With a nature like Pauline's, love was no ordinary passion; all the romance, the fervor, the poetry of her heart and soul were aroused. Her love took her out of herself, transformed and transfigured her, softened and beautified her. She was not of those who could love moderately, and, if one attachment was not satisfactory, take refuge in another. For such as her there was but one love, and it would make or mar her life.
Had Sir Vane St. Lawrence been merely a handsome man she would never have cared for him; but his soul and mind had mastered her. He was a noble gentleman, princely in his tastes and culture, generous, pure, gifted with an intellect magnificent in itself, and cultivated to the highest degree of perfection. The innate nobility of his character at once influenced her. She acknowledged its superiority; she bowed her heart and soul before it, proud of the very chains that bound her.
How small and insignificant everything else now appeared! Even the loss of Darrell Court seemed trifling to her. Life had suddenly assumed another aspect. She was in an unknown land; she was happy beyond everything that she had ever conceived or imagined it possible to be. It was a quiet, subdued happiness, one that was dissolving her pride rapidly as the sunshine dissolves snow—happiness that was rounding off the angles of her character, that was taking away scorn and defiance, and bringing sweet and gracious humility, womanly grace and tenderness in their stead.
While Sir Vane was studying her as the most difficult problem he had ever met with, he heard from Miss Hastings the story of her life. He could understand how the innate strength and truth of the girl's character had rebelled against polite insincerities and conventional untruths; he could understand that a soul so gifted, pure, and eager could find no resting-place and no delight; he could understand, too, how the stately old baronet, the gentleman of the old school, had been frightened at his niece's originality, and scared by her uncompromising love of truth.
Miss Hastings, whose favorite theme in Pauline's absence was praise of her, had told both mother and son the story of Sir Oswald's project and its failure—how Pauline would have been mistress of Darrell Court and all her uncle's immense wealth if she would but have compromised matters and have married Aubrey Langton.
"Langton?" questioned Sir Vane. "I know him—that is, I have heard of him; but I cannot remember anything more than that he is a great roue, and a man whose word is never to be believed."
"Then my pupil was right in her estimate of his character," said Miss Hastings. "She seemed to guess it by instinct. She always treated him with the utmost contempt and scorn. I have often spoken to her about it."
"You may rely upon it, Miss Hastings, that the instinct of a good woman, in the opinion she forms of men, is never wrong," observed Sir Vane, gravely; and then he turned to Lady St. Lawrence with the sweet smile his face always wore for her.
"Mother," he said, gently, "after hearing of such heroism as that, you must not be angry about Lillith Davenant again."
"That is a very different matter," opposed Lady St. Lawrence; but it seemed to her son very much the same kind of thing.