The young man did not condescend to notice his affianced wife’s art-criticism. He relapsed into gloomy silence, and once more betook himself to that savage kind of consolation afforded by a sturdy exercise of the poker.
“But, Launcelot,” pleaded Miss Mason, presently, “I’m sure you needn’t be unhappy about my having money, and your being poor. There’s Mr. de Crespigny’s fortune, you know; he can’t be shameful and wicked enough to leave it to any one but you. My guardian said, only the other day, that he thought it would be left to you.”
“Oh, ah, to be sure,” muttered Mr. Darrell, moodily; “there’s that chance, of course.”
“He couldn’t leave Woodlands to those two old maids, you know, Launcelot, could he?”
To the surprise of the two listeners, Richard Thornton and Eleanor, the young man burst into a harsh disdainful laugh.
“My respected maiden aunts!” he exclaimed; “poor devils, they’ve had a nice time of it.”
Until this moment Richard and Eleanor had most firmly believed that the will which disinherited Launcelot Darrell bequeathed the Woodlands fortune to the two maiden sisters, Lavinia and Sarah de Crespigny; but the young man’s disdainful laugh, and the contemptuous, yet half-pitying tone in which he spoke of the two sisters, plainly revealed that if he knew the secret of the disposal of Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune, and knew that it was not left to himself, he knew also that equal disappointment and mortification awaited his aunts.
He had been in the habit of speaking of them with a savage though suppressed animosity. To-day his tone was utterly changed. He had a malicious pleasure, no doubt, in thinking of the disappointment in store for them; and he could afford now to feel a kind of disdainful compassion for all their wasted labours, their useless patience.
But to whom, then, could the fortune be left?
Eleanor and Richard looked at each other in amazement. It might have been supposed that the old man had left his wealth to Eleanor herself, influenced by the caprice that had induced him to attach himself to her, because of her likeness to his dead friend. But this could not be, for the invalid had distinctly declared that he should leave nothing but George Vane’s miniature to his new favourite; and Maurice de Crespigny was not a man to say one thing and mean another. He had spoken of a duty to be fulfilled, a duty which he was determined to perform.