CHAPTER XX.
CAPTAIN LANGTON DESPERATE.
A short period of calm fell upon Darrell Court. Miss Darrell's passion seemed to have exhausted itself.
"I will never believe," she said one day to Miss Hastings, "that Sir Oswald meant what he said. I am beginning to think it was merely a threat—the Darrells are all hot-tempered."
But Miss Hastings had heard more than she liked to tell her pupil, and she knew that what the baronet had said was not only quite true, but that preparations for the marriage had actually commenced.
"I am afraid it was no threat, Pauline," she said, sadly.
"Then let the new-comer beware," said the girl, her face darkening. "Whoever she may be, let her beware. I might have been a good woman, but this will make me a wicked one. I shall live only for revenge."
A change came over her. The improvement that Miss Hastings had so fondly noticed, and of which she had been so proud, died away. Pauline seemed no longer to take any interest in reading or study. She would sit for hours in gloomy, sullen silence, with an abstracted look on her face. What was passing in her mind no one knew. Miss Hastings would go to her, and try to rouse her; but Pauline grew impatient.
"Do leave me in peace," she would say. "Leave me to my own thoughts. I am framing my plans."
And the smile that came with the words filled poor Miss Hastings with terrible apprehensions as to the future of her strange, willful pupil.