r^^»***r*^v rPvf* *^*'- ■n LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE ELEANOR'S VICTORY /// BY THE AUTHOR OF •«LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AUEORA FLOYD* KTO. BTO. ^ttrfotgpfb (gbitiira LONDON JOHN AND EGBERT MAXWELL 4, SHOE LAJTE, FLEET SIKEEI 1878 [JU njht* resercea.] CONTENTS. OBAT. I. Going houb ...«•• II. The entresol in the Rue db l'Archevequb III. Tub story op the past .... IV. Upon the threshold ov a great sorrow V. Waiting VI. The black building by thb rivbr VII. Suspense ....... VIII. Good Samaritans IX. Looking to the future . . . X. Hortensia Bannister holds out a hblpino hand XI. Richard Thornton's promise XII. Gilbert SIonckton XIII. Hazlewood .... XIV. The prodigal's return XV. Launcelot .... XVI. The lawyer's suspicioh . XVII. The shadow on Gilbert Monckton' XVIII. Unforgottkn XIX. Like the memory op a dream . XX. Recognition .... XXI. On the track .... XXII. In the shipbroker's ofpiob . XXIII. Resolved . . . • • XXIY. The one chancb , XXV. Accepted . . . . > XXVI. An insidious demon . , XXVII. Slow fires . . . , XXVIII. By thb sundial ... LIFB tf CONTENTS. CHAP. TAlOh XXIX. KEEPiNa wATcn . . » « ^ - » 212 XXX. An old man's fancy 217 XXXI. A POWERFUL ALLY ....... 222 XXXII. TUE TESTIMONY OF THE SKETOH-BOOK . . . . 228 XXXIII. Maurice de Crespiqny's will 234 XXXJV. Richard's discovery 240 XXXV. What happened at Windsor 243 XXXVI. Another recognition 248 XXXVII. Launcelot's troubles 254 XXXVIII. Mr. MoNCKTON brings GLOOMY TIDINGS FEOM Woodlands 261 XXXIX. Launcelot's counsellor 265 XL. Resolved 270 XLI, A terrible surprise 277 XLII. In the presence op the dkad 284 XLIII. A BRIEF triumph 289 XLIV. Lost 296 XLY. At sea «... 301 XLVI. Laura's troublm 308 XLVII. Getting over it 314 XL VIII. The reading op thk will 320 XLIX. Deserted 326 L. Gilbert's letter 331 LI. Mrs. Major Lennard 339 LII. Going back to Paris 34i LIII. Margaret Lennard's delinquencies . . . 351 LIV. Very lonely 363 LV. Victor Bourdon goes over to the eneut . . 367 LVI. The horrors of delirium tremens . . . . 375 LYII. Maurice de Crespigny's bequest . , , . 385 LVIII. The day of liECKONiNO 389 LIX. The last r . . 393 ELEANOR'S VICTORS. CHAPTER L GOING HOME. The craggy cliffs -upon the Norman coast looked something like the terraced walls and turreted roofs of a ruined city in the hot afternoon sunshine, as the Empress steamer sped swiftly onward toward Dieppe. At least they looked thus in the eyes of a very young lady, who stood alone on the deck of the steam-packet, with yearning eyes fixed upon that foreign shore. It was four o'clock upon a burning August afternoon in the year 1853. The steamer was fast approaching the harbour. Several moustachioed gentlemen, of various ages, costumes, and manners, were busy getting together carpet-bags, railway-rugs, camp-stools, newspapers, and umbrellas ; preparatory to that eager rush towards the shore by which marme voyagers are apt to testify their contempt for Neptune, when they have no longer need of his service or fear of his vengeance. Two or three English families were collected in groups, holding guard over Bmall mounds or barrows of luggage, having made all prepara- tion for landing at first sight of the Norman shore, dim in the distance ; and of course about two hours too soon. Several blooming young English damsels, gathered under maternal wings, were looking forward to sea-bathing in a foreign watering-place. The EtabUssement des Bains had not yet been built, and Dieppe was not so popular, perhaps, among Enghsh f)leasure-seekers as it now is. There were several comfortable- ooking British families on board the steamer, but of all the friendly matrons and pretty daughters assembled on the deck, there seemed no one in any way connected with that lonely young lady who leant against the bulwark with a cloak across her arm and a rather shabby carpet-bag at her feet. She was very young — indeed of that age which in the other »ex is generally called the period of hobbledehoyhood. There was more ankle to be seen below the hem of her neat mushn froek than is quite consistent with elegance of attire in a young 6 Eleanor's Tietory. lady of fifteen ; but as tlie ankle so revealed was rounded and slender, it would have been bypercritical to have objected to the shortness of the skirt, "which had evidently been outgrovm by its wearer. Then, again, this lonely traveller was not only young but pretty. In spite of the shortness of her frock and the shabbiness of her straw bonnet, it was impossible for the most spiteful ot the British misses to affirm the contrary. She was very pretty ; so pretty that it was a pleasure to look at her, in her unconscioua innocence, and to think how beautiful she would be by-and-by, when that bright, budding girhsh loveliness bloomed out in its womanly splendour. Her skin was fair, but pale — not a sentimental or sickly paUor, but a beautiful alabaster clearness of tint. Her eyes were grey, large and dark, or rendered dark by the shadow of long black lashes. I would rather not catalogue her other features too minutely; for though they were regular, and even beautiful, there is something low and material in all the other features as compared to the eyes. Her hair was of a soft golden brown, bright and rippling Kke a sunlit river. The brightness of that luxuriant hair, the Ught in her grey eyes, and the vivacity of a very beautiful smile, made her face seem almost luminous as she looked at you. It was difficult to imagine that she could ever look nnbappy. She seemed an animated, radiant, and exuberant creature, who made an atmosphere of brightness and haiDpines3 about her. Other girls of her age would have crept to a comer of the deck, perhaps to hide their loneliness, or would have clung to the outer fringe of one of the family groups, making behave not to be alone ; but this young lady had taken her stand boldly against the bulwark, choosing the position from which she might soonest hope to see Dieppe harbour, and apparently quite indif- ferent to observation, though many a furtive glance was cast towards the tail but girlish figure and the handsome profile so' sharjDly defined against a blue background of summer sky. But there was nothing uufeminine in all this; nothing bold or defiant ; it was only the innocent unconsciousness of a light- hearted girl, ignorant of any perils which could assail her loneli- ness, and fearless in her ignorance. Throughout the brief sea< voyage she had displayed no symptoms of shyness or perplexity. She had suffered none of the tortures common to many travellers in their marine experiences. She had not been sea-sick; and indeed she did not look Kke a person who could be subject to any of the common ills this weak flesh inherits. You could almost as easily have pictured to yourself the Goddess Hygeia s^afFei-ing from a bilious headache, or Hebe laid up with the influenza, as this auburn-haired, grey-eyed young lady