Launcelot Darrell looked up with a strange, eager glance, but said nothing. The sisters, however, could not suffer Eleanor’s words to pass without remark.
“You never thought that; oh dear no, I dare say not,” Miss Lavinia observed.
“Of course you never entered this house with any mercenary ideas upon the subject of my dear uncle’s will,” Miss Sarah exclaimed, with biting irony.
“I never built any hope upon my dear father’s fancy,” resumed Eleanor, so indifferent to the remarks of the two ladies that it seemed as if they had been unheard by her; “but I humoured it as I would have humoured any fancy of his, however foolish. But after his death I remembered that Mr. de Crespigny had been his friend, and I only waited to convince myself of that man’s guilt”—she pointed to Launcelot Darrell as she spoke—“before I denounced him to his great-uncle. I thought that my father’s old friend would listen to me, and knowing what had been done, would never let a traitor inherit his wealth. I thought that by this means I should be revenged upon the man who caused my father’s death. I heard to-day that Mr. de Crespigny had not long to live; and when I came here to-night I came with the intention of telling him the real character of the man who was perhaps to inherit his fortune.”
The maiden ladies looked at each other. It would not have been a bad thing, perhaps, after all, if Eleanor had arrived in time to see the dying man. It was a pity that Maurice de Crespigny should have died in ignorance of his nephew’s character, when there was just a chance that he might have left a will in that nephew’s favour. But on the other hand, George Vane’s daughter was even a more formidable person than Launcelot. Who could tell how she might have contrived to tamper with the old man?
“I have no doubt you wished to denounce Mr. Darrell; and to denounce us, too, for the matter of that, I dare say,” observed Miss Sarah, “in order that you yourself might profit by my uncle’s will.”
“I profit!” cried Eleanor; “what should I want with the poor old man’s money?”
“My wife is rich enough to be above any suspicion of that kind, Miss de Crespigny,” Gilbert Monckton said, proudly.
“I came too late,” Eleanor said; “I came too late to see my father’s friend, but not too late for what I have so long prayed for—revenge upon my father’s destroyer. Look at your sister’s son, Miss de Crespigny. Look at him, Miss Lavinia; you have good reason to be proud of him. He has been a liar and a traitor from first to last; and to-night he has advanced from treachery to crime. The law could not punish him for the cruelty that killed a helpless old man; the law can punish him for that which he has done to-night, for he has committed a crime.”
“A crime!”