This passage did not occur until Eleanor had reached the very last of the twelve pages which Miss Mason had covered with flowing Italian characters, whose symmetry was here and there disfigured by sundry blots and erasures. But as her eyes rested upon the last page, Eleanor Vane’s hand tightened upon the paper in her grasp, and the hot blood rushed redly to her earnest face.
“And I have found out all you want to know, dear Nell,” wrote Miss Mason; “though I am puzzled out of my wits to know why you should want to know it—when I did exercises in composition at Bayswater, they wouldn’t let me put two ‘knows’ so near together; but you won’t mind it, will you, dear? Well, darling, I’m not very clever at beating about the bush or finding out anything in a diplomatic way; so this afternoon at tea—I am writing to catch the evening post, and Bob is going to take my letters to the village for sixpence—I asked Launcelot Darrell, who was not drinking his tea, like a Christian, but lolling in the window, smoking a cigar: he has been as sulky as a bear ever since you left—oh, Nelly, Nelly, he isn’t in love with you, is he?—I should break my heart if I thought he was—I asked him, point-blank, what year and what day he sailed for India. I suppose the question sounded rather impertinent, for he coloured up scarlet all in a minute, and shrugged his shoulders in that dear disdainful way of his that always reminds me of Lara or the Corsair—L. and the C. were the same person, though, weren’t they?—and said, ‘I don’t keep a diary, Miss Mason, or I should be happy to afford you any information you may require as to my antecedents.’ I thought I should have dropped through the floor, Nelly,—the floor won’t let one drop through it, or else I am sure I should,—and I couldn’t have asked another question, even for your sake, dear; when, strange to say, Mrs. Darrell got me quite out of the difficulty. ‘I am sorry you should answer Laura so very unkindly, Launcelot,’ she said; ‘there is nothing strange in her question. I remember the date of your departure from your native country only too vividly. You left this house upon the 3rd of October, ’52, and you were to sail from Gravesend on the 4th, in the Princess Alice. I have reason to remember the date, for it seemed as if my uncle chose the very worst season of the year for sending you upon a long sea-voyage. But he was prompted, no doubt, by my sisters. I ought to feel no anger against him, poor old man!’”
Eleanor Vane glanced hurriedly at the concluding words of the letter. Then, with the last sheet crumpled in her hand, she sat motionless and absorbed, thinking over its contents.
“If Launcelot Darrell sailed for India upon the 4th of October, ’52, he is not likely to have been in Paris in ’53. If I can only prove to myself that he did sail upon that date, I will try and believe that I have been deluded by some foolish fancy of my own. But why did his face flush scarlet when Laura questioned him about his voyage?—why did he pretend to have forgotten the date?”
Eleanor waited impatiently for the arrival of her friend and counsellor, Richard Thornton. He came in at about three o’clock in the afternoon, while his aunt was still absent amongst her out-of-door pupils, and flung himself, jaded and worn out, on the chintz-covered sofa. But, tired as he was, he aroused himself by an effort to listen to that portion of Laura Mason’s letter which related to Launcelot Darrell.
“What do you think now, Dick?” Miss Vane asked, when she had finished reading.
“Pretty much what I thought before, Nell,” answered Mr. Thornton. “This young fellow’s objection to talk of his Indian voyage is no proof that he never went upon that voyage. He may have half-a-dozen unpleasant recollections connected with that part of his life. I don’t particularly care about talking of the Phœnix; but I never committed a murder in the obscurity of the flies, or buried the body of my victim between the stage and the mezzanine floor. People have their secrets, Nell; and we have no right to pry into the small mysteries which may lurk under a change of countenance or an impatient word.”
Eleanor Vane took very little notice of the young man’s argument.
“Can you find out if Launcelot Darrell sailed in the Princess Alice, Dick?” she added.
The scene-painter rubbed his chin reflectively.