“Yes, my dear,” Maurice de Crespigny said; “that portrait was painted sixty years ago. George Vane would have been close upon eighty if he had lived. Yes, close upon eighty, my love. You don’t see your own likeness to that picture, perhaps; people seldom do see resemblances of that kind. But the lad’s face is like yours, my dear, and you bring back the memory of my youth, just as the scent of some old-fashioned flower, that our advanced horticulture has banished to a cottager’s garden, brings back the grass-plot upon which I played at my mother’s knees. Do you know what I mean to do, Mrs. Monckton?”
Eleanor lifted her eyebrows with an arch smile, as who should say, “Your caprices are quite beyond my power of divination.”
“I mean to leave that miniature to you in my will, my dear.”
The maiden sisters started simultaneously, agitated by the same emotion, and their eyes met.
“Yes, my dear,” Maurice de Crespigny repeated, “I shall leave that miniature to you when I die. It’s not worth anything intrinsically; but I don’t want you to be reminded of me when I am dead and gone, except through your own tender feelings. You have been interested in my stories of George Vane—who, with all his faults, and I’m not slow to acknowledge them, was a brighter and better man than I was—and it may please you sometimes to look at that picture. You’ve brought a ray of sunlight across a very dismal pathway, my love,” added the invalid, quite indifferent to the fact that this remark was by no means complimentary to his devoted nurses and guardians, “and I am grateful to you. If you were poor, I should leave you money. But you are the wife of a rich man; and, beyond that, my fortune is already disposed of. I am not free to leave it as I might wish; I have a duty to perform, my dear; a duty which I consider sacred and imperative; and I shall fulfil that duty.”
The old man had never before spoken so freely of his intentions with regard to his money. The sisters sat staring blankly at each other, with quickened breaths and pale faces.
What could this speech mean? Why, clearly that the money must be left to them. What other duty could Maurice de Crespigny owe to any one? Had they not kept guard over him for years, shutting him in, and separating him from every living creature? What right had he to be grateful to any one but them, inasmuch as they had taken good care that no one else should ever do him a service?
But to the ears of Eleanor Monckton, the old man’s speech had another signification; the blood mounted to her face, and her heart beat violently. “He is thinking of Launcelot Darrell,” she thought; “he will leave his fortune to Launcelot Darrell. He will die before he learns the secret of my father’s wrongs. His will is already made, no doubt, and he will die before I can dare to say to him, ‘Your niece’s son is a trickster and a villain!’”
This was the only occasion upon which Maurice de Crespigny ever spoke of his intentions with regard to the fortune that he must leave behind him. He said, plainly enough, that Eleanor was to have none of his money; and the sisters, who had until now kept a jealous watch upon the old man and his favourite, were henceforward content to let Mrs. Monckton come and go as she pleased. But for all this Eleanor was no nearer the accomplishment of her great purpose.
Launcelot Darrell came to Tolldale, and in a certain easy and somewhat indifferent manner paid his homage to his affianced wife. Laura was happy by fits and starts; and by fits and starts utterly miserable, when the horrible pangs of jealousy—jealousy of Eleanor, and jealous doubts of her lover’s truth—tortured her breast. Gilbert Monckton sat day after day in the library or the drawing-room, or Eleanor’s morning-room, as the case might be, keeping watch over his wife and the lovers.