And at last, a rough pencil sketch of a group in a small chamber at a café; an old man seated at a lamplit table playing écarté with a man whose face was hidden; an aristocratic-looking, shabby-genteel old man, whose nervous fingers seemed to clutch restlessly at a little pile of napoleons on the table before him.
There was a third figure; the figure of a smartly-dressed Frenchman standing behind the old man’s chair; and in this watcher of the game Eleanor recognized the man who had persuaded her father to leave her on the Boulevard,—the companion of the sulky Englishman.
The sketch was dated August 12, 1853; the very day on which Richard Thornton had recognized the dead man in the ghastly chamber of the Morgue. On the back of the drawing were written these words, “Sketch for finished picture, to be called ‘The last of the Napoleons’—Robert Lance.”
The likeness of the principal figure to George Vane was unmistakable. The man who had been heartless enough to cheat his kinsman’s friend, had made this record of the scene of his cruelty; but had not been so callous as to carry out his design after the suicide of his victim.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
MAURICE DE CRESPIGNY’S WILL.
Richard Thornton folded the pencil sketch and put it in his pocket with the water-coloured drawing.
“I told you that Launcelot Darrell would make a confidant of his pencil,” he said, in a low voice. “We may as well tie up the portfolio, Mrs. Monckton; there will be nothing more in it that can help us. The memory of your father would scarcely be pleasant to this young man after the 12th of August. When he made this sketch he had yet to learn the consequences of what he had done.”
Eleanor stood behind the scene-painter’s chair, silent and motionless. Her face was pale, and her mouth compressed and rigid with the effort by which she controlled her agitation. But a flame of fire burned in her eyes, and her nostrils quivered with a convulsive movement. Mr. Thornton carefully replaced the sketches in the purple portfolio, tied the strings, and laid the book in its old place against the wall. Then, unfastening the green portfolio, he went rapidly through the landscape scraps which it contained.
“The hand is weak here,” Richard said: “Mr. Launcelot Darrell has no sympathy with nature. He might be a clever figure painter if he had as much perseverance as he has talent. His pictures are like himself; shallow, artificial, and meretricious; but they are clever.”
The scene-painter said this with a purpose. He knew that Eleanor stood behind him, erect and statuesque, with her hand grasping the back of his chair, a pale Nemesis bent on revenge and destruction. He wanted, if possible, to let her down to commonplace feeling, by his commonplace talk, before Launcelot Darrell saw her face. But, looking round at that pale young face, Richard saw how terrible was the struggle in the girl’s breast, and how likely she was at any moment to betray herself.