under any phase of mortal sufiering. Eyes dim in the paroxysms of sea -sickness Ooing Home. 1 had looked almost spitefully towards this happy, radiant crea- ture, as she tlittcd hither and thither about the deck, courting the balmy ocean breezes that made themselves merry with her "ippling hair. Lips, blue with suffering, had writhed as their owners beheld the sandwiches which this young school-girl devoured, the stale buns, the oval raspberry tarts, the hideous, bilious, revolting three-cornered puffs which she i^roduced at different stages of the voyage from her shabby carpet-bag. She had an odd voliime of a novel, and a long, dreary desert of crochet-work, whose white-cotton monotony was only broken by occasional dingy oases bearing witness of the worker's dirty hands ; they were such pretty hands, too, that it was a shame they should ever be dirty ; and she had a bunch of flabby, faded flowers, sheltered by a great fan-like shield of newspaper ; and she had a smelling-bottle, which she sniffed at perpetually, though she had no need of any such restorative, being as fresh and bright from first to last as the sea breezes themselves, and as little sub- ject to any marine malady as the Lurleis whose waving locks could scarcely have been yellower than her own. I think, if the feminine voyagers on board the Empress were cruel to this soKtary young traveller in not making themselves friendly with her in her loneliness, the unkindncss must be put down very much to that unchristian frame of mind in which people who are sea-sick are apt to regard those who are not. This bouncing, bright-faced girl seemed to have httle need of kindness from the miserable sufferers around her. So she was left to wander about the deck ; now reading three pages of her novel ; now doing half-a-dozen stit"\ies of her work ; now talking to the man at the wheel, in rt-'\^ i all injunctions to the con- trary; now making herself ucquainted -svith stray pet dogs; always contented, always happy ; and no one troubled himself about her. It was only now, when they were nearing Dieppe, that one of the passengers, an elderly, gi-ey-headed Englishman, spoke to her. " Ton are very anxious to arrive," he said, smiling at her eager face. " Oh, yes, very anxious, sir. We are nearly there, are we not P " " Yes, we shall enter the harbour presently. You will have ■ome one to meet you there, I suppose ? " " Oh, no," the young lady answered, Ufting her arched brown eyebrows, " not at Dieppe. Papa will meet me at Paris ; but he could never come all the way to Dieppe, just to take me back to Paris. He could never afford such an expense as that." " No, to be sure ; and you know no one at Dieppe ? " " Oh, no ; I don't know any one in all France, except papa." ' Her face, bright as it was even in repose, was Ut up with a new brightness as she spoke of her father. 8 Eleanor's Victory. " You are very fond of your papa, I think," the Englishman Baid. " Oh, yes, I love him very, very much. I have not seen hira for more than a year. The journey costs so much between Eng- land and France, and I have been at school near London, at Brixton ; I dare say you know Brixton ; but I am goiug to France now, for good." " Indeed ! You seem very young to leave school." " But I'm not going to leave school," the young lady answered, lagerly, " I am going to a very expensive school in Paris, to fimsh my education ; and then " She paused here, hesitating and blushing a little. " And then what P " " I am going to be a governess. Papa is not rich. He has no fortune now." '• He has had a fortune, then P " " He has had three." The young lady's grey eyes were lit up with a certain look of laiumph as she said this. " He has been very extravagant, poor dear," she continued, apologetically ; " and he has spent three fortunes, altogether. But he has always been so courted and admired, you know, that it is not to be wondered at. He knew the Prince Regent, and Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Brummel, and the Duke of York, and — oh, all sorts of people, ever so intimately ; and he was a member of the Beefsteak Club, and wore a silver gridiron in his button- hole, and he is the most deUghtfiil man in society, even now, though he is very old." " Very old ! And you are so young." The Englishman looked almost incredulously at his animated fompanion. "Yes, I am papa's youngest child. He has been married twice. I have no real brothers and sisters. I have only half* brothers and sisters, who don't reaUy and truly care for me, you know. How should they ? They were grown up when I was bom, and I have scarcely ever seen them. I have only papa in ftll the world." " You have no mother, then ? " " No ; mamma died when I was three years old." The Empress packet was entering the harbour by this time. The grey-headed Englishman went away to look after his port- manteaus and hat-boxes, but he returned presently to the fair- haired school-girl. " Will you let me help vou with your luggage ? " he said. ** I win go and look after it, if you will tell me for what to inquire." " You are very kind. I have only one box. It is directed to Visa Yane, Paris." Going Home. % "Teiy well. Miss Yane, I will go and find yonr box. Stay," he said, taking out his card-case, " this is my name, and if you will permit me, I will see you safely tcv Paris." "Thank you, sir. You are very kind." The young lady accepted her new friend's service as frankly as it was ofiered. He had grey hair, and in that one particular at, least resembled her father. That was almost enough to make her hke him. There was the usual confusion and delay at the Custom-house — a httle squabbling and a good deal of bribery ; but everything was managed, upon the whole, pretty comfortably. Most of the passengers dropped in at the Hotel de 1' Europe, or some of the other hotels upon the stony quay; a few hurried off to the market-place, to stare at the cathedral church of Saint Jacques, or the great statue of Abraham Duquesne, the rugged sea-king, with broad-brimmed hat and waving plumes, high boots and flowing hair, and to buy peaches and apricots of the noisy market-women. Others wandered in the shmy and shppery fish- market, fearfully and wonderingly contemplative of those hideous conger-eels, dog-fish, and other piscatorial monstrosities which eeem pecuhar to Dieppe. Miss Vane and her companion strolled into the dusky church of Saint Jacques by a little wooden door in a shady nook of the edifice. A few solitary women were kneehng here and there, half- hidden behind their high-backed lush chairs. A fisherman was praying upon the steps of a little chapel, in the solemn obscurity. " I have never been here before," Miss Yane whispered. " I came by Dover and Calais, the last time ; but this way is so much cheaper, and I almost think it nicer, for the journey's so short from London to Newhaven, and I don't mind the long sea voyage a bit. Thank you for bringing me