The lawyer read aloud this last sheet of Maurice de Crespigny’s will.
“I devise and bequeath all the residue and remainder of my real and personal property unto Hortensia Bannister, the daughter of my old and deceased college friend, George Vane, and my valued friend Peter Sedgewick, of Cheltenham, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, upon trust, for the sole and separate use of Eleanor, the daughter of my said dear deceased friend, George Vane, by his last wife, Eleanor Thompson, during her life, free from the control, debts, or engagements of any husband she may at any time have, and so that she shall not have power to anticipate the rents, interest, and annual proceeds thereof; and upon and after her decease for such persons, estates, and in such manner as she shall, whether covert or uncovert, by will appoint; and in default of and subject to any such appointment, by the said Eleanor, the daughter of the said George Vane, to her heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, according to the nature of the said property. And in case the said Eleanor shall have departed this life during my life time, or in case the said last-named trustees cannot discover the said Eleanor Vane within four years after my decease, then they shall consider the said Eleanor Vane dead, and therefrom I give and devise the said residuary estates to be equally divided between my said three nieces, Sarah, Lavinia, and Ellen, absolutely.”
“It is fortunate that the money is left to trustees for your separate use, Eleanor,” Mr. Monckton said. “If it had been otherwise, the gift would have been invalid, since I, your husband, was one of the witnesses to the will.”
A torrent of congratulations from Major and Mrs. Lennard, and Richard Thornton, almost overwhelmed Eleanor; but she was still more overwhelmed by her astonishment at the wording of the will.
“The money left to me!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t want it. I am sorry it should be so. It will seem now as if I had been plotting to get this fortune. I don’t want it: I only want my revenge.”
Gilbert Monckton narrowly watched his wife’s astonished face. He saw no look of triumph, no smile of gratification. At least she was free from any mercenary baseness. He took her a little way from the rest of the party, and looked earnestly into her fearless eyes.
“My own dear love,” he said, “I have learned a hard lesson, and I believe that I shall profit by it. I will never doubt you again. But tell me, Eleanor, tell me once and for ever! have you ever loved Launcelot Darrell? Have any of your actions been prompted by jealousy?”
“Not one,” cried Mrs. Monckton. “I have never loved him, and I have never been jealous of him. From first to last I have been actuated by one motive, and one alone—the duty I owe to my dead father.”
She had not abandoned her purpose, then. No; the lurid star that had beckoned her forward still shone before her. It was so near now, that its red splendour filled the universe. The young wife was pleased to be reconciled to her husband; but with the sense that he was restored to her once more, the memory of the dreary interval in which she had lost him melted away from her mind, and Launcelot Darrell—Launcelot Darrell, the destroyer of her dead father, became once more paramount in her thoughts.
“Oh, Gilbert!” she said, clasping her hands about her husband’s arm and looking up in his face, “you’ll take me back to England at once, won’t you?”
“Yes, my dear,” Mr. Monckton answered, with a sigh. “I’ll do whatever you wish.”
There was a jealous pain at his heart as he spoke. His wife was pure, and true, and beautiful, but this strange purpose of her life divided her from him; and left his own existence very blank.
CHAPTER LIX. THE DAY OF RECKONING.
Launcelot Darrell and his mother had inhabited Woodlands for a little more than a fortnight. The painters, and paper-hangers, and upholsterers, had done a great deal to alter the handsome country-house; for Mr. Darrell had no wish to be reminded of his dead uncle; and familiar chairs and tables have an unpleasant faculty of suggesting tiresome thoughts, and recalling faded faces that had better be forgotten. Almost all the old furniture had been swept away, therefore, and the young man had behaved very generously to his maiden aunts, who had furnished a small house in Windsor with the things that Launcelot had banished from Woodlands. These poor disappointed ladies had located themselves in a quiet little cul-de-sac, squeezed in between the hilly street and the castle, with the idea that the wild dissipations of a town life would enable them to forget their wrongs.
So Launcelot Darrell and his mother reigned at Woodlands instead of the maiden sisters; and Parker, the butler, and Mrs. Jepcott, the housekeeper, waited upon a new master and mistress.
The young man had chafed bitterly at his poverty, and had hated himself and all the world, because of those humiliations to which a man who is too idle to work, and too poor to live without work, is always more or less subject. But, alas! now that by the commission of a crime he had attained the great end of his ambition, he found that the game was not worth the candle; and that in his most fretful moments before Maurice de Crespigny’s death he had never suffered as much as he now suffered, daily and hourly.
The murderers of the unfortunate Mr. Ware ate a hearty supper of pork chops while their victim lay, scarcely cold, in a pond beside the high road; but it is not everybody who is blessed with the strength of mind possessed by those gentlemen. Launcelot Darrell could not shake off the recollection of what he had done. From morning till night, from night till morning, the same thoughts, the same fears, were perpetually pressing upon him. In the eyes of every servant who looked at him; in the voice of every creature who spoke to him; in the sound of every bell that rang in the roomy country-house, there lurked a something that inspired the miserable