Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/644

 636 Hazlewood, or at least to the neighbourhood. Absorbed by this wish she had formed no scheme for the future. She had not even remembered that she stood alone in the world, with only a few pounds saved out of her slender salary, unprovided with that which is the most necessary of all weapons in any warfare, Money!

“I—I scarcely know what I shall do,” she said. “Mrs. Darrell promised to procure me a situation.”

But as she spoke she remembered that to accept a situation of Mrs. Darrell’s getting would be in some manner to eat bread provided by the kinswoman of her father’s foe, and she made a mental vow to starve rather than to receive the widow’s patronage.

“I do not put much confidence in Mrs. Darrell’s friendship when her own end is gained,” Gilbert Monckton said thoughtfully. “Ellen Darrell is only capable of loving one person, and that person is, according to the fashion of the world, the one who has used her worst. She loves her son, Launcelot, and would sacrifice a hecatomb of her fellow-creatures for his advantage. If she can get you a new home, I dare say she will do so. If she cannot, she has succeeded in removing you from her son’s pathway, and will trouble herself very little about your future.”

Eleanor Vane lifted her head with a sudden gesture of pride.

“I do not want Mrs. Darrell’s help,” she said.

“But you would not refuse the counsel, or even the help of any one you liked, would you, Eleanor?” returned the lawyer. “You are very young, very inexperienced,—the life at Hazlewood suited you, and it might have gone on for years without danger of unhappiness or disquiet, but for the coming of Launcelot Darrell. I have known you for a year and a half, Miss Vincent, and I have watched you very closely. I think I know you very well. Yes, if a lawyer’s powers of penetration and habit of observation are to go for anything, I must know you by this time. I may have been an egregious fool twenty years ago; but I must be wise enough now to understand a girl of eighteen.”

He said this rather as if reasoning with himself than talking to Eleanor. Miss Vane looked at him, wondering what all this talk would lead to, and what motive, under heaven, could have induced a lawyer of high standing to leave his chambers in the middle of the business day, for the purpose of sitting in a shabby lodging-house chamber, with his elbow resting upon a dirty table-cloth amid the confusion of unwashed breakfast cups and saucers.

“Eleanor Vincent,” Mr. Monckton said by-and-bye, after a very long pause, “country people are most intolerable gossips. You cannot have lived at Hazlewood for a year and a half without having heard something of my history.”

“Your history?”

“Yes, you heard that there was some secret trouble in the early part of my life—that there were some unpleasant circumstances connected with my purchase of Tolldale.”

Eleanor Vane was utterly unskilled in the art of prevarication. She could not give an evasive answer to a straight question.

“Yes,” she said, “I have heard people say that.”

“And you have no doubt heard them say that my trouble—like every other trouble upon this earth, as it seems to me—was caused by a woman.”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“I was very young when that sorrow came to me, Eleanor Vincent, and very ready to believe in a beautiful face. I was deceived. My story is all told in those three words, and it is a very old story after all. Great tragedies and epic poems have been written upon the same theme until it has become so hackneyed that I have no need to enlarge upon it. I was deceived, Miss Vincent, and for twenty years I have profited by that bitter lesson. Heaven help me if I feel inclined to forget it now. I am forty years of age, but I do not think that the brightness of my life has quite gone yet. Twenty years ago I was in love, and in the ardour and freshness of my youth, I dare say I talked a great deal of nonsense. I am in love once more, Eleanor. Will you forgive me if all my faculty for sentimental talk is lost? Will you let me tell you, in very few and simple words, that I love you; that I have loved you for a very long time; and that you will make me unspeakably happy if you can think my earnest devotion worthy of some return?”

Every vestige of colour faded slowly from Eleanor’s face. There had been a time—before the return of Launcelot Darrell—when a word of praise, an expression of friendliness or regard from Gilbert Monckton, had been very precious to her. She had never taken the trouble to analyse her feelings. That time, before the coming of the young man, had been the sunniest and most careless period of her youth. She had during that interval been false to the memory of her father—she had suffered herself to be happy. But now a gulf yawned between her and that lapse of forgetfulness. She could not look back clearly; she could not remember or recall her former feelings. Gilbert Monckton’s offer might then have awakened some answering sentiment in her own breast. Now his hand struck upon the slackened chords of a shattered instrument; and there was no music to respond harmoniously to the player’s touch.

“Can you love me, Eleanor? Can you love me?” the lawyer asked, imploringly, taking the girl’s hands in his own. “Your heart is free: yes, I know that; and that at least is something. Heaven forgive me if I try to bribe you. But my youth is passed, and I can scarcely expect to be loved for myself alone. Think how dreary and undefended your life must be, if you refuse my love and protection. Think of that, Eleanor. Ah! if you knew what a woman is when thrown upon the world without the shelter of a husband’s love, you would think seriously. I want you to be more than my wife, Eleanor. I want you to be the guardian and protectress of that poor frivolous girl whose future has been trusted to my care. I want you to come and live at Tolldale, my darling, so as to be near that poor child at Hazlewood.”

Near Hazlewood! The hot blood rushed into Eleanor’s face at the sound of those two words, then faded suddenly away and left her deadly white, trembling and clinging to the back of her