“The keys are quite safe, Miss Lavinia,” she said.
“And they have not been disturbed?” asked Launcelot.
“No, Mr. Darrell, they haven’t been moved a quarter of an inch. They’re lyin’ just where they lay when my poor master died, half hid under a pocket-handkerchief.”
Launcelot Darrell drew a long breath. How wonderfully these foolish women had played into his hands, and helped him to escape.
“That will do, Jepcott,” said Miss Sarah; “you may go now. Remember that you are responsible for everything in my uncle’s room until the arrival of Mr. Lawford’s clerk. It would have been a very bad business for you if Mr. de Crespigny’s keys had been tampered with.”
Mrs. Jepcott looked rather alarmed at this remark, and retired without delay. Suppose she had been asleep, after all, for five minutes or so, and some mischief had arisen out of it, what might not her punishment be. She had a very vague idea of the power of the law, and did not know what penalties she might have incurred by five minutes’ unconscious doze. This honest woman had been in the habit of spending the evening in a series of intermittent naps for the last ten years, and had no idea that while closing her eyes to shade them from the glare of the light, she often slumbered soundly for an hour at a stretch.
“Well, Mrs. Monckton,” Launcelot Darrell said, when the housekeeper had left the room, “I suppose now you are convinced that all this midwinter night’s dream is a mere hallucination of your own?”
Eleanor looked at him with a contemptuous smile, whose open scorn was not the least painful torture he had been obliged to bear that night.
“Do not speak to me,” she said; “remember who I am; and let that memory keep you silent.”
The door-bell rang loudly as Eleanor finished speaking.