us tenfold for any little sacrifice we may have made on your account?”
“Yes, yes; tell me.”
“You have to choose your pathway in life, Nelly, and to choose it quickly. In all the world you have only your half-sisters and brothers to whom you can appeal for assistance. You have some claim upon them, you know, dear, but I sometimes think you are too proud to avail yourself of that claim.”
Eleanor Vane lifted her head with a gesture of superb defiance.
“I would starve rather than accept a penny from Mrs. Bannister, or from her sister or brothers. If they had been different, my father would never have died as he did. He was deserted and abandoned by all the world, poor dear, except his helpless child, who could do nothing to save him.”
“But if you don’t mean to apply to Mrs. Bannister, what will you do, Nelly?”
Eleanor Vane shook her head hopelessly. The whole fabric of the future had been shattered by her father’s desperate act. The simple dream of a life in which she was to have worked for that beloved father was over, and it seemed to Eleanor as if the future existed no longer: there was only the sad, desolate present,—a dreary spot in the great desert of life, bounded by a yawning grave.
“Why do you ask me what I mean to do, Signora?” she said piteously. “How does it matter what I do? Nothing I can do will bring my father back. I will stay in Paris, and get my living how I can, and look for the man who murdered my father.”
“Eleanor,” cried the Signora, “are you mad? How could you stay in Paris, when you don’t know one living creature in the whole city? How, in mercy’s name, could you get your living in this strange place?”
“I could be a nursery-governess or a nursery-maid; anything! What do I care how low I sink, if I can only stay here, where I am likely to meet that man?”
“Eleanor, my dear! For pity’s sake do not delude yourself in this manner. The man you want to find is an adventurer, no doubt. In Paris one day, in London another, or away in America perhaps, or at the further extremity of the globe. Do you hope to find this man by walking about the streets of Paris?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you expect to meet him?”
“I don’t know.”
“But, Eleanor, be reasonable. It is utterly impossible that you can remain in Paris. If Mrs. Bannister does not claim the right of exercising some authority over you, I claim it as your oldest friend. My dear, you will not refuse to listen to me, will you?”
“No, no, dear Signora. If you think I mustn’t stay in Paris, I’ll go back to England, to the Miss Bennetts. They’ll give me fifteen pounds a-year as junior teacher. I may as well live with them, if I mustn’t stay here. I must earn some money, I suppose, before I can even try to find the man who caused my father’s death. How long it will be before I can earn anything worth speaking of!”
She sighed wearily, and fell again into a gloomy silence, from which the poodle vainly tried to arouse her by many affectionate devices.
“Then we may consider it settled, Nelly, my dear,” the Signora said, cheerfully. “You will leave Paris to-morrow morning, with Richard and me. You can stay with us, my dear, till you’ve made up your mind what to do. We’ve a little spare room, which is only used now as a receptacle for empty boxes and Richard’s painting litter. We’ll fit it up for you, my darling, and make you as comfortable as we can.”
“Dear, dear Signora!” said Eleanor, kneeling by her friend’s chair. “How good you are to me. But while I have been ill there must have been a great deal of money spent: for the doctor, and the jelly, and fruit and lemonade you have given me—who found the money, Signora?”
“Your sister, Mrs. Bannister, my dear; she sent some money in answer to a letter from Richard.”
Eleanor’s face crimsoned suddenly, and the music-mistress understood the meaning of that angry flush.
“Richard didn’t ask for any money, my love. He only wrote to tell your sister what had happened. She sent money for all necessary expenses. It is not all gone yet, Nelly; there will be enough to pay your journey back to England; and even then something left. I have kept an account of all that has been spent, and will give it to you when you like.”
Eleanor looked down at her white morning-gown.
“Is there enough left to buy a black frock?” she asked, in a low voice.
“Yes, my darling. I have thought of that. I have had mourning made for you. The dressmaker took one of your muslin frocks for a pattern, so there was no occasion to trouble you about the business.”
“How good you are to me, how very, very good!”
Eleanor Vane could only say this. As yet she only dimly felt how much she owed to these people, who were bound to her by no tie of relationship, and who yet stepped aside from their own difficult pathway to do her service in her sorrow. She could not learn to cling to them, and depend upon them yet. She had loved them long ago, in her father’s lifetime; but now that he was dead, every link that had bound her to life, and love, and happiness, seemed suddenly severed, and she stood alone, groping blindly in the thick darkness of a new and dreary world, with only one light shining far away at the end of a wearisome and obscure pathway, and that a lurid and fatal star, that beckoned her onward to some unknown deed of hate and vengeance.
Heaven knows what vague scheme of retribution she cherished in her childish ignorance of the world. Perhaps she formed her ideas of life from the numerous novels she had read, in which the villain was always confounded in the last chapter, however triumphant he might be through two volumes and three-quarters of successful iniquity.
