Jump to content

Page:Between Two Loves.djvu/33

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
28
BETWEEN TWO LOVES.

ances of many kinds ought to be readily made for her.

Upon the whole it was a very sorrowful conference, and Jonathan's heart ached when he folded the rich carriage robes about his unhappy, angry daughter, and watched her drive away through the evening shadows to her own home. He sat thinking and smoking until very late, full of uncertainty and annoyance. He felt as if Squire Aske had deceived him, and that was a wrong hard to forgive. As a lover he had been so attentive and affectionate. No service had then appeared too great. He had been at Eleanor's side constantly, and ever on the alert to gratify her slightest wish. All who knew the young couple had regarded the marriage as particularly suitable, full of the promise of happiness.

But Aske was an English squire of the old order, and he held in the main their ideas about women. They were to be faithful and obedient wives, careful, busy mistresses, and loving mothers of children. Eleanor's efforts to establish an autocracy of her own at Aske Hall, to rule it as she had done her father's house, to fill it with company of her own selecting, and order