CHAPTER VIII.GOOD SAMARITANS.
George Vanedid not come home. Eleanor kept the promise made to her faithful friend, and tried to sleep. She flung herself, dressed as she was, upon the little bed near the curtained alcove. She would thus be ready to run to her father, whenever he came in, she thought, to welcome and minister to him. She was thoroughly worn out, and she slept; a wretched slumber, broken by nightmares and horrible dreams, in which she saw her father assailed by all kinds of dangers, a prey to every manner of misfortune and vicissitude. Once she saw him standing on a horrible rock, menaced by a swiftly advancing tide, while she was in a boat only a few paces from him, as it seemed, doing battle with the black waves, and striving with all her might to reach and rescue him, but never able to do so.
In another dream he was wandering upon the crumbling verge of a precipice—he seemed a white-haired, feeble, tottering old man in this vision—and again she was near him, but unable to give him warning of his danger, though a word would have done so. The agony of her endeavour to utter the one cry which would have called that idolized father from his death, awoke her.
But she had other dreams, dreams of quite a different character, in which her father was restored to her, rich and prosperous, and he and she were laughing merrily at all the foolish tortures she had inflicted upon herself; and other dreams again which seemed so real that she fancied she must be awake: dreams in which she heard the welcome footsteps upon the stair, the opening of the door, and her father’s voice in the next room calling to her.
These dreams were the worst of all. It was terrible to awake after many such delusions and find she had been again deluded. It was cruel to awake to the full sense of her loneliness, while the sound of the voice she had heard in her dream still lingered in her ears.
The dark hours of the short summer night seemed interminable to her in this wretched, bewildered, half-sleeping, half-waking state; even longer than they had appeared when she sat up watching for her father’s return. Every fresh dream was a slow agony of terror and perplexity.
At last the grey daylight stole in through the half-closedshutters, the vague outlines of the furniture grew out of the darkness; duskily impalpable and ghastly at first, then sharp and distinct in the cold morning light. She could not rest any longer; she got up and went to the window; she pushed the sash open, and sank down on her knees with her forehead resting on the window sill.
“I will wait for him here,” she thought; “I shall hear his step in the street. Poor dear, poor dear, I can guess why he stays away. He has spent that odious money, and does not like to return and tell me so. My darling father, do you know me so little as to think that I would grudge you the last farthing I had in the world, if you wanted it?”
Her thoughts rambled on in strange confusion until they grew bewildering; her brain became dizzy with perpetual repetitions of the same idea; when she lifted her head—her poor, weary, burning, heavy head, which seemed a leaden weight that it was almost impossible to raise—and looked from the window, the street below reeled beneath her eyes, the floor upon which she knelt seemed sinking with her into some deep guff of blackness and horror. A thousand conflicting sounds—not the morning noises of the waking city—hissed and buzzed, and roared and thundered in her ears, growing louder and louder and louder, until they all melted away in the fast-gathering darkness.
The sun was shining brightly into the room when the compassionate mistress of the house found Mr. Vane’s daughter half kneeling, half lying on the ground, with her head upon the cold sill of the open window, and her auburn hair streaming in draggled curls about her shoulders. Her thin muslin frock was wet with the early dew. She had fainted away, and had lain thus, helpless and insensible, for several hours.
The butcher’s wife undressed her and put her to bed. Richard Thornton came to the Rue de l’Archevêque half an hour afterwards, and went away again directly to look for an English doctor. He found one, an elderly man with grave and gentle manners, who declared that Miss Vane was suffering from fever brought on by intense mental excitement; she was of a highly nervous temperament, he said, and that she required little to be done for her; she only wanted repose and quiet. Her constitution was superb, and would triumph over a far more serious attack than this.
Richard Thornton took the doctor into the adjoining room, the little sitting-room which bore the traces of Mr. Vane’s occupation, and talked to him in a low voice for some minutes. The medical man shook his head gravely.
