Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/503

25, 1863.] a few valueless and old-fashioned trinkets that had been her mother’s, and the crumpled fragment of her father’s last letter.

She sat at the little dressing-table, reading the disjointed sentences in that melancholy letter, before she undressed, and then replaced the scrap of paper in the casket.

She looked at the lawn and shrubbery. The shining leaves of the evergreens trembled in the soft April breeze, and shimmered in the moonlight. All was silent in that simple rustic retreat. The bare branches of the tall trees near the low white gates were sharply defined against the purple sky. High up in the tranquil heavens the full moon shone out from a pale back-ground of fleecy cloud.

The beauty of the scene made a very powerful impression upon Eleanor Vane. The window from which she had been accustomed to look in Bloomsbury abutted on a yard, a narrow gorge of dirt and disorder, between the dismal back walls of high London houses.

“I ought never to have come here,” Eleanor thought bitterly, as she let fall her dimity window curtain and shut out the splendour of the night. “I ought to have stayed in London; there was some hope of my meeting that man in London, where strange things are always happening. But here—″

She fell into a gloomy reverie. Secluded in that quiet rustic retreat, what hope could she have of advancing, by so much as one footstep, upon the dark road she had appointed for herself to tread?

It was very long before she fell asleep. She lay for hours, tumbling and tossing feverishly upon her comfortable bed.

The memories of her old life mingled themselves with thoughts of her new existence. She was haunted now by the recollection of her father, and her father’s death; now by her fresh experiences of Hazlewood, by the widow’s grey hair and penetrating gaze, and by the pictured face of Launcelot Darrell.

course of Eleanor’s life at Hazlewood was peaceful and monotonous. She had been engaged simply as a “companion” for Laura Mason. That common epithet which is so often twisted into the signification of a household drudge—an upper-servant, who works harder than any of her fellows—in this case meant purely and simply what it was originally intended to mean. Eleanor’s only duties were to teach Laura Mason music, and to be the companion and associate of all her girlish pleasures and industries.

Not that Miss Mason was very industrious. She had a habit of beginning great undertakings in the way of fancy work, and the more gigantic the design the more ardent was her desire to attempt it—but she rarely got beyond the initiative part of her labour. There was always some “Dweller on the Threshold” in the shape of a stitch that couldn’t be learnt, or a skein of silk that couldn’t be matched, or a pattern that wouldn’t come right; and one after another of the gigantic undertakings was flung aside to decay in dusty oblivion, or to be finished by Eleanor or Mrs. Darrell.

Laura Mason was not made for the active service of life. She was one of the holiday soldiers in the great army, fit for nothing but to wear gilded epaulettes and gorgeous uniforms, and to turn out upon gala days to the sound of trumpet and drum.

She was a loving, generous-hearted, confiding creature; but, like some rudderless boat drifting hither and thither before a stormy ocean, this frivolous, purposeless girl flung herself, helpless and dependent, upon the mercy of other people.

The rich City solicitor, Mr. Monckton, the head of a celebrated legal firm familiar in the Bankruptcy Court, took the trouble to say very little about his pretty, flaxen-haired, and blue-eyed ward.

He spoke of her, indeed, with an almost pointed indifference. She was the daughter of some people he had known in his early youth, he said, and her fortune had been entrusted to his care. She would be rich, but he was none the less anxious about her future. A woman was not generally any the safer in this world for being an heiress.

This was all Gilbert Monckton had ever said to Mrs. Darrell upon the subject of his ward’s past history. Laura herself had talked freely enough of her two first homes. There was little to tell, but, upon the other hand, there seemed nothing to conceal.

Upon one subject Mr. Monckton was very strict, and that was the seclusion of the home he had chosen for his ward.

“When Miss Mason is of age she will of course choose for herself,” he said; “but until that time comes I must beg, Mrs. Darrell, that you will keep her out of all society.”

Under these circumstances it was especially necessary that Laura Mason should have a companion of her own age. Hazlewood was a hermitage, never approached by any visitors except some half-dozen elderly ladies, who were intimate with Mrs. Darrell, and Mr. Monckton, who came about once a fortnight to dine and spend the evening.

He used to devote himself very much to Laura and her companion during these visits. Eleanor could see how earnestly he watched the flaxen-haired girl, whose childish simplicity no doubt made her very bewitching to the grave man of business. He watched her and listened to her; sometimes with a pleased smile, sometimes with an earnest and anxious face; but his attention very rarely wandered from her.

“He must love her very dearly,” Eleanor thought, remembering how earnestly he had spoken in the railway carriage.

She wondered what was the nature of the affection which the solicitor felt for his ward. He was old enough to be her father, it was true, but he was still in the prime of life; he had not that beauty of feature and complexion which a school-girl calls handsome, but he had a face which leaves its impress upon the minds of those who look at it.

He was very clever, or at least he seemed so to Eleanor; for there was no subject ever mentioned, no topic ever discussed, with which he did not