The young lady blushed crimson and dropped her eyelids.
“I should dearly like to live with Eleanor,” she said. “But——”
“But what?”
“I don’t think it would be quite right to leave Mrs. Darrell, would it? The money you pay her is of great use to her, you know; I have heard her say she could scarcely get on without it, especially now that Launcelot—now that Mr. Darrell has come home.”
The blushes deepened as Laura Mason said this.
The lawyer watched those deepening blushes with considerable uneasiness. “She is in love with this dark-eyed young Apollo,” he thought.
“You are very scrupulous about Mrs. Darrell and her convenience, Laura,” he said. “I should have fancied you would have been delighted to live with your old friend and companion. You’ll come to-morrow to spend the day with Eleanor, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes; if you please.”
“I’ll send the carriage for you, after it has taken me to Slough. Good-bye.”
Mr. Monckton rode slowly homewards. His interview with Laura had not been altogether agreeable to him. The girl’s surprise at his marriage with Eleanor had irritated and disturbed him. It seemed like a protest against the twenty years that divided his age from that of his young wife. There was something abnormal and exceptionable in the marriage, it seemed, then; and the people who had congratulated him and wished him well, were so many bland and conventional hypocrites, who no doubt laughed in their sleeves at his folly.