ELEANOR’S VICTORY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “AURORA FLOYD,” “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” &c.
CHAPTER XXXIII.—MAURICE DE CRESPIGNY’S WILL.
Richard Thornton folded the pencil sketch and put it in his pocket with the water-coloured drawing.
“I told you that Launcelot Darrell would make a confidant of his pencil,” he said in a low voice. “We may as well tie up the portfolio, Mrs. Monckton; there will be nothing more in it that can help us. The memory of your father would scarcely be pleasant to this young man after the 12th of August. When he made this sketch he had yet to learn the consequences of what he had done.”
Eleanor stood behind the scene-painter’s chair, silent and motionless. Her face was pale, and her mouth compressed and rigid with the effort by which she controlled her agitation. But a flame of fire burned in her luminous grey eyes, and her delicate nostrils quivered with a convulsive movement. Mr. Thornton carefully replaced the sketches in the purple portfolio, tied the strings, and laid the book in its old place against the wall. Then, unfastening the green portfolio, he went rapidly through the landscape scraps which it contained.
“The hand is weak here,” Richard said; “Mr. Launcelot Darrell has no sympathy with nature. He might be a clever figure-painter if he had as much perseverance as he has talent. His pictures are like himself; shallow, artificial, and meretricious; but they are clever.”
The scene-painter said this with a purpose. He knew that Eleanor stood behind him, erect and statuesque, with her hand grasping the back of his chair, a pale Nemesis bent on revenge and destruction. He wanted, if possible, to let her down to commonplace feeling, by his commonplace talk, before Launcelot Darrell saw her face. But, looking round at that pale young face, Richard saw how terrible was the struggle in the girl’s breast, and how likely she was at any moment to betray herself.
“Eleanor,” he whispered, “if you want to carry this business to the end, you must keep your secret. Launcelot Darrell is coming this way. Remember that an artist is quick to observe. There is the plot of a tragedy in your face at this moment.”
Mrs. Monckton tried to smile; but the attempt was very feeble; the smile wan and sickly. Launcelot Darrell came to the curtained recess, but he was not alone: Laura Mason came with him, talking very fast, and asking innumerable questions, now turning to her lover, now appealing to Eleanor or Richard Thornton.
“What a time you’ve been looking over the sketches,” she said, “and how do you like them, and which do you like best? Do you like the sea-side bits, or the forest sketches? There’s a picture of Tolldale with the cupola and the dinner-bell, Eleanor; I like the sketches in the other portfolio best; Launcelot lets me look at them, though he won’t allow any one else to see them. But I don’t like Rosa. I’m terribly jealous of Rosa—yes, I am, Launcelot; and it’s not a bit of use telling me you were never in love with her, and you only admired her because she was a pretty rustic model. Nobody in the world could believe that, could they, Mr. Thornton? Could they, Eleanor? When an artist paints the same face again and again, and again and again, he must be in love with the original; mustn’t he now?”
Nobody answered the young lady’s eager questions. Launcelot Darrell smiled and twisted his dark moustache between his slender, womanish fingers. Laura’s unrestrained admiration of him was very agreeable; and he was beginning to be in love with her, after his own fashion, which was a very easy one.
Eleanor looked at her husband’s ward with a strange expression in her face—a stern unpitying gaze that promised little good to the young heiress.
“What is this foolish girl’s fancy to me, that it should weigh against my father’s death?” she thought. “What is it to me that she may have to suffer? Let me remember the bitterness of his sufferings; let me remember that long night upon which I watched for him,—that miserable night in which he despaired and died. Surely the remembrance of this will shut every thought of pity from my heart.”
Perhaps Eleanor Monckton had need to reason with herself thus. It might be difficult to be true to her scheme of vengeance, when, in the path she had to tread, this girl’s heart must be trampled upon; this innocent, childish, confiding little creature who had clung to her, and trusted in her, and loved her, from the hour of their first meeting.
“Should I be pitiful, or merciful, or just to her, if I suffered her to marry a bad man?” Mrs. Monckton asked herself. “No; for her sake as much as for the memory of my father, it is my duty to denounce Launcelot Darrell.”
Throughout the drive back to Tolldale, Mrs. Monckton silently brooded upon the morning’s work. Richard Thornton had indeed proved a powerful ally. How often she had been in that studio, and not once had the idea of looking amongst the artist’s sketches for the evidence of his life occurred to her.
“I told you that you could help me, Richard,” she said, when she found herself alone with the scene-painter. “You have given me the proof which I have waited for so long. I will go to Woodlands to-night.”
“What for?”
“To show those two sketches to Mr. de Crespigny.
“But will that proof be strong enough to convince a man whose powers of perception must be weakened by age? What if Mr. de Crespigny should