“And mine,” added Laura.
She stood silent for a moment, trembling. The lawyer looked at her with a sharp curiosity under his natural placidity and professional dryness.
He remembered his late client, the Jamaican merchant, and the elder brother, Sir John of Leppard Hall, how they had spoken of the girl whom they had watched, tenderly and keenly, though she never knew much of that, both when she was at school and when she had lived with Mary Tolls. They had been rather afraid of her character, that was full, they declared, of vagaries, fancies, and sudden caprices and staunch and constant passions. In everything she had been a contrast to that model of self-control and rectitude, Sir Theodosius, who had passed through school and college amid a chorus of commendation, winning scholarships
