was sitting upon a bench near the fountain, but he rose and darted forward as the two ladies approached.
“I’ll go and look in the jewellers’ shops, Miss Villars,” Mrs. Lennard said, “while you’re talking to your friend, and please come and look for me when you want me. The Major is to join us here, you know, at half-past six, and we’re to dine at Véfours. Good morning.”
Mrs. Lennard bestowed these final words upon the Frenchman, accompanied by a graceful curtsey, and departed. Victor Bourdon pointed to the bench which he had just left, and Eleanor sat down. The Frenchman seated himself next her, but at a respectful distance. Every trace of the tipsy excitement of the previous night had vanished. He was quite cool to-day; and there was a certain look of determination about his mouth, and a cold glitter in his light, greenish-grey eyes that did not promise well for any one against whom he might bear a grudge.
He spoke English to-day. He spoke it remarkably well, with only an occasional French locution.
“Madame,” he began, “I shall not waste time, but come at once to the point. You hate Launcelot Darrell?”
Eleanor hesitated. There is something terrible in that word “hate,” People entertain the deadly sentiment; but they shrink from its plain expression. The naked word is too appalling. It is half-sister of murder.
“I have good reason to dislike him—” she began.
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders as he interrupted her.
“Yes, you hate him!” he said; “you do not like to say so, because the word is not nice. You are—what is it you call it?—you are shocked by the word. But it is so, nevertheless; you hate him, and you have cause to hate him. Yes, I know now who you are. I did not know when I first saw you in Berkshire; but I know now. Launcelot Darrell is one who cannot keep a secret, and he has told me. You are the daughter of that poor old man who killed himself in the Faubourg Saint Antoine, that is enough! You are a great heart; you would to avenge the death of your father. You saw us that night—the night the wills were change?”
“I did,” Eleanor answered, looking at the man with sovereign contempt. He had spoken of the transaction as coolly as if it had been the most honourable and common-place business.
“You are there in the darkness, and you see us,” exclaimed Monsieur Bourdon, bending over Eleanor and speaking in a confidential whisper, “you watch, you look, you listen, and after, when you go into the-house, you denounce Launcelot. You declare the will is forge. The will is change. You were witness, you say; you tell all that you saw! But they do not believe you. But why? Because when you say you have the true will in your pocket, you cannot find it; it is gone.”
The Frenchman said this in a tone of triumph, and then paused suddenly, looking earnestly at Eleanor.
As she returned that look, a new light flashed upon her mind. She began to understand the mystery of the lost will.
“It is gone,” cried Monsieur Bourdon, “no trace, no vestige of it remains. You say, search the garden; the garden is search; but no result. Then the despair seizes itself of you. Launcelot mocks himself of you; he laughs at your nose. You find yourself unhappy; they do not believe you; they look coldly at you; they are harsh to you, and you fly from them. That is so; is it not?”
“Yes,” Eleanor answered.
Her breath came and went quickly, she never removed her eyes from the man’s face. She began to think that her justification was perhaps only to be obtained by the agency of this disreputable Frenchman.
“What then of the lost will? It was not swallowed up by the earth. It could not fly itself away into the space! What became of it?”
“You took it from me!” cried Eleanor. “Yes, I remember how closely you brushed against me. The paper was too big to go altogether into the pocket of my dress. The ends were sticking out, and you—”
“I did all my possible to teach you a lesson! Ah, when young and beautiful ladies mix themselves with such matters, it is no wonder they make mistakes. I was watching you all the time, dear madame. I saw you change the papers, and I drew the will out of your pocket as easily as I could rob you of that handkerchief.”
The corner of a lace-bordered handkerchief was visible amid the folds of Eleanor’s dress. The Frenchman took the scrap of lace between his fingers, and snatched the handkerchief away with an airy lightness of touch that might have done credit to a professional adept in the art of picking pockets. He laughed as he returned the handkerchief to Eleanor. She scarcely noticed the action, so deeply was she absorbed in the thought of the missing will.
“You have the will, then?”
“Si, madame.”
“Why did you take it from me?”
“But why, madame? For many reasons. First, because it is always good to seize upon anything that other people do not know how to keep. Again, because it is always well to have a strong hand, and a card that one’s adversary does not know of. An extra king in one’s coat-cuff is a good thing to have when one plays écarté, madame. That will is my extra king.”
The Frenchman was silent for some little time after having made what he evidently considered rather a startling coup. He sat watching Eleanor with a sidelong glance, and with a cunning twinkle in his small eyes.
“Is it that we are to be friends and allies, madame?” he asked, presently.
“Friends!” cried Eleanor. “Do you forget who I am? Do you forget whose daughter I am? If Launcelot Darrell’s was the only name written in my father’s last letter, you were not the less an accomplice in the villany that led to his death. The pupil was no doubt worthy of the master.”
“You reject my friendship, then, madame? You wish to know nothing of the document that