Mr. Monckton looked at his watch as he and Eleanor joined Mrs. Darrell.
“Half-past three o’clock,” he said; “Mr. de Crespigny generally takes an airing in his Bath-chair at about this time in the afternoon. You see, I know the habits of the Citadel, and know therefore how to effect a surprise. If we strike across the park we are almost sure to meet him.”
He led the way to a little gate in the fence. It was only fastened by a latch, and the party entered the grassy enclosure.
Eleanor Vane’s heart beat violently. She was about to see her father’s old and early friend; that friend whom George Vane had never been suffered to approach, to whom he had been forbidden to appeal in the hour of his distress.
“If my poor father could have written to Mr. de Crespigny for help when he lost that wretched hundred pounds, he might have been saved from a cruel death,” Eleanor thought.
Fortune seemed to favour the invaders. In a shady avenue that skirted one side of the slope, they came upon the old man and the two sisters. The maiden ladies walked on either side of their uncle’s Bath-chair, erect and formidable-looking as a couple of grenadiers.
Maurice de Crespigny looked twenty years older than his spendthrift friend had looked up to the hour of his death. His bent head nodded helplessly forward. His faded eyes seemed dim and sightless. The withered hand lying idle upon the leathern apron of the Bath-chair, trembled like a leaf shaken by the autumn wind. The shadow of approaching death seemed to hover about this feeble creature, separating him from his fellow-mortals.
The two maiden ladies greeted their sister with no very demonstrative cordiality.
“Ellen!” exclaimed Miss Lavinia, the elder of the two, “this is an unexpected pleasure. I am sure that both Sarah and myself are charmed to see you; but as this is one of our poor dear invalid’s worst days, your visit is rather unfortunately timed. If you had written, and given us notice of your coming——”
“You would have shut the door in my face,” Mrs. Darrell said, resolutely. “Pray do not put yourself to the trouble of inventing any polite fictions on my account, Lavinia. We understand each other perfectly. I came here by the back way, because I knew I should be refused admittance at the front door. You keep watch well, Lavinia, and I beg to compliment you upon your patience.”