder which of them is Mr. Monckton,” she thought. “Not that fidgetty young man with the red hair, I hope.”

While she still stood doubtfully upon the threshold, hesitating what to do—she little knew what a pretty picture she made in that timid, fluttering attitude—the tall man threw down his newspaper upon the sofa beside him, and walked across the room to where she stood.

“Miss Vincent, I believe?” he said.

Eleanor blushed at the sound of that false name, and then bent her head in reply to the question. She could not say yes. She could not fall into this disagreeable falsehood all at once.

“I am Mrs. Darrell’s friend and legal adviser, Mr. Monckton,” the gentleman said quietly, “and I shall be very happy to perform the duty she has entrusted to me. We are in very good time, Miss Vincent. I know that young ladies are generally ultra punctual upon these occasions, and I came very early in order to anticipate you, if possible.”

Eleanor did not speak. She was looking furtively at the face of Mrs. Darrell’s friend and legal adviser. A good and wise adviser, Miss Vane thought: for the face, not strictly handsome, seemed to bear in its every feature the stamp of three qualities—goodness, wisdom, and strength.

“I am sure he is very good,” she thought; “but I would not like to offend him for the world, for though he looks so kind now, I know he must be terrible when he’s angry.”

She looked almost fearfully at the strongly-marked black eyebrows, thinking what a stormy darkness must overshadow the massive face when they contracted over the grave, brown eyes—serious and earnest eyes, but with a latent fire