The two ladies looked very sharply and rather suspiciously at Mr. Parker, as if they were meditating the possibility of that gentleman having fabricated a will constituting himself sole legatee.
“I did not hear my dear uncle mention you, Parker,” Miss Sarah said, stiffly; “but we shall not forget any one he wished to have remembered; you may be sure of that.”
Eleanor Monckton stood, silent and aghast, staring straight before her, paralyzed, dumbfounded, by the tidings she had just heard.
“Dead!” she murmured at last. “Dead! dead!—before I could see him, before I could tell him——”
She paused, looking round her with a bewildered expression in her face.
“I do not know why you should be so eager to see my uncle,” said Miss Lavinia, forgetting her assumption of grief, and becoming very genuine in her spiteful feeling towards Eleanor, as a possible rival, “nor do I know what you can have had to say to him. But I do know that you have not exhibited very good taste in intruding upon us at such an hour as this, and, above all, in remaining, now that you hear the sad affliction”—the handkerchief went to the eyes again here—“which has befallen us. If you come here,” added Miss Lavinia, suddenly becoming spiteful again, “in the hope of ascertaining how my uncle’s money has been left—and it would be only like some people to do so—I can give you no information upon the subject. The gardener has been sent to Windsor to summon Mr. Lawford’s clerk. Mr. Lawford himself started some days ago for New York on business. It’s very unlucky that he should be away at such a time, for we put every confidence in him. However, I suppose the clerk will do as well. He will put seals on my uncle’s effects, I believe, and nothing will be known about the will until the day of the funeral. But I do not think you need trouble yourself upon the subject, my dear Mrs. Monckton, as I perfectly remember my beloved relative telling you very distinctly that he had no idea of leaving you anything except a picture, or something of that kind. We shall be very happy to see that you get the picture,” concluded the lady, with frigid politeness.
Eleanor Monckton stood with one hand pushing the glossy ripples of auburn hair away from her forehead, and with a look upon her face which the Misses de Crespigny—whose minds had run in one very narrow groove for the last twenty years—could only construe into some disappointment upon the subject of the will. Eleanor recovered her self-command with an effort, as Miss Lavinia finished speaking, and said, very quietly:
“Believe me, I do not want to inherit any of Mr. de Crespigny’s property. I am very, very sorry that he is dead, for there was something that I wanted to tell him before he died; something that I ought to have told him long ago. I have been foolish—cowardly—to wait so long.”
She said the last words not to the two ladies, but to herself; and then, after a pause, she added, slowly:
“I hope your uncle has left his fortune to you and your sister, Miss Lavinia. Heaven grant that he may have left it so!”