Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/167

. 1, 1863.] find you’re not forgotten, Parker,’ were his last words.”

The two ladies looked very sharply and rather suspiciously at Mr. Parker, as if they were meditating the possibility of that gentleman having fabricated a will constituting himself sole legatee.

“I did not hear my dear uncle mention you, Parker,” Miss Sarah said, stiffly; “but we shall not forget any one he wished to have remembered; you may be sure of that.”

Eleanor Monckton stood, silent and aghast, staring straight before her, paralysed, dumbfounded, by the tidings she had just heard.

“Dead!” she murmured at last. “Dead! dead!—before I could see him, before I could tell him—”

She paused, looking round her with a bewildered expression in her face.

“I do not know why you should be so eager to see my uncle,” said Miss Lavinia, forgetting her assumption of grief, and becoming very genuine in her spiteful feeling towards Eleanor, as a possible rival, “nor do I know what you can have had to say to him. But I do know that you have not exhibited very good taste in intruding upon us at such an hour as this, and, above all, in remaining, now that you hear the sad affliction”—the handkerchief went to the eyes again here—“which has befallen us. If you come here,” added Miss Lavinia, suddenly becoming spiteful again, “in the hope of ascertaining how my uncle’s money has been left—and it would be only like some people to do so—I can give you no information upon the subject. The gardener has been sent to Windsor to summon Mr. Lawford’s clerk. Mr. Lawford himself started some days ago for New York on business. It’s very unlucky that he should be away at such a time, for we put every confidence in him. However, I suppose the clerk will do as well. He will put seals on my uncle’s effects, I believe, and nothing will be known about the will until the day of the funeral. But I do not think you need trouble yourself upon the subject, my dear Mrs. Monckton, as I perfectly remember my beloved relative telling you very distinctly that he had no idea of leaving you anything except a picture, or something of that kind. We shall be very happy to see that you get the picture,” concluded the lady, with frigid politeness.

Eleanor Monckton stood with one hand pushing the glossy ripples of auburn hair away from her forehead, and with a look upon her face which the Misses de Crespigny—whose minds had run in one very narrow groove for the last twenty years—could only construe into some disappointment upon the subject of the will. Eleanor recovered her self-command with an effort, as Miss Lavinia finished speaking, and said, very quietly:

“Believe me, I do not want to inherit any of Mr. de Crespigny’s property. I am very, very sorry that he is dead, for there was something that I wanted to tell him before he died; something that I ought to have told him long ago. I have been foolish—cowardly—to wait so long.”

She said the last words not to the two ladies, but to herself; and then, after a pause, she added, slowly,

“I hope your uncle has left his fortune to you and your sister, Miss Lavinia. Heaven grant that he may have left it so!”

Unfortunately the Misses de Crespigny were in the humour to take offence at anything. The terrible torture of suspense which was gnawing at the heart of each of the dead man’s nieces disposed them to be snappish to any one who came in their way. To them, to-night, it seemed as if the earth was peopled by expectant legatees, all eager to dispute for the heritage which by right was theirs.

“We are extremely obliged to you for your good wishes, Mrs. Monckton,” Miss Sarah said, with vinegary politeness, “and we can perfectly appreciate their sincerity. Good evening.”

On this hint, the butler opened the door with a solemn flourish, and the two ladies bowed Eleanor out of the house. The door closed behind her, and she went slowly down the steps, lingering without purpose, entirely bewildered by the turn that events had taken.

“Dead!” she exclaimed, in a half-whisper, “dead! I never thought that he would die so soon. I waited, and waited, thinking that, whenever the time came for me to speak, he would be alive to hear me; and now he is dead, and I have lost my chance; I have lost my one chance of avenging my father’s death. The law cannot touch Launcelot Darrell; but this old man had the power to punish him, and would have used that power, if he had known the story of his friend’s death. I cannot doubt that. I cannot doubt that Maurice de Crespigny dearly loved my father.”

Eleanor Monckton stopped for a few minutes at the bottom of the steps, trying to collect her senses—trying to think if there was anything more for her to do.

No, there was nothing. The one chance which fortune, by a series of events, not one of which had been of her own contriving, had thrown into her way, was lost. She could do nothing but go quietly home, and wait for the reading of the will, which might, or might not, make Launcelot Darrell the owner of a noble estate.

But then she remembered Richard Thornton’s visit to Windsor, and the inferences he had drawn from the meeting between Launcelot and the lawyer’s clerk. Richard had most firmly believed that the property was left away from the young man; and Launcelot Darrell’s conduct since that day had gone far towards confirming the scene-painter’s assertion. There was very little doubt, then, that the will which had been drawn up by Mr. Lawford and witnessed by Gilbert Monckton, was a will that left Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune away from Launcelot Darrell. The old man had spoken of a duty which he meant to perform. Surely he must have alluded to his two nieces’ devotion, and the recompense which they had earned by their patient attendance upon him. Such untiring watchers generally succeed in reaping the reward of their labours; and why should it be otherwise in this case?

But then, on the other hand, the old man was fretful and capricious. His nerves had been shattered by a long illness. How often, in the watches of the night, he might have lain awake, pondering