“It is very sad,” he said; “it will be better to tell her the truth, if possible, as soon as she recovers from the delirium. Theanxiety and suspense have overtaken her brain. Anything would be better than that this overstrained state of the mind should continue. Her constitution will rally after a shock; but with her highly nervous and imaginative nature, everything is to be dreaded from prolonged mental irritation. She is related to you, I suppose?”
“No, poor child, I wish she were.”
“But she is not without near relatives, I hope?”
“No, she has sisters—or at least half sisters—and brothers.”
“They should be written to, then, immediately,” the doctor said, as he took up his hat.
“I have written to one of her sisters, and I have written to another lady, a friend, who will be of more use, I fancy, in this crisis.”
The doctor went away, promising to send some saline draughts to keep the fever under, and to call again in the evening.
Richard Thornton went into the little bed-chamber, where the butcher’s wife sat beside the curtained alcove, making up some accounts in a leather-covered book. She was a hearty, pleasant-mannered young woman, and had taken up her post by the invalid’s bed very willingly, although her presence was always much needed in the shop below.
“Chut,” she whispered, with her finger on her lip, “she sleeps,pauvrette!”
Richard sat down quietly by the open window. He took out Michel Levy’s edition of “Raoul,” a stump of lead pencil, and the back of an old letter, and set to work resolutely at his adaptation. He could not afford to lose time, even though his adopted sister lay ill under the shadow of the worsted curtains that shrouded the alcove on the other side of the little room.
He sat long and patiently, turning the Poison drama into English with wonderful ease and rapidity; and meekly bearing a deprivation that was no small one to him, in the loss of his clay pipe, which he was in the habit of smoking at all hours of the day.
Eleanor awoke at last, and began talking in a rambling, incoherent way about her father, and the money sent by Mrs. Bannister, and the parting upon the Boulevard.
The butcher’s wife drew back the curtain, and Richard Thornton went to the bedside and looked down tenderly at his childish friend.
Her golden-tinted hair was scattered on the pillow, tangled and roughened by the constant movement of her restless head. Her grey eyes were feverishly bright, and burning spots blazed upon the cheeks which had been so deadly pale on the previous night. She knew Richard, and spoke to him; but the delirium was not over, for she mixed the events of the present with the Chelseaexperiences of long ago, and talked to her old friend of the Signora, the violin, and the rabbits. She fell off into a heavy sleep again, after taking the effervescent medicine sent her by the English surgeon, and slept until nearly twilight. In these long slumbers her fresh and powerful constitution asserted itself, and took compensation for the strain that had been made upon it in the past day or two.
Richard went away in the afternoon, and did not return till late at night, when the butcher’s wife told him that her charge had been very restless, and had asked repeatedly for her father.
“What are we to do?” the good woman said, shrugging her shoulders with a despairing gesture. “Are we to tell her?”
“Not yet,” Richard answered. “Keep her quiet; keep her as quiet as you can. And if it is positively necessary to tell her anything, say that her father has been taken ill, away from home, and cannot be brought back yet. Poor child! it seems so cruel to keep her in suspense, and still more cruel to deceive her.”
The butcher’s wife promised to do all in her power to keep her patient quiet. The doctor had sent an opiate. Miss Vane could not sleep too much, he said.
So another night passed, this time very peacefully for Eleanor, who lay in a heavy slumber broken by no cruel dreams. She was very, very weak the next day, for she had scarcely eaten anything since the roll and coffee which Richard had made her take; and though she was not exactly delirious, her mind seemed almost incapable of receiving any very vivid impression. She listened quietly when they told her that her father could not come home because he was ill.
Richard Thornton came to the Rue de l’Archevêque several times during this second day of Eleanor’s illness, but he only stayed a few minutes upon each occasion. He had a great deal to do, he told the butcher’s wife, who still kept faithfully to her post in the sick room, only stealing away now and then, while Eleanor was asleep, to attend to her business.
