sensitive feelings of her niece. Possibly she stood in a little unconscious awe of Randolph, for certainly so long as he remained she was quiet and discreet enough. But when his presence was once removed, then began a system of petty persecution and annoyance that was the very [156]thing to rouse in Monica a spirit of opposition and hostility.

[156]

Lady Diana had set her heart upon a speedy marriage, half afraid that her niece might change her mind; she took a half spiteful pleasure in the knowledge that the girl’s independence was at last to be curbed, and that she was about to take upon herself the common lot of womanhood. She lost no opportunities of reading homilies on wifely submission and subjection. She bestirred herself over the matter of the trousseau as if the day were actually fixed, and Monica’s indignant protests were laughed at and ignored as if too childish for serious argument.

The girl began to observe, too, that her father spoke of her marriage as of something speedily approaching, and that he, [157]Lady Diana, and even Arthur, seemed to understand that she would spend much of her time away from Trevlyn, when once that ceremony had taken place. Her father and brother spoke cheerfully of her leaving them, taking it for granted that her affianced husband was first in her thoughts, and that they must make her way easy to go away with him, without one regret for those left behind. Lady Diana, with more of feminine insight, had less of kindliness in her method of approaching the subject; but when she found them all agreed upon the point, the girl felt almost as if she had been betrayed. There was no Randolph to shield and protect her. She could not put into written words the tumult of her conflicting feelings; she could only struggle and suffer, and feel like a wild thing trapped in [158]the hunter’s toils. Ah, if only Randolph had not left her! But when the poison had done its work, she ceased even to wish for him back.

[157]

[158]

Another enemy to her peace of mind was Conrad Fitzgerald. Monica was growing to feel a great repugnance to this fair-haired, smooth-tongued man, despite the nominal friendship that existed between him and those of her name. She knew that her feelings were changing towards him; but, like other young things, she was ashamed of any such change, regarding it as treacherous and ungenerous, especially after the pledge she had given him.

Conrad thus found opportunities of seeing her from 

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