to see this cathedral." Half-an-hour after this the two travellers were seated in a first-class carriage, with other railway passengers, French and English, hurrying through the fair Norman landscape. Miss Yane looked out at the bright hills and woods, the fruit- ful orchards, and white-roofed cottages, so \Tlla-Uke, fantastical,, and beautiful ; and her face brightened with the brightening of the landscape under the hot radiance of the sun. The grey- headed gentleman felt a quiet pleasure in watching that earnest, hopeful, candid face ; the grey eyes, illumined with gladness ; the parted lips, almost tremulous with dehght, as the sunny panorama glided by tlie open window. The quiet old bachelor's heart had been won by his com- panion's frank acceptance of his simple service. " Another girl of her age would have been as frightened of a masculine stranger as of a wild beast," he thought, " and would have given herself aP manner of missish airs ; but this young 10 Eleanor's Victory. damsel smiles in my face, and trusts me with almost infantile simplicity. I lupe lier father is a good man. I don't much Kke that talk of Sheridan and Beau Brummel and the Beefsteak Club. No very good school for fathers that, I should fancy. 1 wish her mother had been aUve, poor child. I hope she is going to a happy home, and a haj^py future." The train stopped at Rouen, and Miss Yane accepted a cup of coffee and some brioches from her companion. The red August sunset was melting into grey mistiness by this time, and the lirst shimmer of the moonUght was silvery on the water as they crossed the Seine and left the lighted city behind them. The grey-headed Englishman fell asleep soon after this, and before long there was a low chonis of snoring, mascuhne and feminine, audible in the comfortable carriage ; only broken now and then, when the train stopped with a jerk at some fantastic village that looked like a collection of Swiss toy cottages in the dim summer night. But, let these matter-of-fact people snore and slumber as they might, there was no such thing as sleep for Eleanor ^^ane. It would have been utter sacrilege to have slept in the face of all that moonlighted beauty, to have been carried sleei^ing tlu-ough that fairy landscape. The eager school-girl's watchful eyes drank in the loveliness of every liiU and valley ; the low scat- tered woodland; the watering streams; and that perplexing Seine, which the rumbhng carriage crossed so often with a dis- mal hollow sound in the stillness of the night. No ; INIiss Vane's bright grey eyes were not closed once in that evening journey; and at last, when the train entered the great Parisian station, when aU the trouble and confusion of arrival began — that wearisome encounter of difficulty which makes cowardly travellers wish the longest joi;rney longer than it is — the young lady's head was thrust out of the %vindow, and her eager eyes wandered hither and thither amongst the faces of the crowd. Yes, he was there — her father. That white-haired old man. Math the gold-headed cane, and the aristocratic appearance. She pointed him out eagerly to her fellow-passenger. "That is papa — you see, — the handsome man. He is coming this way, but he doesn't see us. Oh, let me out, please; let me go to him ! " She trembled in her eagerness, and her fair face flushed crimson with excitement. She forgot her carpet-bag, her novel, her crochet, her smelling-bottle, her cloak, her parasol — all her para- phernaha : and left her companion to collect them as best he might. She was ou" ,of the carriage and in her father's arms she scarcely knew b jw. The platform seemed deserted aU in a moment, for the p9 isengers had rushed away to a great dreary Ooing Home, IX- talle (Tattenfe, fhcre to await the inspection of their luggage. Miss Vane, her fellow-traveller, and her father, were almost alone, and she was looking up at the old man's face in the lamplight. " Papa, dear papa, darling, how well you are looking ; ae well as ever ; better than ever, I think ! " Her father drew himself up proudly. He was past seventy years of age, but he was a very handsome man. His beauty was of that patrician type which loses Uttlc by age. He was tall and broad-chested, erect as a Grenadier, but not fat. The Prince Regent might become corpulent, and lay himself open to the insolent sneers of liis sometime boon compamon and friend ; but Mr. George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane held himself on his guard against that insidious foe which steals away the graces of so many elderly gentlemen. Mr. Vane's aristocratic bearing imparted such a stamp to his clothes, that it was not easy to see the shab- biness of his garments; but those gai-ments were shabby. Care- fully as they had been brashed, they bore the traces of that slow decay wliich is not to be entii-ely concealed, whatever the art of the wearer. Miss Vane's travelling companion saw all this. He had been BO much interested by the young lady's frank and fearless man- ner, that he would fain have Ungered in the hope of learning something of her father's character ; but he felt that he had no excuse for delaying his departure. " I will wish you good night, now. Miss Vane," he said, kindly, " since you are safeljr restored to your i^apa." Mr. Vane lifted his grey eyebrows, looked at his daughter in- terrogatively ; rather suspiciously, the traveller thought. " Oh, pajm, dear," the young lady answered, in reply to that questioning look, " this gentleman was on board the boat with me, and he has been so very kind." She searched in her pocket for the card which her acquaintance had given her, and produced that document, rather limp and crumpled. Her father looked at it, murmured the name in- scribed upon it twice or thrice, as if trpng to attach some aris- tocratic association thereto, but evidently failed in doing so. " I have not the honour of — a — haw — knowing this name, sir," he said, lifting his hat stiffly about half a yard from his silvered head ; " but for your courtesy and kindness to my child, I hope you will accept my best thanks. I was prevented by important business of — a — haw — not altogether uuclii^lomatio character — from crossing the Channel to fetch my daughter; and — aw — also — prevented from sencliu^ my servant — by — aw — I thank you for your politeness, sir. You are a stranger, by the way. Can I do anything for you in Paris .'