Eleanor’s face changed. Her feverish eagerness gave place to a look of indifference.
“Is that all?” she said.
She had no very great belief in the intensity of Miss Mason’s feelings. The girl’s sentimental talk and demonstrative admiration had to her mind something spurious in their nature; Mrs. Monckton was ready to love Laura very dearly when the business of her life should be done, and she could have time to love anybody; but in the meantime she gave herself no uneasiness about Miss Mason’s romantic passion for the young painter.
“Laura is as inconstant as the wind,” she thought. “She will hate Launcelot Darrell when I tell her how base he is.”
But what was Eleanor’s surprise when Mr. Monckton said, very quietly:
“If the girl is really attached to this young man, and he returns her affection—she is so pretty and fascinating, that I should think he could scarcely help being in love with her—I don’t see why the match should not take place.”
Eleanor looked up suddenly.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she cried; “you would never let Laura marry Launcelot Darrell.”
“And why not, Mrs. Monckton?”
The insidious imp which the lawyer had made his bosom companion of late, at this moment transformed himself into a raging demon, and gnawed ravenously at the vitals of its master.