It was past eleven o’clock that night when the scene-painter came for the last time. Eleanor had grown worse as the evening advanced, and was by this time terribly feverish and restless. She wanted to get up and dress herself, and go to her father. If he was ill, how could they keep her from him, how could they be so cruel as to keep her from his side?
Then, starting up suddenly from her pillow, she would cry out wildly that they were deceiving her, and that her father was dead.
But help and comfort were near at hand. When Richard came, he did not come alone. He brought a lady with him; an elderly grey-headed woman, dressed in shabby black.
When this lady appeared upon the threshold of the dimly-lighted little bedchamber, Eleanor Vane suddenly sprang up inher bed, and threw out her arms with a wild cry of surprise and delight.
“The Signora!” she exclaimed, “the dear, kind Signora!”
The lady took off her bonnet, and then went close up to the bed, and seating herself on the edge of the mattress, drew Eleanor’s fair head upon her bosom, smoothing the tangled hair with unspeakable tenderness.
“My poor child!” she murmured again and again. “My poor, poor child!”
“But, dear Signora,” Eleanor cried, wonderingly, “how is it that you are here? Why didn’t Richard tell me that you were in Paris?”
“Because I have only just arrived, my darling.”
“Only just arrived! Only just arrived in Paris! But why did you come?”
“I came to see you, Eleanor,” the Signora answered, very gently. “I heard that you were in trouble, my dear, and I have come to you; to help and comfort you if I can.”
The butcher’s wife had withdrawn into the little sitting-room where Richard sat in the darkness. Eleanor Vane and the Signora were therefore quite alone.
Hitherto the invalid’s head had rested very quietly upon her friend’s bosom, but now she lifted it suddenly and looked full in the Signora’s face.
“You came to me because I was in trouble,” she said. “How should I be in trouble so long as my father lives? What sorrow can come to me while he is safe? He is ill, they say, but he will get better; he will get better, won’t he? He will be better soon, dear Signora; he will be better soon?”
She waited for an answer to her breathless questioning, looking intently in the pale quiet face of her friend; then suddenly, with a low, wailing cry, she flung up her hands and clasped them wildly above her head.
“You have all deceived me,” she cried, “you have all deceived me: my father is dead!”
The Signora drew her arm caressingly round Eleanor Vane, and tried to shelter the poor burning head once more upon her shoulder; but Eleanor shrank from her with an impatient gesture, and, with her hands still clasped above her head, stared blankly at the dead wall before her.
“My dear, my dear,” the Signora said, trying to unclasp the rigid hands which were so convulsively clasped together. “Eleanor, my dear, listen to me: for pity’s sake try and listen to me, my own dear love. You must know, you must have long known, my dear, that heavy sorrows come to us all, sooner or later. It is the common lot, my love, and we must all bow before the Divine hand that afflicts us. If there were no sorrowin this world, Eleanor, we should grow too much in love with our own happiness; we should be frightened at the approach of grey hairs and old age; we should tremble at the thought of death. If there were no better and higher life than this, Eleanor, sorrow and death would indeed be terrible. You know how very much affliction has fallen to my share, dear. You have heard me speak of the children I loved; all taken from me, Nelly, all taken away. If it were not for my dear nephew, Richard, I should stand quite alone in the world, a desolate old woman, with no hope on this side of the grave. But when my sons were taken from me, God raised me up another son in him. Do you think that God ever abandons us, Eleanor, even when He afflicts us most heavily? I have lived a long life, my dear, and I tell youNO!”
The Signora waited in vain for some change in the rigid attitude, the stony face. Eleanor Vane still stared blankly at the dead wall before her.
“You have all deceived me,” she repeated; “my father is dead!”
