"I hope she is pleased with Darrell Court," said Sir Oswald.
"How could she fail to be, as well as delighted with its hospitable master? I could read that much in her pretty face. Here they are, Sir Oswald--Miss Darrell alone, looking very dignified--Elinor, with your friend. Ah, she knows how to choose friends!"
They joined the group, but Miss Darrell was in one of her most dignified moods. She had been forced to listen to a fashionable conversation between Captain Langton and Miss Rocheford, and her indignation and contempt had got the better of her politeness.
They all partook of luncheon together, and then the visitors departed; not, however, until Lady Hampton had accepted from Sir Oswald an invitation to spend a week at Darrell Court. Sir Francis and Lady Allroy were coming--the party would be a very pleasant one; and Sir Oswald said he would give a grand ball in the course of the week--a piece of intelligence which delighted the captain and Miss Rocheford greatly.
Then Lady Hampton and her niece set out. Sir Oswald held Elinor"s hand rather longer than strict etiquette required.
"How like she is to my dead love!" he thought, and his adieu was more than cordial.
As they drove home, Lady Hampton gazed at her niece with a look of triumph.
"You have a splendid chance, Elinor," she said; "no girl ever had a better. What do you think of Darrell Court?"
"It is a palace, aunt--a magnificent, stately palace. I have never seen anything like it before."
"It may be yours if you play your cards well, my dear."
"How?" cried the girl. "I thought it was to be Miss Darrell"s. Every one says she is her uncle"s heiress."
"People need not make too sure of it. I do not think so. With a little management, Sir Oswald will propose to you, I am convinced."
The girl"s face fell.
"But, aunt, he is so old."
"He is only just fifty, Elinor. No girl in her senses would ever call that old. It is just the prime of life."
"I like Captain Langton so much the better," she murmured.
"I have no doubt that you do, my dear; but there must be no nonsense about liking or disliking. Sir Oswald"s income must be quite twenty thousand per annum, and if you manage well, all that may be yours. But you must place yourself under my directions, and do implicitly what I tell you, if so desirable a result is to be achieved."
CHAPTER XIV.
PAULINE"S LOVE FOR DARRELL COURT.
Miss Darrell preserved a dignified silence during dinner; but when the servants had withdrawn, Sir Oswald, who had been charmed with his visitors, said:
"I am delighted, Pauline, that you have secured a young lady friend. You will be pleased with Miss Rocheford."
Pauline made no reply; and Sir Oswald, never thinking that it was possible for one so gentle and lovely as Miss Rocheford to meet with anything but the warmest praise, continued:
"I consider that Lady Hampton has done us all a great favor in bringing her charming niece with her. Were you not delighted with her, Pauline?"
Miss Darrell made no haste to reply; but Sir Oswald evidently awaited an answer.
"I do not like Miss Rocheford," she said at length; "it would be quite useless to pretend that I do."
Miss Hastings looked up in alarm. Captain Langton leaned back in his chair, with a smile on his lips--he always enjoyed Pauline"s "scenes"
when her anger was directed against any one but himself; Sir Oswald"s brow darkened.
"Pray, Miss Darrell, may I ask why you do not like her?"
"Certainly. I do not like her for the same reason that I should not like a diet of sugar. Miss Rocheford is very elegant and gentle, but she has no opinions of her own; every wind sways her; she has no ideas, no force of character. It is not possible for me to really like such a person."
"But, my dear Pauline," interposed Miss Hastings, "you should not express such very decided opinions; you should be more reticent, more tolerant."
"If I am not to give my opinion," said Pauline, serenely, "I should not be asked for it."
"Pray, Miss Hastings, do not check such delightful frankness," cried Sir Oswald, angrily, his hands trembling, his face darkening with an angry frown.
He said no more; but the captain, who thought he saw a chance of recommending himself to Miss Darrell"s favor, observed, later on in the evening:
"I knew you would not like our visitor, Miss Darrell. She was not of the kind to attract you."
"Sir Oswald forced my opinion from me," she said; "but I shall not listen to one word of disparagement of Miss Rocheford from you, Captain Langton. You gave her great attention, you flattered her, you paid her many compliments; and now, if you say that you dislike her, it will simply be deceitful, and I abominate deceit."
It was plain that Pauline had greatly annoyed Sir Oswald. He liked Miss Rocheford very much; the sweet, yielding, gentle disposition, which Pauline had thought so monotonous, delighted him. Miss Rocheford was so like that lost, dead love of his--so like! And for this girl, who tried his patience every hour of the day, to find fault with her! It was too irritating; he could not endure it. He was very cold and distant to Pauline for some time, but the young girl was serenely unconscious of it.
In one respect she was changing rapidly. The time had been when she had been indifferent to Darrell Court, when she had thought with regret of the free, happy life in the Rue d"Orme, where she could speak lightly of the antiquity and grandeurs of the race from which she had sprung; but all that was altered now. It could not be otherwise, considering how romantic, how poetical, how impressionable she was, how keenly alive to everything beautiful and n.o.ble. She was living here in the very cradle of the race, where every tree had its legend, every stone its story; how could she be indifferent while the annals of her house were filled with n.o.ble retrospects? The Darrells had numbered great warriors and statesmen among their number. Some of the n.o.blest women in England had been Darrells; and Pauline had learned to glory in the old stories, and to feel her heart beat with pride as she remembered that she, too, was a Darrell.
So, likewise, she had grown to love the Court for its picturesque beauty, its stately magnificence, and the time came soon when almost every tree and shrub was dear to her.
It was Pauline"s nature to love deeply and pa.s.sionately if she loved at all; there was no lukewarmness about her. She was incapable of those gentle, womanly likings that save all wear and tear of pa.s.sion. She could not love in moderation; and very soon the love of Darrell Court became a pa.s.sion with her. She sketched the mansion from twenty different points of view, she wrote verses about it; she lavished upon it the love which some girls lavish upon parents, brothers, sisters, and friends.
She stood one day looking at it as the western sunbeams lighted it up until it looked as though it were bathed in gold. The stately towers and turrets, the flower-wreathed balconies, the grand arched windows, the Gothic porch, all made up a magnificent picture; the fountains were playing in the sunlit air, the birds singing in the stately trees. She turned to Miss Hastings, and the governess saw tears standing warm and bright in the girl"s eyes.
"How beautiful it is!" she said. "I cannot tell you--I have no words to tell you--how I love my home."
The heart of the gentle lady contracted with sudden fear.
"It is very beautiful," she said; "but, Pauline, do not love it too much; remember how very uncertain everything is."
"There can be nothing uncertain about my inheritance," returned the girl. "I am a Darrell--the only Darrell left to inherit it. And, oh!
Miss Hastings, how I love it! But it is not for its wealth that I love it; it is my heart that is bound to it. I love it as I can fancy a husband loves his wife, a mother her child. It is everything to me."
"Still," said Miss Hastings, "I would not love it too well; everything is so uncertain."
"But not that," replied Pauline, quickly. "My uncle would never dare to be so unjust as to leave Darrell Court to any one but a Darrell. I am not in the least afraid--not in the least."
CHAPTER XV.