“It’s very unkind of you to say so, Nell,” she exclaimed. “I’m sure he’s good! Or if he isn’t good, I like him all the better for it,” she added, with charming inconsistency. “I don’t want to marry a good man, like my guardian, or Mr. Neate, the curate of Hazlewood parish. The Corsair wasn’t good; but see how fond Gulnare and Medora were of him. I don’t suppose it was good of the Giaour to kill Hassan; but who could have had the heart to refuse to marry the Giaour?”
Mrs. Monckton did not attempt to argue with a young lady who expressed such opinions as these. Laura’s romantic infatuation only made Eleanor more impatient for the coming of that hour in which she should be able to denounce Launcelot Darrell as a cheat and a traitor.
“He shall be disappointed in his hope of a fortune, and through me,” she thought. “He shall be cast off by the woman who has loved him, and through me. And when he suffers most I will be as pitiless to his suffering, as he was pitiless to the old man whom he cheated and abandoned to despair.”
A fortnight passed after Eleanor’s arrival at the Priory before she had any opportunity of seeing Launcelot Darrell. She had proposed going to Hazlewood several times, but upon each occasion Mr. Monckton had contrived to interpose some objection to her visit. She began to despair of entering upon the silent struggle with her father’s destroyer. It seemed as if she had come to Tolldale for no purpose. In her impatience she dreaded that Maurice de Crespigny would die, leaving his fortune to his nephew. She knew that the old man’s life hung by a slender thread, which at any moment might be severed.
But at last the opportunity she had so anxiously awaited arrived unexpectedly, not brought about by any scheming or foresight upon her part. Laura had been a few days at the Priory, and the two girls were walking in one of the sheltered pathways of the old-fashioned garden, waiting for Gilbert Monckton’s arrival, and the clanging summons of the great dinner-bell.
The October sunshine was bright and pleasant; the autumn flowers enlivened the dark luxuriance of the garden with their gaudy splendour. The tall hollyhocks waved in the breeze.
The two girls had walked up and down the smooth gravel path for some time in silence. Eleanor was absorbed in her own thoughts, and even Laura could not talk for ever without encouragement.
But presently this latter young lady stopped with a blush and a start, clasping her hand tightly about her companion’s wrist. At the other end of the sheltered walk, amongst the flickering patches of sunshine that trembled on the filbert-trees, she had perceived Launcelot Darrell advancing towards them.
Eleanor looked up.
“What is the matter, Laura?” she asked.