If Gilbert Monckton’s young wife had seemed happy in her new home, he would have accepted the fair omen, and would have sunned himself in the brightness of her gaiety. But she was not happy; he could clearly see that; and day and night he tormented himself with vain endeavours to find out the cause of her uncertain spirits, her fits of abstraction, her long pauses of thoughtful silence.
And while Mrs. Monckton’s husband was nursing all these tortures, and every day widening the gulf of his own making, his wife, absorbed by her own secret purpose, was almost unconscious of all else in the world. If she saw the lawyer’s face thoughtful or gloomy, she concluded that his moodiness arose from business anxieties with which she had no concern. If he sighed, she set down his melancholy to the same professional causes. A tiresome will case, a troublesome chancery suit—something in those dusty offices had annoyed him; and that professional something had of course no concern for her.
Eleanor Monckton had taken upon herself an unnatural office; she had assumed an abnormal duty; and her whole life fashioned itself to fit that unwomanly purpose. She abnegated the privileges, and left unperformed the duties, of a wife—true to nothing except to that fatal promise made in the first madness of her grief for George Vane’s death.
She had been more than a week at Tolldale Priory, and she had not advanced one step upon the road which she had so desperately determined to pursue. She had not yet seen Launcelot Darrell.
Gilbert Monckton had spent the day after his return to Berkshire in riding about the neighbourhood, calling upon those few people with whom he kept up any acquaintance, and informing them of his marriage with the young lady who, a few weeks before, had been the companion of his ward. Of course he received friendly congratulations and good wishes from every one to whom he imparted this intelligence; and of course when his back was turned, the same people who had tendered those good wishes set to work to wonder at his folly, and to prognosticate all manner of evil from his absurd and imprudent marriage.
His longest visit was paid to Hazlewood, and here his tidings afforded real and unmixed satisfaction. Launcelot Darrell was at work in his painting-room, and was therefore out of the way of hearing the news. The widow was pleased to think that Eleanor’s marriage would secure her son against the immediate danger of taking a penniless wife; and Laura was sincerely rejoiced at the idea of seeing her friend again.
“I may come to Tolldale soon, mayn’t I, Mr. Monckton?” she asked. “Dear Nelly, I do so long to see her! But to think of her being married to you! I never was so surprised in my life. Why, you must be old enough to be her father. It does seem so funny!”
Gilbert Monckton did not feel particularly grateful to his ward for the extreme candour of these remarks, but he invited the young lady to spend the following day with Eleanor.
“I shall be in town to-morrow,” he said, “and I dare say Mrs. Monckton will find the Priory dull.”
“Mrs. Monckton!” cried Laura; “oh, to be sure; why, that’s Nelly, of course! Find the Priory dull? Yes, I should think she would indeed! Poor Eleanor, in those damp, overgrown gardens, with the high walls all round, and the tops of the trees above the walls. How lonely she’ll be.”