^ Lord Cowley is my very old friend ; an}" service that I can render you in that qu arter — I ' ' 12 Eleanor's Victorjf, The traveller bowed and smiled. " Thank you very much," he said, " I am no stranger in Paris. I will wish you good night ; good night, Miss Vane." But Mr. Vane was not going to let his daughter's friend off 80 easily. He produced his card-case, murmured more pompous assurances of his gratitude, and tendered further offers of pa- tronage to the quiet traveller, who found something rather oppressive in Mr. Vane's civility. But it was aU over at last, and the old man led his daughter off to look for the trunk which contained all her worldly j^ossessions. The stranger looked wistfully after the father and child. " I hope she may have a happy future," he thought, rather despondingly ; " the old man is poor and pompous. He tells lies which bring hot blushes iato his daughter's beautiful face. I am very sorry for her." CHAPTER 11. THE ENTRESOL IN THE KUE DE l'aHCHEVEQTTE. Mr. Vane took his daughter awajr from the station in one of those secondary and cheaper vehicles which are distinguished by the discrimiuating Parisian by some mysterious difference of badge. The close, stifling carriage rattled over the uneven stones of long streets which were unfamdiar to Eleanor Vane, until it emerged into the full glory of the lighted Boulevard. The Hght-hearted school-girl could not suppress a cry of rapture as she looked once more at the broad thoroughfare, the dazzling lamps, the crowd, the theatres, the cafes, the beauty and splen- dour, although she had spent her summer hohday in Paris only a year before. " It seems so beautiful again, papa," she said, "just as if I'd never seen it before ; and I'm to stop here now, and never, never to leave you again, to go away for such a cruel distance. You don't know how unhappy I've been, sometimes, papa dear. I wouldn't tell you then, for fear of making you uneasy; but I can tell you now, now that it's all over." " Unhappy ! " gasped the old man, clenching his fist ; " they've not been unkind to you — they've not dared " " Oh, no, dearest father. They've been very, very good. I was quite a favourite, papa. Yes, though there were so many rich girls in the school, and I was only a half-boarder, I was fuite a favourite with Miss Bennett and Miss Sophia ; though know I was careless and lazy sometimes — not on purpose, you know, papa, for I tried hard to get on with my education, for your sake, darling. No, everybody was very kind to me, papa; but 1 used to think sometimes how far I was from you ; wha% The Entresol in the Rue de VArcheveque. 18 miles and miles and miles of sea and land there were between as, and that if you should be ill — I " Eleanor Vane broke down, and her father clasped her in hia arms, and cried over her silently. The tears came \vith very little provocation to the old man's handsome blue eyes. He was of that sanguine temperament which to the last preserves the fondest delusions of youth. At seventy-five years of age he hoped and dreamed and deluded himself as foohshly as he had done at seventeen. His sanguine temperament had been for ever leading him astray for more than sixty years. Severe judges called George Vane a bar; but perhaps his shallow romances, his pitiful boasts, were more often highly-coloured an(? poetical versions of the truth, than actual falsehood. It was past twelve o'clock when the carriage drove away from the lights and splendour into the darkness of a labyrinth of quiet streets behind the Madeleine. The Rue de TArcheveque was one of these dingy and quiet streets, very narrow, very close and stifling in the hot August midnight. The vehicle stopped abruptly at a comer, before a httle shop, the shutters of which were closed, of course, at this hour. " It is a butcher's shop, I am sorry to say, my love," Mr. Vane said, apologetically, as he handed liis daughter on to the pavement ; " but I find myself very comfortable here, and it is conveniently adjacent to the Boulevards." The old man paid the driver, who had deposited mademoiselle's box upon the threshold of the little door beside the butcher's shop. The j)oiLrhoire was not a veiy large one, but Iklr. Vane bestowed it with the air of a prince. He pushed open the low door, and took liis daughter into a narrow passage. There was no porter or portress, for the butcher's shop and the apartments belonging to it were abnormal altogether; but there was a caudle and box of matches on a shelf m a comer of the steep cork- screw staircase. The driver carried Eleanor's box as far as the entresol in consideration of his pourhoire, but departed while Mr. Vane was opening the door of an apartment facmg the staircase. The entresol consisted of three little rooms, opening one out of another, and so small and low that Miss A'ane almost fancied herself in a doll's house. Every article of furniture in the etifling Uttle apartment bore the impress of its nationalit}'. Tawdry curtains of figured damask, resplendent with dirty tubps and monster roses, tarnished ormolu mouldings, a gilded clock with a cracked dial and a broken shade, a pair of rickety bronze candlesticks, a couple of uncompromising chairs covered with dusty green velvet and relieved by brass-headed nails, and a square table with a long trailing cover of the same material as the curtains, completed the adornments of the sitting-room. The bed-chambers were smaller, closer, and hotter. VoluniinoiM 14 JEleanor's Victory. worstea curtains falling before the narrow windows, and smo tlieriiig the little beds, made the stifling atmosphere yet more stifling. The low ceilings seemed to rest on the top of poo? Eleanor's head. She had been accustomed to large airy rooms, and broad uncurtained open windows. " How hot it is here, papa," she said, drawing a long breath. " It always is hot in Paris at this time of year, my dear," Mr. Vane answered ; " the rooms are small, you see, but conve- nient. That is to be your bedroom, my love," he added, indi- cating one of the little chambers. He was evidently habituated to Parisian lodging-houses, and saw no discomfort m the tawdry grandeur,' the shabby splendour, the pititul attempt to substitute scraps of gildiug and patches of velvet for the common necessaries and decencies of Hfe. " And now let me look at you, my dear ; let me look at you, SJleanor.** George Mowbray Vane set the candlestick upon tne rusty velvet cover of the low mantel-piece, and drew his daughter towards him. She had thrown off her bonnet and loose grey cloak, and stood before her father in her scanty muslin frock, with all her auburn hair hanging about her face and shoulders, and ghttering in the dim light of that one scrap of wax candle. " My pet, how beautiful you have grown, how beautiful !" the old man said, with an accent of fond tenderness. "We'll teach Mrs. Bannister a lesson some of these days, Eleanor. Yes, owr turn will come, my love ; I know that I shall die a rich man." Miss Vane was accustomed to hear this remark from her father. She inherited sometliing of his sanguine nature, and she loved him very dearly, so she may be forgiven if she believed in his vague visions of future grandeur. She had never seen any- thing in her hfe but chaotic wrecks of departed splendour, con- fasion, debt, and difiiculty. She had not been called upon to face poverty in the fair hand-to-hand struggle which ennobles and elevates the sturdy wrestler in the battle of hfe. No, she