ELEANOR’S VICTORY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “AURORA FLOYD,” “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” &c.
CHAPTER XLV. AT SEA.
The will was gone. Eleanor tried to think how or where she could have lost it. It might have dropped from her pocket, perhaps. That was the only solution of the mystery that presented itself to her mind. The open pocket of her dress might have been caught by one of the laurel boughs as she crouched upon the ground, and when she rose the paper had dropped out. There was no other way in which she could have lost it. She had been so absorbed in the watch she had kept on Launcelot Darrell, as to forget the value of the document which she had thrust carelessly into her pocket. Her father’s letter and Launcelot Darrell’s sketch were still safe in the bosom of her dress; but the will, the genuine will, in place of which the young man had introduced some fabrication of his own, was gone.
“Let me see this will, Eleanor,” Gilbert Monckton said, advancing to his wife. Although she had been the most skilful actress, the most accomplished deceiver amongst all womankind, her conduct to-night could not be all acting, it could not be all deception. She did not love him: she had confessed that, very plainly. She did not love him; and she had only married him in order to serve a purpose of her own. But then, on the other hand, if her passionate words were to be believed in, she did not love Launcelot Darrell. There was some comfort in that. “Let me see the will, Eleanor,” he repeated, as his wife stared at him blankly, in the first shock of her discovery.
“I can’t find it,” she said, hopelessly. “It’s gone; it’s lost. Oh, for pity’s sake, go out into the garden and look for it. I must have dropped it amongst the evergreens outside Mr. de Crespigny’s rooms. Pray go and look for it.”
“I will,” the lawyer said, taking up his hat and walking towards the door of the room.
But Miss Lavinia de Crespigny stopped him.
“No, Mr. Monckton,” she said; “pray don’t go out into the night air. Parker is the proper person to look for this document.”
She rang the bell, which was answered by the old butler.
“Has Brooks come back from Windsor?” she asked.
“No, Miss, not yet.”
“A paper has been dropped in the garden, Parker, somewhere amongst the evergreens, outside my uncle’s rooms. Will you take a lantern, and go and look for it?”
“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Miss Sarah, “Brooks has been a very long time going from here to Windsor and back again. I wish Mr. Lawford’s clerk were come. The place would be taken care of, then, and we should have no further anxiety.”
The lady looked suspiciously from her nephew to Eleanor, and from Eleanor to Gilbert Monckton. She did not know whom to trust, or whom most to fear. Launcelot Darrell sat before her, biting savagely at his nails, and with his head bent upon his breast. Eleanor had sunk into the chair nearest her, utterly dumbfounded by the loss of the will.
“You need not fear that we shall long intrude upon you, Miss de Crespigny,” Gilbert Monckton said. “My wife has made an accusation against a person in this room. It is only right, in your interest, and for the justification of her truth and honour, that this business should be investigated—and immediately.”
“The will must be found,” Eleanor cried; “it must have fallen from my pocket in the shrubbery.”
Launcelot Darrell said nothing. He waited the issue of the search that was being made. If the will was found, he was prepared to repudiate it; for there was no other course left to him. He hated this woman, who had suddenly arisen before him as an enemy and denouncer, who had recalled to him the bitter memory of his first great dishonour, and who had detected him in the commission of his first crime. He hated Eleanor, and was ready to sacrifice her to his own safety.
He lifted his head, presently, and looked about him with a scornful laugh.
“Is this a farce, or a conspiracy, Mrs. Monckton?” he asked. “Do you expect to invalidate my great-uncle’s genuine will—wherever that will may happen to be found—by the production of some document dropped by you in the garden, and which has, very likely, never been inside this house, much less in my uncle’s possession. You surely don’t expect any one to believe your pretty, romantic story, of a suicide in Paris, and a midnight scene at Woodlands? It would be an excellent paragraph for a hard-up penny-a-liner, but, really, for any other purpose—”
“Take care, Mr. Darrell,” Gilbert Monckton said quietly, “you will gain nothing by insolence. If I do not resent your impertinence to my wife, it is because I begin to believe that you are so despicable a scoundrel as to be unworthy of an honest man’s anger. You had much better hold your tongue.”
There was no particular eloquence in these last few words, but there was something in the lawyer’s tone that effectually silenced Launcelot Darrell. Mr. Monckton’s cane lay upon a chair by the fire-place, and while speaking he had set down his hat, and taken up the cane; unconsciously, perhaps; but the movement had not escaped the guilty man’s furtive glance. He kept silence; and with his face darkened by a gloomy scowl, still sat biting his nails. The will would be found. The genuine document would be compared with the fabrication he had placed amongst his great-uncle’s papers, and perpetual shame, punishment, and misery