“I am quite willing to hear anything you may have to say to me,” she said.
“Oh, very well!” cried Laura. “I’m sure I’ll go away if you want to talk about secrets that I mustn’t hear. Only I don’t see how you can have any secrets. You haven’t known Mr. Darrell a day longer than I have, Eleanor; and I can’t imagine what he can have to say to you.”
After this protest Miss Mason turned her back upon her companions, and ran away towards the house. She shed a few silent tears behind the shelter of a great clump of chrysanthemums.
“He doesn’t care for me a bit,” she muttered, as she dried her eyes: “Mrs. Darrell is a wicked old story-teller. I feel just as poor Gulnare must have felt when the Corsair was so rude to her, after she’d committed a murder for his sake.”
Eleanor and Launcelot left the sheltered pathway, and walked slowly across the broad lawn towards an old sundial, quaint in shape, and covered with the moss that had slowly crept over the grey stonework. Here the young man stopped, lounging against the moss-grown pedestal, and resting his elbow upon the broken dial.
“I have come here to-day to tell you that you have treated me very ill, Eleanor Monckton,” he said.
The young wife drew herself up proudly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean that you jilted me.”
“Jilted you!”