ad rather been compelled to play at hide-and-seek with the grim nemy. She had never gone out into the open, and looked her 06 full in the eyes, hardy, resolute, patient, and steadfast. She as familiar with all those debasing tricks and pitiful subter- ges whereby the weak and faint-hearted seek to circumvent e enemy ; but she had never been taught the use of those easures by which he may be honestly beaten. The Mrs. Bannister of whom George Vane had spoken, was ne of hia elder daughters, who had been very, very ungrateful .;0 him, he declared ; and who now in his old age doled him out he meagre allowance which enabled him to occupy an entresol Over a butcher's shop, and diae daily at one of the cheap restau- rante in the Palais BojaL Tlie Entresol in the Rue de VArcheveque. IS Mr. Vane was wont to lament his daufrhter's cruel lack of affection in very bitter language, freely interspersed with quota- tions from " King Lear;" indeed I believe he considered his case entirely parallel vni\\ that of the injured British monarch and father ; ignoring the one rather important fact that, whereas Lear's folly had been the too generous division of his own fortune between his recreant daughters, his weakness had been the reck- less waste and expenditure of the portions which his children had inherited from their mother. Mrs. Bannister, instigated thereto by her husband, had pro- tested some years before against the several acta of folly and extravagance by which the fortune which ought to have been hers had been fooled away. She declmed to allow her father more than the pittance alluded to above ; although, as she was now a rich widow, and of course entirely her own mistress, she might have done much more. " Yes, my darUng," Mr. Vane said, as he proudly contemplai d his youngest child's beauty, " we will turn the tables upon Mrs. Bannister and the rest of them, yet, please God. My Benjamin ; my youngest, brightest darling; we'll teach them a lesson. They may poke their old father away in a foreign lodging, and stint him of money for any httle innocent pleasure ; but the day will come, my love, the day Avill come ! " The old man nodded his head two or three times with solemn aignificance. The sanguine, impulsive nature, dwarfed and fettered by the cruel bonds of povertj^, was too elastic to be entirely repressed even bj those galhng chains ; and having hoped all his Ufe, and having enjoyed such successes and good fortune as fall to the lot of very few men, he went on hoping in his old a^e, blindly confident that some sudden revolution in the wheel of life would Uft him out of his obscurity and set him again on the pinnacle he had once occupied so proudly. He had had a host of friends and many children, and he had aqnandered more than one fortune, not being any more careful of other people's money than of his own ; and now, in his poverty and desolation, the child of his old age was the only one who clung to him, and loved liim, and believed in him ; the only one whom he loved, perhaps, truly and unreserredlj', thougli he wept frequently over the ingratitude of the others. It may be that Eleanor was the only one whom he could lovo witn any comfort to himself, because the only one he had never injured. " But, papa, dear," this youngest and best loved of the old man's cliildren jileaded gently, "Mrs. Bannister, Hortensia, has been very good — has she notP — in sending the money for my education at Madame Marly's, where she was finished her That was very generous of her, wasn't it, papa ? " 16 Eleanor's Victory. Mr. Vane shook hi? head, and lifted Ids grey eyebrows with • deprecating expression. "Hortensia Bannister cannot perform a generous act in a generous manner, my dear. You recognize the viper by the reptile's sting : you may recognize Hortensia in pretty much the eame manner. She gives, but she insults the recipients of he' — ahem — bounty. Shall I read you her letter, Eleanor ? " " If you please, dear papa." The young lady had seated herself, in a somewhat hoydenish manner, upon the elbow of her father's chair, and had wound her soft round arm about his neck. She loved him and beUeved in him. The world which had courted and admired him while he had money and could boast such acquaintance as the Prince and Sheridan, Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Pitt, and the Duke of York, had fallen away from him of late ; and the few old associates who yet remained of that dead-and-gona cycle were apt to avoid him, influenced perhaps by the recol- lection of small loans of an occasional five-pound note, and a " Uttle silver," wliich had not been repaid. Yes, the world had fallen away from George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane, once of Vandeleur Park, Cheshire, and Mowbray Castle, near York. The tradesmen who had helped him to squander his money had let him get very deep in their books before they closed those cruel ledgers, and stoj^ped all supplies. He had existed for a long time — he had Hved as a gentleman, he said himself — upon the traditions of the past, the airy memories of the fortunes he had wasted. But this was all over now, and he had emigrated to the city in which he had played the Grand Seigneur in those glorious early days of the Kestoration, and where he was compelled to lead a low and vulgar hfe, disgracing liimself by pettifogging ready-money dealings, utterly degrading to a gentleman. He could not bring himself to own that he was better and happier in this new life, and that it was pleasant to be able to walk erect and defiant upon the Boulevards, rather than to be compelled to jjlunge down dark alleys, and dive into sinuous byways, for the avoidance of importunate creditors, as he had been in free England. He took his wealthy daughter's letter from the breast-pocket of his coat ; a fashionable coat, though shabby now, for it had been made for him by a sentimental German tailor, who had wept over his late patron's altered fortimes, and given him credit for a suit of clothes. That compassionate German tailor never expected to be paid, and the clothes were a benefaction, a gift as purely and generously given as any Christian dole offered in the holy name of charity ; but Mr. Vane was pleased with the fiction of an expected payment, and would have revolted against the idea of receiving a present from the good-natured tradesman. The Entresol in the Hue de FArchevique. 