What right had he to marry a young wife, and believe that she could love him? What justification could he find for his own folly in taking this girl from poverty and obscurity, and then expecting that she should feel any warmer sentiment than some feeble gratitude to him for having given her an advantageous bargain? He had given her a handsome house and attentive servants, carriages and horses, prosperity and independence, in exchange for her bright youth and beauty, and he was angry with her because she did not love him.
Looking back at that interview in the Pilasters—every circumstance of which was very clear to him now, by the aid of a pair of spectacles lent him by the jealous demon, his familiar—Mr. Monckton remembered that no confession of love had dropped from Eleanor’s lips. She had consented to become his wife, nothing more. She had, no doubt—in those moments of maidenly hesitation, during which he had waited so breathlessly—deliberately weighed and carefully balanced the advantages that were to be won from the sacrifice demanded of her.
Of course the perpetual brooding upon such fancies as these very much tended to make Gilbert Monckton an agreeable and lively companion for an impulsive girl. There is something remarkable in the persistency with which the sufferer from that terrible disease called jealousy strives to aggravate the causes of his torture.
CHAPTER XXVIII
BY THE SUNDIAL.
Laura Mason came to live at Tolldale. Gilbert Monckton argued with himself that his most reasonable motive for marrying Eleanor Vane had lain in his desire to provide a secure home and suitable companionship for his ward. The girl was very glad to be with Eleanor; but a little sorry to leave Hazlewood, now that Mr. Launcelot Darrell’s presence gave a new charm to the place.
“Not that he is very lively, you know, Nelly,” Miss Mason remarked to her guardian’s wife in the course of a long discussion of Mr. Darrell’s merits. “He never seems happy. He’s always roaming about the place, looking as if he had something upon his mind. It makes him look very handsome, though, you know; I don’t think he’d look half so handsome if he hadn’t anything on his mind. He was awfully dull and gloomy after you went away, Nell; I’m sure he must have been in love with you. Mrs. Darrell says he wasn’t; and that he admires another person: quite a different person. Do you think I’m the person, Eleanor dear?” asked the young lady, blushing and smiling, as she looked shyly up at her companion’s grave face.
“I don’t know, Laura; but I almost hope not, for I should be very sorry if you were to marry Launcelot Darrell,” Eleanor said.
“But why should you be sorry, Nelly?”
“Because I don’t think he’s a good man.”
Miss Mason pouted her under lip and shrugged her shoulders, with the prettiest air of impatience.