It was useless talking to her; the tenderest words were dull and meaningless jargon to her ears. That night the fever grew worse, and the delirium was at its height. The butcher’s wife was relieved by a very patient and accustomed watcher, for the Signora had sat by many sick-beds, hoping against hope, until despair crept into her heart, as the grey shadows of approaching death came over a beloved face, never again to pass away.
The fever lasted for several days and nights, but throughout every change the English doctor declared that Eleanor Vane’s constitution would carry her through a worse attack than this.
“I am glad you told her,” he said one morning to the Signora; “there will be less to tell her by-and-by, when she begins to get strong again.”
There was, therefore, something more to be told.
Little by little the fever passed away; the crimson spots faded out of the invalid’s hollow cheeks; the unnatural lustre of the grey eyes grew less and less vivid; little by little the mind grew clearer, the delirious wanderings less frequent.
But with the return of perfect consciousness there came terrible bursts of grief—grief that was loud and passionate in proportion to the impulsive vehemence of Eleanor Vane’s character. This was her first sorrow, and she could not bear it quietly. Floods of tears drowned her pillow night after night; she refused to be comforted; she repulsed the patient Signora; she would not listen to poor Richard, who came sometimes to sit by her side, and tried his best to beguile her from her grief. She rebelled against their attempted consolation.
“What was my father to you?” she cried, passionately. “You can afford to forget him. He was all the world to me!”
But it was not in Eleanor’s nature to be long ungrateful for the tenderness and compassion of those who were so patient with her in this dark hour of her young life.
“How good you are to me,” she cried sometimes, “and what a wretch I am to think so little of your goodness. But you don’t know how I loved my father. You don’t know—you don’t know. I was to have worked for him; I was to have worked for him by-and-by, and we were to have led such a happy life together.”
She was growing strong again, in spite of her grief. Her elastic temperament asserted itself in spite of her sorrow, which she never ceased to think of night and day, and she arose after her illness like a beautiful flower which had been beaten and crushed by the storm.
Richard Thornton’s leave of absence had expired for some days, but the Royal Phœnix Theatre closed its doors in the hot summer months, and he was therefore comparatively free. He stayed in Paris with his aunt, for they were both bent upon one purpose, to be accomplished at any sacrifice to themselves. Thank Heaven! there are always good Samaritans in the world, who do not mind turning backward upon their life’s journey when there is a desolate wounded traveller in need of their help and tenderness.
The Parisian atmosphere was cooling down in the early days of September—faint but refreshing breezes were beginning to blow away the white mists of summer heat upon the Boulevards, when Eleanor Vane was well enough to sit in the little saloon above the butcher’s shop, and drink tea in the English fashion with her two friends.
She was well enough to do this, and Richard and the Signora were beginning to think of turning homewards; but before they could well leave Paris there was something that ought to be told to Eleanor—something that shemustknow sooner or later—something that it would be perhaps better for her to know at once.
But they had waited from time to time, thinking that she might ask some question which would lead to the revelation that must ultimately be made to her.
Upon this September afternoon she sat near the open window, looking very beautiful and virginal in a loose white muslin dressing-gown, and with her long auburn curls falling upon her shoulders. She had been silent for a long time: her two companions watching her furtively, observant of every change in her countenance. Her cup of tea stood untasted on a little table at her side, and she was sitting with her hands loosely locked together in her lap.
She spoke at last, and asked that very question which must inevitably lead to the revelation her friends had to make to her.
“You have never told me how papa died,” she said; “his death must have been sudden, I know.”
Eleanor Vane spoke very quietly. She had never before mentioned her dead father with so little outward evidence of emotion. The hands loosely locked together upon her lap stirred with a slightly tremulous motion; the face, turned towards the Signora and Richard Thornton, had a look of fixed intensity; and that was all.
“Papa died suddenly, did he not?” she repeated.
“Yes, my dear, very suddenly.”
“I thought so. But why was he not brought home? Why couldn’t I see——”
She stopped abruptly, and turned her face away towards the open window. She was trembling violently now from head to foot.
