Eleanor Vane, she would doubtless have done so, for the girl’s presence had now become a source of alarm to her. There were two reasons for this sentiment of alarm. First, the likeness which Maurice de Crespigny had discovered between Eleanor and his dead friend, and which might prompt him at any moment to some capricious fancy for the girl; and, secondly, the fact that Eleanor’s beauty and fascinations might not be without their effect upon Launcelot Darrell.
The widow knew by cruel experience that her son was not a man to surrender his lightest caprice at the entreaty of another. At seven-and-twenty years of age he was as much a spoiled child as he had been at seven. Ellen Darrell looked back at the bitter trials of the past, and remembered how hard it had been to keep her son true even to his own interests. Selfish and self-willed, he had taken his own way; always relying upon his handsome face, his shallow versatility, his showy accomplishments, to carry him through every difficulty, and get him out of every dilemma; always eager for the enjoyment of the present hour, and reckless as to any penalties to be paid in the future.
Mrs. Darrell had concentrated every feeling of her heart into one passion: her love for this young man. Frigid and reserved to others, with him she was impulsive, vehement, spontaneous, ready to pour out her heart’s blood at his feet, if he had needed such an evidence of her devotion. For him she was jealous and exacting; harsh to others; desperate and unforgiving to those whom she thought his enemies.
For Launcelot she was anxious and ambitious. The hope that her uncle Maurice would leave his fortune to the young man, or, on the other hand, would die without a will, thus leaving Launcelot to succeed as heir-at-law, never entirely deserted her. But, even if that hope should fail, her sisters were elderly women like herself. If they succeeded in cajoling Maurice de Crespigny out of his fortune, they must surely eventually leave it to their only nephew, Launcelot. This was how the widow reasoned. But there was another chance which she fancied she saw for her son’s advancement. Laura Mason, the heiress, evidently admired the young man’s handsome face and dashing manners. What more likely than that Launcelot might succeed in winning the hand and fortune of that capricious young lady?
Under these circumstances Mrs. Darrell would have been very glad to have removed Eleanor Vane out of her son’s way; but this was not easily to be done. When the widow sounded Laura Mason upon the subject, and dimly suggested the necessity of parting with Eleanor, the heiress burst into a flood of tears, and declared passionately that she would not live without her darling Nelly; and when Mrs. Darrell went even further than this, and touched upon the subject in a conversation with Mr. Monckton, the lawyer replied very decidedly that he considered Miss Vincent’s companionship of great benefit to his ward, and that he could not hear of any arrangement by which the two girls would be separated.
Mrs. Darrel], therefore, could do nothing but submit, in the hope that for once her son might consent to be governed by his interests, rather than by those erratic impulses which had led him in the reckless and riotous days of his early youth.
She pleaded with him, entreating him to be prudent and thoughtful for the future.
“You have suffered so much from poverty, Launcelot,” she urged, “that surely you will lose no opportunity of improving your position. Look back, my boy; remember that bitter time in which you were lost to me, led away by low and vicious companions, and only apppealing to me when you found yourself in debt and difficulty. Think of your Indian life, and the years you have wasted,—you who are so clever and accomplished, and who ought to have been so fortunate. Oh, Launcelot, if you knew what a bitter thing it is to a mother to see her idolised child waste every opportunity of winning the advancement which should be his by right,—yes, by right, Launcelot, by the right of your talents. I never reproached you, my boy, for coming home to me penniless. Were you to return to me twenty times, as you came back that night, you would always find the same welcome, the same affection. My love for you will never change, my darling, till I go to my grave. But I suffer very bitterly when I think of your wasted youth. You must be rich, Launcelot; you cannot afford to be poor. There are some men to whom poverty seems a spur that drives them on to greatness, but it has clogged your footsteps, and held you back from the fame you might have won.”
“Egad, so it has, mother,” the young man answered, bitterly; “a shabby coat paralyses a man’s arm, to my mind, and it’s not very easy for a fellow to hold his head very high when the nap’s all worn off his hat. But I don’t mean to sit down to a life of idleness, I can tell you, mother; I shall turn painter. You know I’ve got on with my painting pretty well during the last few years.”
“I’m glad of that, my dear boy. You had plenty of time to devote to your painting, then?”
“Plenty of time; oh, yes, I was pretty well off for that matter.”
“Then you were not so hard worked in India?”
“Not always. That depended upon circumstances,” the young man answered, indifferently. “Yes, mother, I shall turn painter, and try and make a fortune out of my brush.”
Mrs. Darrell sighed. She wished to see her son made rich by a quicker road than the slow and toilsome pathway by which an artist reaches fortune.
“If you could make a wealthy marriage, Launcelot,” she said, “you might afford to devote yourself to art, without having to endure the torturing anxieties which must be suffered by a man who has only his profession to depend upon. I wouldn’t for the world wish you to sell yourself for money, for I know the wretchedness of a really mercenary marriage; but if—”
The young man flung back the dark hair from his forehead, and smiled at his mother as he interrupted her.
“If I should fall in love with this Miss Laura Mason, who, according to your account, is to have a power of money one of these days, I should prove myself a wise man. That’s what