“Miss Vincent and I are good friends already, Mrs. Darrell,” she said, gaily, “and we shall be as happy together as the day is long, I hope.”
“And I hope Miss Vincent will teach you industrious habits, Laura,” Miss Darrell answered, gravely.
Miss Mason made a grimace with her pretty red under-lip.
Eleanor took the seat indicated to her, a seat at the end of the dining-table, and exactly opposite to Mrs. Darrell, who sat with her back to the fireplace.
Sitting here, Eleanor could scarcely fail to observe an oil painting—the only picture in the room—which hung over the mantel-piece. It was the portrait of a young man, with dark hair clustering about a handsome forehead, regular features, a pale complexion, and black eyes. The face was very handsome, very aristocratic, but there was a want of youthfulness, an absence of the fresh, eager spirit of boyhood in its expression. A look of listless hauteur hung like a cloud over the almost faultless features.
Mrs. Darrell watched Eleanor’s eyes as the girl looked at this picture.
“You are looking at my son, Miss Vincent,” she said; “but perhaps it is scarcely necessary to tell you so. People say there is a strong likeness between us.”
There was indeed a very striking resemblance between the faded face below and the pictured face above. But it seemed to Eleanor Vane as if the mother’s face, faded and careworn though it was, was almost the younger of the two. The listless indifference, the utter lack of energy in the lad’s countenance, was so much the more striking when contrasted with the youthfulness of the features.
“Yes,” exclaimed Laura Mason, “that is Mrs. Darrell’s only son, Launcelot Darrell. Isn’t that a romantic name, Miss Vincent?”
Eleanor started. This Launcelot Darrell was the young man she had heard her father speak of; the man who expected to inherit the De Crespigny estate. How often she had heard his name! It was he, then, who would have stood between her father and fortune, had that dear father lived; or whose claim of kindred would, perhaps, have had to make way for the more sacred right of friendship.