Mr. Monckton shrugged his shoulders.
“Who set you up as a judge of how a woman should speak of the man she loves?” he said, sharply. “My wife has too much modesty to advertise her affection for any man. By the bye, Miss Mason, would you like to come and live at Tolldale?”
Laura looked at her guardian with unmitigated surprise.
“Come and live at Tolldale!” she said; “I thought you didn’t like me; I thought you despised me because I’m so frivolous and childish.”
“Despise you, Laura,” cried Gilbert Monckton, “not like you! My poor dear child, what a brute I must have been if I ever have given you such an impression as that. I am very fond of you, my dear,” he added, gravely, laying his hand upon the girl’s head as he spoke, and looking down at her with sorrowful tenderness. “I am very much attached to you, my poor dear child. If I ever seem vexed with your girlish frivolity, it is only because I am anxious about your future. I am very, very anxious about your future.”
“But why are you so anxious?”
“Because your mother was childish and light-hearted like you, Laura, and she was led to do a very cruel thing for want of thought.”
“My poor mother. Ah, how I wish you would tell me about her.”
Laura Mason looked very serious as she said this. Her hands were folded round the lawyer’s arm; her bright blue eyes seemed to grow of a more sombre colour as she looked earnestly upward to his grave face.
“Not now, my dear; some day; some day, perhaps, we’ll talk about all that. But not now. You haven’t answered my question, Laura. Would you like to live at Tolldale?”