17 The letter from Hortonsia Bannister was not a long one. It was written in sharp and decisive paragraphs, and in a neat firm hand. Kathcr a cruel-looking hand, Eleanor Vane thought. The old man put a double gold eyeglass over his nose, and began to read. "Hyde Park Gardens, August, 1853. " Mt dkar. Father, — In compliance with your repeated soli- citations I have determined upon taking measures by which I hope the future welfare of your youngest daughter may l« secured. " I must, however, remind you that Eleanor Yane and I are the cliildren of difierent mothers ; that she has, therefore, les3 claim upon me than a sister usually has ; and I freely conless I never heard of one sister being called upon to provide for another. " You must also remember that I never entertained any degree of friendshij) or affection for Eleanor's mother, who was much below you in station, and whom you married in direct opposition to myself and my sisters " Eleanor started ; she was too impetuous to listen quite pas- sively to this letter. Her father felt the sudden movement ol the arm about his neck. " Your mother was an angel, my dear," he said ; " and this woman is — never mind what. My daughters chose to give them- selves airs to your poor mother because she had been their gover- ness, and because her father had failed as a sugar-broker." He went back to the letter, groj^ing nervously for the place at which he had left olf, with the point of his well-shaped finger — " But you tell me that you have no power to make any pro- vision whatsoever for your daughter ; and that, unless I assist you, tliis unhai:)py girl may, in the event of your death, be Hung penniless upon the world, imperfectly educated, and totally mcomj^etent to get her living." '■ She speaks of my death very freely," the old man mur- mured, "but she's right enough. I shan't trouble anybody long, my dear ; I shan't trouble anybody long." The tender arms wound themselves more closely about George Vane's neck. "Papa, darling," the soft voice whispered, "you have never troubled me. Don't go on with that horrid letter, papa. We won'tijaccept any favours from such a woman." " Yes, yes, my love, for your sake ; if I stoop, it is for your sake, Eleanor." The old man went on reading. " Under these circum>jtances," the writer continued, " I have oome to the following determination. I will give you a hundred pounds, to be paid to Madame Jlarly, who knows you, and has 18 Eleanor's Victory. received a great deal of money from you for my ed-ucation and that of my sisters, and who will, therefore, be inclined to receive Eleanor upon advantageous terms. For this sum of money Madame Marly will, I feel assured, consent to prepare my half- eister for the situation of governess in a gentleman's family; that is, of course, premising that Eleanor has availed herself conscientiously of the advantages afforded her by her residence with the Misses Bennett. " I shall write to Madame Marly by this post, using my best influence with her for Eleanor's benetit ; and should I receive a favourable reply to this letter, I ■wdl immediately send jom an order for a hundred pounds, to be paid by you to Madame Marly. " I do this in order that you may not appear to my old in« Btructress — who remembers you as a rich man — in the position of a pauper ; but in thus attempting to spare your feelings, and perhaps my own, I fear that I run some risk. " Let me therefore warn you that this money is the last I will ever pay for my half-sister's benefit. Squander or misuse it if you please. You have robbed me often, and would not perhaj)8 hesitate to do so again. But bear in mind, that this time it is Eleanor you will rob and not me. " The only chance she will have of completing her education is the chance I now give her. Rob her of this and you rob her of an honourable future. Deprive her of this and you make yourself answerable for any misfortunes which may befall her when you are dead and gone. " Forgive me if I have spoken harshly, or even undutifully ; my excuse lies in your past follies. I have spoken strongly because I wished to make a strong impression, and I believe that I have acted for the best. " Once for all, remember that I will attend to no future soli- citations on Eleanor's behalf. If she makes good use of the help I now afford her, I may perhaps be tempted to render her further services — unsolicited — in the future. If she or you make a bad use of this one chance, I wash my hands of all concern in your future miseries. "The money will be made payable at Messrs. Blount's, Rue de la Paix. " I trust you attend the Protestant Church in the Rue Rivoli. " With best wishes for your welfare, temporal and eternal, I remain, my deai- father, "Tour affectionate daughter, "HOKTENSIA BaNNISTEK.*' George Yane burst into tears as he finished the letter. How erueUy she had stabbed him, this honourable, conscientious The Entresol in the Sue de VArcheveqne. 19 daughter, whom he had robbed certainly, but in a generous, magnanimous, reckless fashion, that made robbery rather a princely virtue than a sordid vice. How cruelly the old heart was lacerated by that bitter letter ! " As if I would touch the money," cried Mr. Vane, elevating his trembling hands to the low ceiling with a passionate and tragic gestui-e. " Have I been such a wretch to you, Eleanor, that this woman should accuse me of wishing to snatch the bread from your innocent Ups ? " " Papa, papa ! " " Have I been such an unnatural father, such a traitor, liar, Bwindler, and cheat, that my own daughter should say these things to me ? " His voice rose higher with each sentence, and the tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks. Eleanor tried to kiss away those tears ; but he pushed her from him with passionate vehemence. " Go away from me, my cliild, I am a wretch, a robber, a scoundrel, a " " No, no, no, papa," cried Eleanor ; " you are all that is good{ you have always been good to me, dear, dear papa." " By what right, then, does this woman insult me with such a letter as that?" asked the old man, drying his eyes, and pointing to the crumpled letter which he had flung upon the ground. " She has no right, papa," answered Eleanor. " She is a wicked, cruel woman. But we'll send back her money. I'd rather go out into the world at once, papa, and work for you : I'd rather be a dressmaker. I could learn soon if I tried very hard. I do know a little about dressmaking. I made tliis dress, and it fits very well, only I cut out both the backs for one side, and both sleeves for one arm, and that wasted the stuff, you know, and made the skirt a httle scanty. I'd rather do Anything, papa, than accept this money, — I would indeed. I don't wan.j to go to this grand Parisian school, except to be near you, papa, darling. That was the only thing I ever cared for. The Miss Bennetts would take me as a pupil teacher, and give me fifteen pounds a-year, and I'd send every sliilling of it to you, papa, and then you needn't live over a wretched shop where the meat smells nasty in the warm weather. We won't take the money, ^vill we, papa ? " The old man shook liis head, and made a motion with his lips and throat, as if he had been gulping down some bitter draught. " Yes, my dear," he said, in a tone of ineffable resignation, ** for your sake I would sufier many humiliations ; for your sake I will endure this. We will take no notice of this woman's letter ; though I could write her a reply that — but no matter. 