Her two companions were silent. That terrible something which was at yet unrevealed must be told sooner or later; but who was to tell it to this girl, with her excitable nature, her highly-wrought nervous temperament?
The Signora shrugged her shoulders despondingly as she looked at her nephew. Mr. Thornton had been painting all the afternoon in the little sitting-room. He had tried to interest Eleanor Vane in the great set scenes he was preparing forRaoul. He had explained to her the nature of a vampire trap in the wainscot of the poisoner’s chamber, and had made his pasteboard model limp in his repeated exhibition of its machinery. The vampire trap was a subtle contrivance which might have beguiled any one from their grief, Dick thought; but the wan smile with which Eleanor watched his work only made the scene-painter’s heart ache. Richard sighed as he returned his aunt’s look. It seemed quite a hopeless case as yet. This poor lonely child of fifteen might go melancholy mad, perhaps, in her grief for a spendthrift father.
Eleanor Vane turned upon them suddenly while they sat silent and embarrassed, wondering what they should say to her next.
“My father committed suicide!” she said, in a strangely quiet voice.
The Signora started and rose suddenly, as if she would have gone to Eleanor. Richard grew very pale, but sat looking down at the litter upon the table, with one hand trifling nervously amongst the scraps of cardboard and wet paint-brushes.
“Yes,” cried Eleanor Vane, “you have deceived me from first to last. You told me first that he was not dead; but when you could no longer keep my misery a secret from me, you only told me half the truth—you only told me half the cruel truth. Andeven now, when I have suffered so much that it seems as if no further suffering could touch me, you still deceive me, you still try to keep the truth from me. My father parted from me in health and spirits. Don’t trifle with me, Signora; I am not a child any longer; I am not a foolish school-girl, whom you can deceive as you like. I am a woman, and will know the worst. My father killed himself!”
She had risen in her excitement, but clung with one hand to the back of her chair, as if too weak to stand without that support.
The Signora went to her, and wound her arms about the slight trembling figure; but Eleanor seemed almost unconscious of that motherly caress.
“Tell me the truth,” she cried, vehemently; “did my father kill himself?”
“It is feared that he did, Eleanor.”
The pale face grew a shade whiter, and the trembling frame became suddenly rigid.
“It is feared that he did!” Eleanor Vane repeated. “It is not certain, then?”
The Signora was silent.
“Why don’t you tell me the truth?” cried the girl, passionately. “Do you think you can make my misery less to me by dropping out your words one by one? Tell me the worst. What can there be worse than my father’s death; his unhappy death; killed by his own hand, his poor desperate hand? Tell me the truth. If you don’t wish me to go mad, tell me the truth at once.”
“I will, Eleanor, I will,” the Signora answered, gently. “I wish to tell you all. I wish that you should know the truth, sad as it may be to hear. This is the great sorrow of your life, my dear, and it has fallen upon you very early. I hope you will try and bear it like a Christian.”
Eleanor Vane shook her head with an impatient gesture.
“Don’t talk to me of my sorrow,” she cried; “what does it matter what I suffer? My father, my poor father, what must he have suffered before he did this dreadful act? Don’t talk about me; tell me of him, and tell me the worst.”
“I will, my darling, I will; but sit down, sit down, and try to compose yourself.”
“No, I’ll stand here till you have told me the truth. I’ll not stir from this spot till I know all.”
She disengaged herself from the Signora’s supporting arm, and with her hand still resting on the chair, stood resolute before the old music-mistress and her nephew. I think the Signora and the scene-painter were both afraid of her, she looked so grand in her beauty and despair.
She seemed indeed, as she had said, no longer a child or aschool-girl; but a woman, desperate and almost terrible in the intensity of her despair.
