She disengaged herself from the slight arms which had encircled her in a half-childish caress, and rose suddenly to her feet.
“Laura,” she cried, “Laura, you mustn’t talk to me like this. My life is not like yours. I have something to do,—I have a purpose to achieve; a purpose before which every thought of my mind, every impulse of my heart, must give way.”
“What purpose, Eleanor?” asked Laura Mason, almost alarmed by the energy of her companion’s manner.
“I cannot tell you. It is a secret,” Miss Vane replied.
Then sitting down once more in the deep window-seat by Laura’s side, Eleanor Vane drew her arm tenderly round the frightened girl’s waist.
“I’ll try and do my duty to you, Laura, dear,” she said, “and I know I shall be happy with you. But if ever you see me dull and silent, you’ll understand, dear, that there is a secret in my life, and that there is a hidden purpose in my mind that sooner or later must be achieved. Sooner or later,” she repeated, with a sigh, “but Heaven only knows when.”
She was silent and absent-minded during the rest of the evening, though she played one of her most elaborate fantasias at Mrs. Darrell’s request, and perfectly satisfied that lady’s expectations by the brilliancy of her touch. She was very glad when, at ten o’clock, the two women servants of the simple household and a hobbledehoyish young man, who looked after the pony and pigs and poultry-yard, and smelt very strongly of the stable, came in to hear prayers read by Mrs. Darrell.
“I know you’re tired, dear,” Laura Mason said, as she bade Eleanor good night at the door of her bedroom, “so I won’t ask you to talk to me to-night. Get to bed, and go to sleep at once, dear.”
But Eleanor did not go to bed immediately; nor did she fall asleep until very late that night.
She unfastened one of her trunks, and took from it a little locked morocco casket, which held a few valueless and old-fashioned trinkets that had been her mother’s, and the crumpled fragment of her father’s last letter.