“Is she still in her own room?”
“Yes, sir,” the maid answered, looking up from the portmanteau before which she was kneeling. “I peeped into Mrs. Monckton’s room just now, and she was fast asleep. She has had a great deal of fatigue in nursing Miss Mason.”
“Very well, then, she had better not be disturbed.”
“But if I’m going to Nice,” remonstrated Laura, “I can’t go so far away without saying good-bye to Eleanor. She has been very kind to me, you know.”
“I have changed my mind,” Mr. Monckton said; “I’ve been thinking over the matter, and I’ve decided on not taking you to Nice. Torquay will do just as well.”
Miss Mason made a wry face.
“I thought I was to have change of scene,” she said; “Torquay isn’t change of scene, for I went there once when I was a child. I might have forgotten Launcelot in quite a strange place, where people talk bad French and wear wooden shoes, and everything is different; but I shall never forget him at Torquay.”
Gilbert Monckton did not notice his ward’s lamentation.
“Miss Mason will want you with her, Jane,” he said to the girl. “You will get yourself ready, please, as soon as you’ve packed those portmanteaus.”
He went down stairs again, gave his orders about a carriage to take him to the station, and then walked up and down the drawing-room waiting for his ward.