“So those tiger cats, my maiden aunts, are as watchful as ever,” he said, when Laura had finished. “Heaven grant the harpies may be disappointed! Do any of the Vane family ever try to get at the old man?”
Eleanor looked up from her work, but very quietly; she had grown accustomed to hear her name spoken by those who had no suspicion of her identity.
“Oh, no, I believe not,” Miss Mason answered: “old Mr. Vane died two or three years ago, you know.”
“Yes, my mother wrote me word of his death.”
“You were in India when it happened, then?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor’s face blanched, and her heart beat with a fierce heavy throbbing against her breast. How dared they talk of her dead father in that tone of almost insolent indifference? The one passion of her young life had as strong a power over her now as when she had knelt in the little chamber in the Rue de l’Archevêque, with her clasped hands uplifted to the low ceiling, and a terrible oath upon her girlish lips.
She dropped her work suddenly, and rising from her rustic seat, walked away from the shade of the laurels.
“Eleanor,” cried Laura Mason, “where are you going?”
Launcelot Darrell sat in a lounging attitude, trifling with the reels of silk, and balls of wool, and all the paraphernalia of fancy work scattered upon the table before him, but he lifted his head as Laura uttered her friend’s name, and perhaps for the first time looked steadily at Miss Vane.