In the next moment she recognized Mr. Darrell. The chance had come at last.
The young man advanced to meet Mrs. Monckton and her companion. He was pale, and had a certain gravity in his face expressive of some hidden sorrow. He had been in love with Eleanor Vane, after his own fashion, and was very much disposed to resent her desertion of him. His mother had told him the reason of that desertion very frankly, after Eleanor’s marriage.
“I come to offer you my congratulations, Mrs. Monckton,” he said, in a tone which was intended to wound the young wife to the quick, but which, like everything else about this young man, had a certain spuriousness, an air of melodrama that robbed it of all force. “I should have accompanied my mother when she called on you the other day—but——”
He paused abruptly, looking at Laura with an air of ill-concealed vexation.
“Can I speak to you alone, Mrs. Monckton?” he asked; “I have something particular to say to you.”
“But you can say it before Laura, I suppose?”
“No, not before Laura, or before any one. I must speak to you alone.”
Miss Mason looked at the object of her admiration with a piteous expression in her childish face.
“How cruel he is to me,” she thought; “I do believe he is in love with Eleanor. How wicked of him to be in love with my guardian’s wife.”
Mrs. Monckton did not attempt to refuse the privilege which the young man demanded of her.