CHAPTER XXIX.
KEEPING WATCH.
Two pair of jealous eyes kept constant watch upon Eleanor Monckton for some time after that October afternoon on which the lawyer and Miss Mason stood side by side, looking at the two figures by the sundial.
Gilbert Monckton was too proud to complain. He laid down the fair hopes of his manhood in the grave that already held the broken dreams of his youth. He bowed his head and resigned himself to his fate.
“I was mistaken,” he thought; “it was too preposterous to suppose that at forty I could win the love of a girl of eighteen. My wife is good and true, but——”
But what? Could this girl be good and true? Had she not deceived her lover most cruelly, most deliberately, in her declaration of utter indifference towards Launcelot Darrell.
Mr. Monckton remembered her very words, her sudden look of astonishment, her almost shuddering gesture of surprise, as he asked the important question,
“And you do not love Launcelot Darrell?”
“Love him! oh, no, no, no!”
And in spite of this emphatic denial, Mrs. Monckton had, ever since her arrival at Tolldale Priory, betrayed an intense, an almost feverish interest in the young scapegrace artist.
“If she is capable of falsehood,” thought the lawyer, “there must surely be no truth upon this earth. Shall I trust her and wait patiently for the solution of the mystery? No; between man and wife there should be no mystery! She has no right to keep any secret from me.”