“Yes.”
They spoke in whispers, but their whispers were perhaps more distinct than their ordinary tones would have been. Eleanor could hear every word they said.
There was a long pause, during which Launcelot Darrell opened and shut several drawers, taking a hurried survey at their contents. Presently he uttered a half-smothered cry.
“You’ve got it?” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“Yes.”
“Put in the substitute, then, and lock the cabinet.”
Launcelot Darrell threw the document which he had taken from the drawer upon a chair near him, and took another paper from his pocket. He put this second paper in the place from which he had taken the first, and then shut the drawer, and closed and locked the doors of the cabinet. He did all this in nervous haste, and neither he nor his companion perceived that a third paper, very much like the first in shape and size, had fallen out of one of the drawers and lay upon the carpet before the cabinet.
Now, for the first time, Eleanor Monckton began to comprehend the nature of the conspiracy which she had witnessed. Launcelot Darrell and his accomplice had substituted a fictitious paper for the real will signed by Maurice de Crespigny and witnessed by Gilbert Monckton and the lawyer’s clerk. The genuine document was that which Launcelot Darrell had flung upon the chair by the side of the secrétaire.
CHAPTER XLIII.
A BRIEF TRIUMPH.
Eleanor Monckton’s first impulse was to rush into the room and denounce Launcelot Darrell in the presence of those who would be sure to come in answer to her call. He would be scarcely likely to find much mercy at the hands of his aunts: he would stand before them a detected wretch, capable of any crime, of any treachery, for the furtherance of his own interest.