“Oh, yes, we went through the usual routine. It was dreary enough. Pray tell me something about Hazlewood, Miss Mason; I am a great deal more interested in Berkshire than you can possibly be in my Indian experiences.”
The young lady was fain to submit. She told Mr. Darrell such scraps and shreds of gossip as form the “news” in a place like Hazlewood. He listened very attentively to anything Miss Mason had to tell about his uncle, Maurice de Crespigny.”
“So those tiger cats, my maiden aunts, are as watchful as ever,” he said, when Laura had finished. “Heaven grant the harpies may be disappointed. Do any of the Vane family ever try to get at the old man?”
Eleanor looked up from her work, but very quietly; she had grown accustomed to hear her name spoken by those who had no suspicion of her identity.
“Oh, no, I believe not,” Miss Mason answered; “old Mr. Vane died two or three years ago, you know.”
“Yes, my mother wrote me word of his death.”
“You were in India when it happened, then?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor’s face blanched, and her heart beat with a fierce heavy throbbing against her breast. How dared they talk of her dead father in that tone of almost insolent indifference. The one passion of her young life had as strong a power over her now as when she had knelt in the little chamber in the Rue l’Archevêque, with her clasped hands uplifted to the low ceiling, and a terrible oath upon her girlish lips.
She dropped her work suddenly, and rising from her rustic seat, walked away from the shade of the laurels.
“Eleanor,” cried Laura Mason, “where are you going?”
Launcelot Darrell sat in a careless attitude, trifling with the reels of silk, and balls of wool, and all the paraphernalia of fancy work scattered upon the table before him, but he lifted his head as Laura uttered her friend’s name, and perhaps for the first time looked steadily at Miss Vane.
He sat looking at her for some minutes while she and Laura stood talking together a few paces from him. It was perhaps only a painter’s habit of looking earnestly at a pretty face that gave intensity to his gaze. He dropped his eyelids presently, and drew a long breath, that sounded almost like a sigh of relief.
“An accidental likeness,” he muttered; “there are a hundred such likenesses in the world.”
He got up and walked back to the house, leaving the two girls together. Laura had a great deal to say about his handsome face, and the easy grace of his manner; but Eleanor Vane was absent and thoughtful. The mention of her father’s name had brought back the past. Her peaceful life, and all its quiet contentment, melted away like a curtain of morning mist that rises to disclose the ghastly horror of a battle-field; and the dreadful picture of the past arose before her; painfully vivid, horribly real. The parting on the boulevard; the long night of agony and suspense; the meeting with Richard on the bridge by the Morgue; her father’s torn, disjointed letter; and her own vengeful wrath; all returned to her; every voice of her heart seemed to call her away from the commonplace tranquillity of her life to some desperate act of justice and retribution.
“What have I to do with this frivolous girl?” she thought; “what is it to me whether Launcelot Darrell’s nose is Grecian or aquiline, whether his eyes are black or brown? What a wretched, useless life I am leading in this place, when I should be hunting through the world for the murderer of my father.”
She sighed wearily as she remembered how powerless she was. What could she do to get one step nearer to the accomplishment of that one purpose, which she called the purpose of her life? Nothing! She remembered with a chill feeling of despair that however, in her moments of exaltation, she might look forward to some shadowy day of triumph and revenge, her better sense always told her that Richard Thornton had spoken the truth. The man whose treachery had destroyed George Vane had dropped into the chaos of an over-crowded universe, leaving no clue behind him by which he might be traced.
CHAPTER XVI. THE LAWYER’S SUSPICION.
Mr. Monckton came to Hazlewood upon the day after Launcelot Darrell’s arrival. The grave solicitor had known the young man before his departure for India, but there seemed no very great intimacy between them, and Mr. Darrell appeared rather to avoid any familiarity with his mother’s rich friend.
He answered Gilbert Monckton’s questions about India and indigo-planting with an air of unwillingness that was almost insolent.
“The last few years of my life have not been so very pleasant as to make me care to look back at them,” he said, bitterly. “Some men keep a diary of the experiences of each day—I found the experiences dreary enough in themselves, and had no wish to incur the extra dreariness of writing about them. I told my uncle, when he forced a commercial career upon me, that he was making a mistake, and the result has proved that I was right.”
Mr. Darrell spoke with as much indifference as if he had been discussing the affairs of a stranger. He evidently thought that the mistakes of his life rested upon other people’s shoulders; and that it was no shame to him, but rather to his credit as a fine gentleman, that he had come home penniless and shabby to sponge upon his mother’s slender income.
“And now you have come back, what do you mean to do?” Mr. Monckton asked, rather abruptly.
“I shall go in for painting. I’ll work hard, down in this quiet place, and get a picture ready for the Royal Academy next year. Will you sit for me, Miss Mason? and you, Miss Vincent? you would make a splendid Rosalind and Celia. Yes, Mr. Monckton, I shall try the sublime art whose professors have been the friends of princes.”
“And if you fail—”
“If I fail, I’ll change my name, and turn itinerant portrait-painter. But I don’t suppose