“Lonely! I shall come home to dinner every day.”
“Yes, at seven o’clock; and from breakfast time till seven poor Nell must amuse herself in the best way she can. But I’m not going to grumble; I’m only too happy to think she will be near me.”
Mr. Monckton stood by the garden gate—that gate near which he had so often loitered with Eleanor—listening with no very great satisfaction to his ward’s frivolous prattle. His young wife would feel unhappy in the dulness of her new life, perhaps. If that were to be so, it would be proof positive that she did not love him. He could never have felt dull or lonely in her society, though Tolldale had been some grim and isolated habitation in the middle of an African desert.
“So you think she will be dull, Laura?” he said, rather despondently.
“Why, of course she will,” answered the young lady; “but now don’t think me inquisitive, please,” she added, in a very insinuating tone, “but I do so much want you to tell me something.”
“You want me to tell you what?” asked the lawyer, rather sharply.
Laura linked her hand through his arm, and raising herself on tiptoe, so as to bring her rosy lips within easier reach of his ear, whispered archly,
“Does she really love you? Was it really a love match?”
Gilbert Monckton started as violently as if that infantine whisper had been the envenomed hiss of a snake.
“What do you mean, child?” he said, turning sharply upon his ward; “of course Eleanor and I married because we loved each other? Why else should we have married?”