“If I can once prove that, which I now believe as firmly as if every mortal proof had demonstrated its truth, I know how to punish Launcelot Darrell,” replied the girl.
“You know how to punish him?”
“Yes. His uncle—that is to say, his great-uncle—Maurice de Crespigny, was my father’s firmest friend. I need not tell you that story, Dick, for you have heard it often enough from my poor father’s own lips. Launcelot Darrell hopes to inherit the old man’s money, and is, I believe, likely enough to do so. But if I could prove to the old man that my father died a melancholy and untimely death through his nephew’s treachery, Launcelot Darrell would never receive a sixpence of that money. I know how eagerly he looks forward to it, though he affects indifference.”
“And you would do this, Eleanor?” asked Richard, staring aghast at his companion. “You would betray the secrets of this young man’s youth to his uncle, and compass his ruin by that revelation?”
“I would do what I swore to do in the Rue de l’Archevêque—I would avenge my father’s death. The last words my poor father ever wrote appealed to me to do that. I have never forgotten those words. There may have been a deeper treachery in that night’s work than you or I knew of, Richard. Launcelot Darrell knew who my father was; he knew of the friendship between him and Mr. de Crespigny. How do we know that he did not try to goad the poor old man to that last act of his despair?—how do we know that he did not plan those losses at cards, in order to remove his uncle’s friend from his pathway? O God! Richard, if I thought that——!”
The girl rose from her chair in a sudden tumult of passion, with her hands clenched and her eyes flashing.
“If I could think that his treachery went beyond the baseness of cheating my father of his money for the money’s sake, I would take his life for that dear life as freely and as unhesitatingly as I lift my hand up now.”
She raised her clenched hand towards the ceiling as she spoke, as if to register some unuttered vow. Then, turning abruptly to the scene-painter, she said, almost imploringly,——
“It can’t be, Richard; he cannot have been so base as that! He held my hand in his only a few days ago. I would cut off that hand if I could think that Launcelot Darrell had planned my father’s death.”
“But you cannot think it, my dear Eleanor,” Richard answered, earnestly. “How should the young man know that your father would take his loss so deeply to heart? We none of us calculate the consequences of our sins, my dear. If this man cheated, he cheated because he wanted money. For Heaven’s sake, Nelly, leave him and his sin in the hands of Providence! The future is not a blank sheet of paper, for us to write any story we please upon, but a wonderful chart, mapped out by a Divine and unerring Hand. Launcelot Darrell will not go unpunished, my dear. ‘My faith is strong in Time,’ as the poet says. Leave the young man to time—and to Providence.”