happy to afford you any information you may require as to my antecedents.’ I thought I should have dropped through the floor, Nelly,—the floor won’t let one drop through it, or else I’m sure I should,—and I couldn’t have asked another question, even for your sake, dear; when, strange to say, Mrs. Darrell got me quite out of the difficulty. ‘I am sorry you should answer Laura so very unkindly, Launcelot,’ she said, ‘there is nothing strange in her question. I remember the date of your departure from your native country only too vividly. You left this house upon the 3rd of October, ’52, and you were to sail from Gravesend on the 4th, in the Princess Alice. I have reason to remember the date, for it seemed as if my uncle chose the very worst season of the year for sending you upon a long sea voyage. But he was prompted, no doubt, by my sisters. I ought to feel no anger against him, poor old man.’”
Eleanor Vane glanced hurriedly at the concluding words of the letter. Then, with the last sheet crumpled in her hand, she sat motionless and absorbed, thinking over its contents.
“If Launcelot Darrell sailed for India upon the 4th of October, ’52, he is not likely to have been in Paris in ’53. If I can only prove to myself that he did sail upon that date, I will try and believe that I have been deluded by some foolish fancy of my own. But why did his face flush scarlet when Laura questioned him about his voyage—why did he pretend to have forgotten the date?”
Eleanor waited impatiently for the arrival of her friend and counsellor, Richard Thornton. He came in at about three o’clock in the afternoon, while his aunt was still absent amongst her out-of-door pupils, and flung himself, jaded and worn out, on the chintz-covered sofa. But, tired as he was, he aroused himself by an effort to listen to that portion of Laura Mason’s letter which related to Launcelot Darrell.
“What do you think now, Dick?” Miss Vane asked, when she had finished reading.
“Pretty much what I thought before, Nell,” answered Mr. Thornton; “this young fellow’s objection to talk of his Indian voyage is no proof that he never went upon that voyage. He may have half-a-dozen unpleasant recollections connected with that part of his life. I don’t particularly care about talking of the Phœnix; but I never committed a murder in the obscurity of the flies, or buried the body of my victim between the stage and the mezzanine floor. People have their secrets, Nell, and we have no right to pry into the small mysteries which may lurk under a change of countenance or an impatient word.”
Eleanor Vane took very little notice of the young man’s argument.
“Can you find out if Launcelot Darrell sailed in the Princess Alice, Dick?” she added.
The scene-painter rubbed his chin, reflectively.
“I can try and find out, my dear,” he said, after a pause; “that’s open to anybody. The Princess Alice! She’s one of Ward’s ships, I think. If the shipbrokers are inclined to be civil, they’ll perhaps help me; but I have no justification for bothering them upon the subject, and they may tell me to go about my business. If I could give them a good reason for my making such an inquiry, I might very likely find them willing to help me. But what can I tell them, except that a very beautiful young person with grey eyes and auburn hair has taken an absurd crotchet into her obstinate head, and that I, her faithful slave, am compelled to do her bidding?”
“Never mind what they say to you, Richard,” Miss Vane replied, authoritatively, “they must answer your question, if you only go on asking them long enough.”
Mr. Thornton smiled.
“That’s the true feminine method of obtaining information, isn’t it, Nell?” he said; “however, I’ll do my best, and if the shipbrokers are to be ‘got at,’ as sporting gentlemen say, it shall go hard if I don’t get a list of the passengers who sailed in the Princess Alice.”
“Dear, dear Dick!” cried Eleanor, holding out her hands to her young champion. The young man sighed. Alas, he knew only too well that all this pretty friendliness was as far away from any latent tenderness or hidden emotion as the bold blusterous North from the splendid sunny South.
“I wonder whether she knows what love is,” thought the scene-painter; “I wonder whether her heart has been touched ever so slightly by the fatal emotion. No; she is a bright virginal creature, all confidence and candour, and she has yet to learn the mysteries of life. I wish I could think less of her and fall in love with Miss Montalembert—her name is plain Lambert, and she has added the Monta for the sake of euphony. I wish I could fall in love with Lizzie Lambert, popularly known as Elise Montalembert, the soubrette at the Phœnix. She is a good little girl, and earns a salary of four pounds a week. She’s fond of the Signora, too, and we could leave the Pilasters and go into housekeeping upon our joint salaries.”
Mr. Thornton’s fancies might have rambled on in this wise for some time, but he was abruptly aroused from his reverie by Eleanor Vane, who had been watching him rather impatiently.
“When are you going to the shipbroker’s, Dick?” she asked.
“When am I going?”
“Yes, you’ll go at once, won’t you?”
“Eh! Well, my dear Nell, Cornhill’s a good step from here.”
“But you can take a cab,” cried the young lady. “I’ve plenty of money, Dick, and do you think I shall grudge it for such a purpose? Go at once Richard, dear, and take a cab.”
She pulled a purse from her pocket, and tried to force it into the young man’s hand, but he shook his head.
“I’m afraid the shipbroker’s office would be closed, Nelly,” he said. “We’d better wait till to-morrow morning.”
But the young lady would not hear of this. She was sure the shipbroker’s office wouldn’t close so early, she said, with as much authority as if she had been intimately acquainted with the habits of shipbrokers, and she bustled Dick down stairs