20 Eleanor's Victory. "We will let her insolence pass, and elie shall never know how keenly it has stung me here ! " He tapped his breast as he spoke, and the tears rose again to his eyes. " We will accept this money, Eleanor," he continued, " we will accept her bounty ; and the day may come when you wiU have ample power to retahate — ample power, my dear. She has called me a thief, Eleanor," exclaimed the old man, sud- denly returning to his own wrongs, "a thief! My own daughter has called me a thief, and accused me of the baseness of robbing you." " Papa, papa, darling." "As if your father could rob you of this money, Eleanor; aa if I could touch a penny of it. No, so help me, Heaven ! not a penny of it to save me from starving." His head sank forward upon his breast, and he sat for some minutes muttering to himself in broken sentences, as if almost unconscious of his daughter's presence. In that time he looked older than he had looked at any moment since his daughter had met him at the station. Watching him now, wistfully and sor- rowfully, Eleanor Vane saw that her father was indeed an old man, vacillating and weak of purpose, and with am^^le need of all the compassionate tenderness, the fond affection, which over- flowed her girlish heart as she looked at him. She knelt down on the slippery oaken floor at his feet, and took his tremulous hand in both of hers. He started as she touched him, and looked at her. "My darhng," he cried, "you've had nothing to eat; you've been nearly an hour in the house, and you've had nothing to eat. But I've not forgotten you, NeU ; you'll find I've not for- gotten you." He rose from his chair, and went over to a little cupboard in the wall, from which he took a couple of plates and tumblers, aome knives and forks, and two or three parcels wrapped in white paper, and neatly tied with narrow red tape. He put these on the table, and going a second time to the cupboard produced a pint bottle of Burgundy, in a basket ; very dusty and cobwebby ; and therefore, no doubt, very choice. The white paper parcels contained very recherche comestibles. A slender wedge of trufiled turkey, some semi-transparent slices of German sausage, and an open plum tart, with a great deal of rich ruby-coloured syrup, and an utterly uneatable crust. Miss Yane partook very freely of this little collation, praismg her father for his goodness and indulgence as she ate the simple feast he had prepared for her. But she did not Hke the Bur- gundy in the dusty basket, and preferred to diink some water out of one 'tT ifc j toilette-bottles. The Story of tie Past. H Her father, however, enjoyed the pint of good wine, and re- covered his equanimity under its generous influence. He had neyer been a drunkard ; he had indeed one of those excitable natures which cannot endure the influence of strong drinks, and a very little wine had considerable eflFect upon him. He talked a good deal, therefore, to his daughter, told her some of his delusive hopes in the future, tried to explain some of the plans which he had formed for his and her advancement, and was altogether very happy and social. The look of age, which had been so strong upon him half an hour before, faded out like a grey morning shadow under the broadening sunUght. He was a young man again ; proud, hopeful, reckless, hand- 'jome ; ready to run through three more fortunee, if they should fall to his lot. It was past two o'clock when Eleanor Vane lay down, thoroughly exhausted, but not weary — she had one of those natures which seem never to grow weary — to fall asleep for the first time in four-and-twenty hours. Her father did not quite so quickly fall into a peaceful slumber. He lay awake for upwards of an hour, tumbling and tossing to and fro upon the narrow spring mattress, and muttering to himself And even in his sleep, though the early summer dawn was grey in the room when he fell into a fitful and broken slumber, the trouble of his eldest daughter's letter was heavy upon him, for every now and then he muttered, disjointly, — " Thief — swindler ! As if — as if — I would — rob — my own daughter." CHAPTER in. THE STORT OF TUE PAST. Thb history of George Mowbray Vandeleur Yane was the history of many men whose lot it was to shine in that brilliant orbit of which George, Prince Regent, was the ruhng star. Around that dazzling royal planet how many smaller lights re- volved, twinkling in humble emulation of their prince's glory. "What were fortune, friends, children, wives, or creditors, when weighed in the balance, if the royal favour, the princely smile, hung on the other side of the scale P If George the Fourth was E leased to bring ruin upon himself and his creditors, how should is friends and associates do less ? Looking backward at the Bpurious glitter, the mock splendour, the hollow dehght of that wonderful age which is so near us in point of time, so far away from us by reason of the wide diflferences which di\'ide to-day from that foohsh yesterday, we can of course afford to be very wise, and can clearly see what a very witches' sabbath was that long 22 Eleanor's Victory. revelry i n whicli the Fonrtli George of England led the dance. But wb ) shall doubt that the dancers themselves saw the fan- tastic caperings of their leader in a very different Hght, and looked upon their model as worthy of all mortal praise and imitation. The men of that frivolous era seem to have abandoned them- selves to unmanly weakness, and followed the fashions set them (by the fat and pale-faced Royal Adonis, as blindly as the women ©f to-day e.Tiulate the Imperial caprices of the Tuileries, sacri- icing themselves as burnt ofierings to the Moloch of Fashion, in obedience to the laws made by a lady who Hves in a palace ; and who, when she wears her silken robe three yards in length and six in circumference, can scarcely be expected to foresee the nervous torttu-es by-and-by to be endured by Mr. John Smith, of Peckham Rye, whose wife will insist on having a hoop and train a, V Oojenee, and sweeping her superabundant skirts into the fender and across the back of the grate every time she steers her difficult way about the worthy Smith's fourteen feet by twelve front parlour. Yes, if Cleopatra melts pearls in her wine, and sails in a galley of gold, we must have sham jewels to dissolve in our inferior vintages, and sham gold to adorn our galleys. If Pericles, or Charles, or George, affects splendour and ruin, the prince's devoted subjects must ruin themselves also, never letting their master see anything but smiling faces amid the general wreck, and utterly heedless of such minor considerations as wives and children, creditors and friends. George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane ruined himself vdth a grace that was only second to that of his royal model. He began life with a fair estate left him by his father, and having contrived to squander the best part