It was plain that Pauline had greatly annoyed Sir Oswald. He liked Miss Rocheford very much; the sweet, yielding, gentle disposition, which Pauline had thought so monotonous, delighted him. Miss Rocheford was so like that lost, dead love of his—so like! And for this girl, who tried his patience every hour of the day, to find fault with her! It was too irritating; he could not endure it. He was very cold and distant to Pauline for some time, but the young girl was serenely unconscious of it.
In one respect she was changing rapidly. The time had been when she had been indifferent to Darrell Court, when she had thought with regret of the free, happy life in the Rue d'Orme, where she could speak lightly of the antiquity and grandeurs of the race from which she had sprung; but all that was altered now. It could not be otherwise, considering how romantic, how poetical, how impressionable she was, how keenly alive to everything beautiful and noble. She was living here in the very cradle of the race, where every tree had its legend, every stone its story; how could she be indifferent while the annals of her house were filled with noble retrospects? The Darrells had numbered great warriors and statesmen among their number. Some of the noblest women in England had been Darrells; and Pauline had learned to glory in the old stories, and to feel her heart beat with pride as she remembered that she, too, was a Darrell.
So, likewise, she had grown to love the Court for its picturesque beauty, its stately magnificence, and the time came soon when almost every tree and shrub was dear to her.
It was Pauline's nature to love deeply and passionately if she loved at all; there was no lukewarmness about her. She was incapable of those gentle, womanly likings that save all wear and tear of passion. She could not love in moderation; and very soon the love of Darrell Court became a passion with her. She sketched the mansion from twenty different points of view, she wrote verses about it; she lavished upon it the love which some girls lavish upon parents, brothers, sisters, and friends.
She stood one day looking at it as the western sunbeams lighted it up until it looked as though it were bathed in gold. The stately towers and turrets, the flower-wreathed balconies, the grand arched windows, the Gothic porch, all made up a magnificent picture; the fountains were playing in the sunlit air, the birds singing in the stately trees. She turned to Miss Hastings, and the governess saw tears standing warm and bright in the girl's eyes.
"How beautiful it is!" she said. "I cannot tell you—I have no words to tell you—how I love my home."
The heart of the gentle lady contracted with sudden fear.
"It is very beautiful," she said; "but, Pauline, do not love it too much; remember how very uncertain everything is."
"There can be nothing uncertain about my inheritance," returned the girl. "I am a Darrell—the only Darrell left to inherit it. And, oh! Miss Hastings, how I love it! But it is not for its wealth that I love it; it is my heart that is bound to it. I love it as I can fancy a husband loves his wife, a mother her child. It is everything to me."
"Still," said Miss Hastings, "I would not love it too well; everything is so uncertain."