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16, 1863.] you mean, isn’t it, madre mia? Well, I’ll do my best. The young lady is pretty, but her childishness is positively impayable. What’s the amount of the fortune that is to counterbalance so much empty-headed frivolity? Eh, mother?”

“I can’t quite answer that question, Launcelot. I only know that Mr. Monckton told me Laura will be very rich.”

“And Gilbert Monckton, although a lawyer, is one of those uncompromising personages who never tell a lie. Well, mother, we’ll see about it; I can’t say anything more than that.”

The young man had been standing before his easel with his palette and brushes in his hand during this conversation, now and then putting a touch here and there into a picture that he had been working at since his return. He had taken up his abode in his old apartments. His mother spent a good deal of her time with him; sitting at needlework by the open window, while he painted; listening while, in his idler moments, he sat at the piano, composing a few bars of a waltz, or trying to recall some song that he had written long ago; always following him with watchful and admiring eyes, shadowed only by the mother’s anxiety for her son’s future.

Launcelot Darrell did not seem to be altogether a bad young man. He accepted his mother’s love with something of that indolent selfishness common to those spoiled children of fortune upon whom an extra share of maternal devotion has been lavished. He absorbed the widow’s affection, and gave her in return an easy-going, graceful attention, which satisfied the unselfish woman, and demanded neither trouble nor sacrifice from the young man himself.

“Now, if the wealthy heiress were the poor companion, mother,” Mr. Darrell said, presently, working away with his brush as he spoke, “your scheme would be charming. Eleanor Vincent is a glorious girl; a little bit of a spitfire, I should think, quiet and gentle as she is with us; but a splendid girl; just the sort of wife for an indolent man; a wife who would rouse him out of his lethargy and drive him on to distinction.”

Yes, Launcelot Darrell, who had never in his life resisted any temptation, or accepted any guidance except that of his own wishes, was led by them now, and, instead of devoting himself to the young heiress, chose to fall desperately in love with her fair-haired companion. He fell in love with Eleanor Vane; desperately, after his own fashion. I doubt if there was any great intensity in the young man’s desperation, for I do not believe that he was capable of any real depth of feeling. There was a kind of hollow, tinselly fervour in his nature which took the place of true passion. It may be that with him all emotions—love and remorse, penitence, pity, regret, hate, anger, and revenge—were true and real so long as they lasted; but all these sentiments were so short-lived, by reason of the fickleness of his mind, that it was almost difficult to believe even in their temporary truth.

But Eleanor Vane, being very young and inexperienced, had no power of analysing the character of her lover. She only knew that he was handsome, accomplished, and clever; that he loved her, and that it was very agreeable to be loved by him.

I do not believe that she returned the young man’s affection. She was like a child upon the threshold of a new world: bewildered and dazzled by the glorious aspect of the unknown region before her; beguiled and delighted by its beauty and novelty. All the darker aspects of the great passion were unknown to her, and undreamed of by her. She only knew that in the blank horizon that had so long bounded her life, a new star had arisen—a bright and wonderful planet, which for a while displaced the lurid light that had so long shone steadfastly across the darkness.

Eleanor Vane yielded herself up to the brief holiday-time which generally comes once in almost every woman’s life, however desolate and joyless the rest of that life may be. The holiday comes,—a fleeting summer of gladness and rejoicing. The earth lights up under a new sun and moon; the flowers bloom into new colours and scatter new perfumes on the sublimated atmosphere; the waters of the commonest rivers change to melted sapphires, and blaze with the splendour of a million jewels in the sunshine. The dull universe changes to fairyland; but, alas! the holiday-time is very short: the children grow tired of paradise, or are summoned back to school; the sun and moon collapse into commonplace luminaries, the flowers fade into every-day blossoms, the river flows a gray stream under a November sky, and the dream is over.

Launcelot Darrell had been little more than a fortnight at Hazlewood, when he declared his love for Miss Mason’s companion. The young people had been a great deal together in that fortnight; wandering in the grassy lanes about Hazlewood, and in the shadowy woods round Tolldale Priory, or on breezy hills high above the lawyer’s sheltered mansion. In hope of an alliance between Launcelot and Gilbert Monckton’s ward, Mrs. Darrell was obliged to submit to the necessity which threw her son very much into the society of the companion as well as of the heiress.

“He will surely never be so foolish as to thwart my plan for his future,” thought the anxious mother. “Surely, surely, he will consent to be guided by his own interests. Gilbert Monckton must know that it is only likely an attachment may arise between Launcelot and Laura. He would not leave the girl with me unless he were resigned to such an event, and ready to give his consent to their marriage. My son is poor, certainly; but the lawyer knows that he is likely to inherit a great fortune.”

While the mother pondered thus over her son’s chances of advancement, the young man took life very easily; spending his mornings at his easel, but by no means over-exerting himself, and dawdling away his afternoons in rustic rambles with the two girls.

Laura Mason was very happy in the society of this new and brilliant companion. She was bewitched and fascinated by Mr. Darrell’s careless talk, which sounded very witty, very profound, sarcastic, and eloquent in the ears of an ignorant girl. She admired him and fell in love with him, and wearied poor Eleanor with her very