The lawyer rode back to Tolldale Priory with a moody and overclouded brow.
“That girl is in love with Launcelot Darrell,” he thought. “She betrayed her secret in her childish transparence. The young man must be wonderfully attractive, since people fall in love with him in this manner. I don’t like him; I don’t believe in him; I should not like Laura to be his wife.”
Yet in the next moment Mr. Monckton reflected that, after all, a marriage between his ward and Launcelot might not be altogether unadvisable. The young man was clever and gentlemanly. He came of a good stock, and had at least brilliant expectations. He might marry Laura and go to Italy, where he could devote a few years to the cultivation of his art.
“If the poor child is in love with him, and he returns her affection, it would be cruel to come between them with any prudential tyranny,” thought Mr. Monckton. “The young man seems really anxious to achieve success as an artist, and if he is to do so he ought certainly to study abroad.”
The lawyer’s mind dwelt upon this latter point throughout the remainder of his ride, and when he crossed the stone-paved hall where the cavaliers’ boots and saddles hung in the glowing light that stole through the emblazoned windows, he had almost come to the determination that Laura Mason and Launcelot Darrell ought to be married forthwith. He found his wife sitting in one of the windows of the library, with her hands lying idle in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the garden before her. She started as he entered the room, and looked up at him with a bright eagerness in her face.
“You have been to Hazlewood?” she said.
“Yes, I have just come from there.”
“And you have seen——?”
She stopped suddenly. Launcelot Darrell’s name had risen to her lips, but she checked herself before uttering it, lest she should betray her eager interest in him. She had no fear of that interest being misconstrued; no idea of such a possibility had ever entered her head. She only feared that some chance look or word might betray her vengeful hatred of the young man.
“You saw Laura—and—and Mrs. Darrell, I suppose?” she said.