“What do you mean?” asked Eleanor. She had watched the young man’s examination of the drawings with eager interest, with ever-increasing impatience, in her desire to come to something that should be evidence against Launcelot Darrell.
“What do you mean?” she said, and then she added, impatiently, “How slow you are, Dick! What do I want to know of this man except the one proof that will identify him with that man upon the Boulevard?”
“I’m afraid we’ve been making a mistake all this time,” Richard said, in rather a despondent tone. “These sketches must have been done by some companion of Mr. Darrell’s. I’m afraid they’re none of them his.”
“Not his? But why—why not?”
“Because the first lot, the Cromwells and the Rosas, are all signed with a flourishing autograph—‘Launcelot Darrell, pinxt.,’ in full, as if the young man was rather proud of his name.”
“Yes, yes; but what then?”
“The London-life sketches, the Lady Claras, and the suicides, which are much better than the first lot, though I should have thought they had been by the same man, are all signed with a monogram.”
“A monogram?”
“Yes, of two initials. I’ve been trying to make them out for ever so long, and I’ve only just succeeded. The two letters are R. L.”
Richard Thornton felt Eleanor’s hand, which had been resting lightly upon the back of his chair, tighten suddenly upon the rosewood scroll-work; he heard her breath grow quicker; and when he turned his head he saw that she was deadly pale.