“Let me tell Eleanor the truth of this sad story,” Richard said; “it may be told very briefly. When your father parted with you, Nelly, on the night of the 11th of August, he and the two men who were with him went at once to an obscure café in one of the streets near the Barrière Saint Antoine. They were in the habit of going there, it seems, sometimes playing billiards in the large open room on the ground floor, sometimes playing cards in acabinet particulieron the entresol. Upon this night they went straight to the private room. It was about half-past nine when they went in. The waiter who attended upon them took them three bottles of Chambertin and a good deal of seltzer-water. Your father seemed in high spirits at first. He and the dark Englishman were playingécarté, their usual game; and the Frenchman was looking over your father’s hand, now and then advising his play, now and then applauding and encouraging him. All this came out upon inquiry. The Frenchman quitted the café at a little before twelve: your father and the young Englishman stayed till long after midnight, and towards one o’clock they were heard at high words, and almost immediately afterwards the Englishman went away, leaving your father, who sent the waiter for some brandy and writing materials. He wanted to write a letter before he left, he said.”
The scene-painter paused, looking anxiously at the face of his listener. The rigid intensity of that pale young face had undergone no change; the grey eyes, fixed and dilated, were turned steadily towards him.
“When the waiter took your father the things he had asked for, he found him sitting at the table with his face hidden in his hands. The man placed the brandy and writing materials upon the table, and then went away, but not before he had noticed a strange faint smell—the smell of some drug, he thought; but he had no idea then what drug. The waiter went down stairs; all the ordinary frequenters of the place were gone, and the lights were out. The man waited up to let your father out, expecting him to come down stairs every moment. Three o’clock struck, and the waiter went up-stairs upon the pretence of asking if anything was wanted. He found your father sitting very much as he had left him, except that this time his head was resting upon the table, which was scattered with torn scraps of paper. He was dead, Eleanor. The man gave the alarm directly, and a doctor came to give assistance, if any could have been given; but the drug which the waiter had smelt was opium, and your father had taken a quantity which would have killed the strongest man in Paris.”
“Why did he do this?”
“I can scarcely tell you, my dear; but your poor father left among the scraps of paper upon the table, one fragment much larger and more intelligible than the rest. It is evidently part of a letter addressed to you; but it is very wildly and incoherently worded; and you must remember that it was written under circumstances of great mental excitement.”
“Give it me!”
Eleanor stretched out her hand with an authoritative gesture. Richard hesitated.
“I wish you to fully understand the nature of this letter before you read it, Eleanor; I wish——”
“You kept the story of my father’s death from me out of mistaken kindness,” the girl said, in an unfaltering voice; “I will try and remember how good you have been to me, so that I may forgive you that; but you cannot keep from me the letter my father wrote to me before he died. That is mine; and I claim it.”
“Let her see it, poor child,” said the Signora.
Richard Thornton took a leather memorandum-book from one of the pockets of his loose coat. There were several papers in this book. He selected one, and handed it silently to Eleanor Vane. It was a sheet of letter-paper, written upon in her father’s hand, but a part of it had been torn away.
Even had the whole of the letter been left, the writer’s style was so wild and incoherent that it would have been no easy task to understand his meaning. In its torn and fragmentary state, this scrap of writing left by George Vane was only a scribble of confused and broken sentences. The sheet of paper had been torn from the top to the bottom, so that the end of each line was missing. The following broken lines were therefore all that Eleanor could decipher, and in these the words were blotted and indistinct.
