“I am very much afraid of the influence that young man’s handsome face may have upon my poor frivolous ward. I would move her out of the way of that influence if I could, but where could I remove her? Poor child! she has been shifted about enough already. She seems happy at Hazlewood; very happy, with you.”
“Yes,” Eleanor answered, frankly; “we love each other very dearly.”
“And you would do anything to serve her?”
“Anything in the world.”
Mr. Monckton sighed.
“There is one way in which you might serve her,” he said, in a low voice, as if speaking to himself rather than to Eleanor, “and yet——”
He did not finish the sentence, but walked on in silence, with his eyes bent upon the ground. He only looked up now and then to listen, with an uneasy expression, to the animated conversation of Launcelot and Laura. They walked thus through the shadowy woodland, where the rustling sound of a pheasant’s flight amongst the brushwood, and the gay tones of Laura’s voice, only broke the silence.
Beyond the wood they came to a grassy slope dotted by groups of trees, and bounded by an invisible wire fence.
Here, on the summit of a gentle elevation, stood a low white villa—a large and important house—but built in the modern style, and very inferior to Tolldale Priory in dignity and grandeur.
This was Woodlands, the house which Maurice de Crespigny had built for himself some thirty years before; the house whose threshold had so long been jealously guarded by the invalid’s maiden nieces.