My poor Eleanor,—My poor injuredworst your cruel sister, Hortensia Banniscould not be bad enough. I am a thiefrobbed and cheated my ownbeen decoyed to this hell upon eartwretches who are base enough toa helpless old man who had trustto be gentlemen. I cannot returnlook in my child’s face aftermoney which was to haveeducation. Better to die and ridBut my blood be upon the head ofwho has cheated me this night out ofMay he suffer as he hasforget, Eleanor, never forget Robert Lanmurderer of your helpless olda cheat and a villain whosome day live to revenge the fatepoor old father, who prays that God willhelpless old man whose follymadness have
My poor Eleanor,—My poor injuredworst your cruel sister, Hortensia Banniscould not be bad enough. I am a thiefrobbed and cheated my ownbeen decoyed to this hell upon eartwretches who are base enough toa helpless old man who had trustto be gentlemen. I cannot returnlook in my child’s face aftermoney which was to haveeducation. Better to die and ridBut my blood be upon the head ofwho has cheated me this night out ofMay he suffer as he hasforget, Eleanor, never forget Robert Lanmurderer of your helpless olda cheat and a villain whosome day live to revenge the fatepoor old father, who prays that God willhelpless old man whose follymadness have
My poor Eleanor,—My poor injuredworst your cruel sister, Hortensia Banniscould not be bad enough. I am a thiefrobbed and cheated my ownbeen decoyed to this hell upon eartwretches who are base enough toa helpless old man who had trustto be gentlemen. I cannot returnlook in my child’s face aftermoney which was to haveeducation. Better to die and ridBut my blood be upon the head ofwho has cheated me this night out ofMay he suffer as he hasforget, Eleanor, never forget Robert Lanmurderer of your helpless olda cheat and a villain whosome day live to revenge the fatepoor old father, who prays that God willhelpless old man whose follymadness have
My poor Eleanor,—My poor injured
worst your cruel sister, Hortensia Bannis
could not be bad enough. I am a thief
robbed and cheated my own
been decoyed to this hell upon eart
wretches who are base enough to
a helpless old man who had trust
to be gentlemen. I cannot return
look in my child’s face after
money which was to have
education. Better to die and rid
But my blood be upon the head of
who has cheated me this night out of
May he suffer as he has
forget, Eleanor, never forget Robert Lan
murderer of your helpless old
a cheat and a villain who
some day live to revenge the fate
poor old father, who prays that God will
helpless old man whose folly
madness have
There was no more. These lines were spread over the first leaf of a sheet of letter-paper; the second leaf, as well as a long strip of the first, had been torn away.
This was the only clue to the secret of his death which George Vane had left behind him.
Eleanor Vane folded the crumpled scrap of paper, and put it tenderly in her bosom. Then, falling on her knees, she clasped her hands, and lifted them towards the low ceiling of the little chamber.
“Oh, my God!” she cried; “hear the vow of a desolate creature, who has only one purpose left in life.”
Signora Picirillo knelt down beside her, and tried to clasp her in her arms.
“My dear, my dear!” she pleaded; “remember how this letter was written—remember the state of your father’s mind——”
“I remember nothing,” answered Eleanor Vane, “except that my father tells me to revenge his murder. For he was murdered,” she cried, passionately, “if this money—this wretched money, which he would have died sooner than lose—was taken from him unfairly. He was murdered. What did the wretch who robbed him care what became of the poor, broken-hearted, helpless old man whom he had wronged and cheated? What did he care? He left my father; left him in his desolation and misery; left him after having stripped and beggared him; left him to die in his despair. Listen to me, both of you, and remember what I say. I am very young, I know, but I have learnt to think and act for myself before to-day. I don’t know this man’s name; I never even saw his face; I don’t know who he is, or where he comes from; but sooner or later I swear to be revenged upon him for my father’s cruel death.”
“Eleanor, Eleanor!” cried the Signora: “is this womanly? Is this Christian-like?”
The girl turned upon her. There was almost a supernatural light, now, in the dilated grey eyes. Eleanor Vane had risen from her knees, and stood with her slender figure drawn to its fullest height, her long auburn hair streaming over her shoulders, with the low light of the setting sun shining upon the waving tresses until they glittered like molten gold. She looked, in herdesperate resolution and virginal beauty, like some young martyr of the middle ages waiting to be led to the rack.
“I don’t know whether it is womanly or Christian-like,” she said, “but I know that it is henceforward the purpose of my life, and that it is stronger than myself.”