of his patrimony within a few years of his coming of age, was so lucky as to marry the only daughter and heiress of a rich banker, thereby acquiring a second fortune just at that critical moment when the first was on the verge of exhaustion. He was not a bad husband to the simple girl who loved and worshipped him with a foolishly confiding worship. It was not in his nature to be wilfully bad to anybody ; for he was of a genial, generous spirit, with warm affections for those ■who pleased him and ministered to his happiness. He intro- duced his young wife to very brilliant people, and led her into sacred and inner circles, whither her father the banker could never have taken her ; but he squandered her money foolishly and recldessly. He broke down the bulwarks of parchment with which the lawyers had hoped to protect her fortune. He made light of the settlements which were to provide for the future of his children. They were only blooming and beautiful young creatures in cambric frocks and blue sashes ; and surely, Mr. Vane urged, they had nothing to complain of, for hadn't they The Story of the Past. 23 Bplendid apartments and costly dresses, nurses, governesses, masters, carriages, ponies, and indulgences of every kind? What did tliey want, then, or in what manner did he fail in his duty towards those innocent darUngs? Had not his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent himself come to Vandeleur to stand sponsor for Edward George ? Had not Hortensia Geor- S'na received her second name after the beautiful Duchess of evonshire, in whose lovely arms she had been dandled when only a fortnight old ? Were there any earthly honours or splendours, within the limit of reasonable desire, which George Vane had failed to pro- cure for his wife and children ? The gentle lady was fain to answer this question in the negative, and to accept it for what it was not ; namely, an answer to the questions slie had ventured to ask touching the future of those unconscious children. Mr. Vane could always persuade his simple wife to si^ away any of those parchment defences the lawyers had devised for her protection ; and when, after an elegant little tete-a-tete dinner, m the arrangement of which the chef had displayed his most consummate skill, the affectionate husband produced a diamond bracelet or an emerald heart from its morocco casket, and clasped the jewel upon his wife's slender arm, or hung it round her dehcate throat, with the tears gUsten- ing in his handsome blue eyes, gentle Margaret Vane forgot the sacrifices of the morning, and all those shadowy doubts which were wont to torment her when she contemplated the future. Then, again, Mr. Vane had an unfailing excuse for present imprudence in the expectation of a third fortune, which was to come to him from his bachelor uncle and godfather, Sir Milwood Mowbray, of Mowbray Castle, York ; so that there were no vul- fir retrenchments either' at Vandeleur Park or in Berkeley quare, and when Sir MUwood's fortune did come, in the due course of life and death, to his nephew's hands, it only came just in time to stave off the ruin that threatened George Vane's household. If Mr. Vane had then taken his wife's advice, all might have been well ; but the ^Mowbray fortune seemed Uke the two other fortunes, quite inexhaustible; the sanguine gentleman forgetting that he was in debt to fidl half its amount. The French chef still prepared dinners which might have made Oude himseff tremble for his laurels ; the German governess and the Parisian lady's-maids still attended upon Mr. Vane's daughters ; the old career of extravagance went on. George Vane carried his family to the Continent, and plunged them into new gaieties at the court of the restored Louis. He sent liis daughters to the most expen- aive finishing-school in Paris, that very Madame Marly's of wlioni naention has been made in the last chapter. He took them to 24 Eleanor*/ Yictorjf. Italy and Switzerland. He hired a villa by the Lake of Como; a chateau on the borders of Liicei*ne. He followed the footsteps of Byron and D'Orsay, Madame de Stael and Lady Blessing- ton ; he affected art, literature, and music. He indulged hia children's every caprice, he gratified their wildest fancies. It was only when the sons saw themselves penniless and profes- sionless, with the great battle of life all before them, and with no weapons wherewith to fight ; and the daughters found them- selves left portionless, to win the best husbands they might in the matrimonial lottery,: it was only at this crisis that these ungrate- ful children turned round upon poor, indulgent Lear, and re- proached him for the extravagances they had helped him to perpetrate. This was a cruelty which George Vane could never bring him- self to comprehend. Had he denied them anything, these heart- less children, that they should turn upon him now in his old age — it would have been rather a dangerous thing for any one else to have alluded to his age, though he spoke freely enough of his grey hairs when bewailing his wrongs — and be angry with him because he could not give them fortunes ? This thanklessness was worse than a serpent's tooth. It was now that Mr. Vane began to quote " King Lear," piteously likening himself to that too confiding monarch. But he was sixty years old now, and had lived his life. His gentle and trusting wife had died ten years before his money was gone, and of all his four children there was not one who would say a word in his defence. The most aflfectionate and dutiful of them were only silent, and thought they did much in withhold- ing their reproaches. So he let them go their ways, the two sons to fight the battle of fife how they might — the two daugh- ters to marry. They were both handsome and accompUshed, and they married well. And being left quite alone in the world, with nothing but the traditions of a brilliant past, Mr. Vane united his misfortunes to those of a very beautiful girl, who had been his daughters' governess, and who had fallen in love with his splendid graces in the very simpUcity of her heart, thinking his grey hairs more beautiful than the raven locks of meaner men. Yes: George Vane possessed this gift of fascination in a dangerous degree, and his second wife loved and believed in him in the day of his decline, as entirely as his first wife had done ia the brighter hours of his prosperity. She loved and trusted him. She bore with a life of perpetual debt and daily difficulty. She sacrificed herself to the mean shifts and petty stratagems of a dishonest existence. She, whose nature was truth itself, humi- liated herself for her husband's sake, and helped to play that Eitiful, skulking game of hide-and-seek in which George Vane oped to escape the honest struggles of poverty. The Story of the Tost. 2S But she died young, worn out, perhaps, by these incessant miseries, and not able to draw consolation from the sham splen- dour and tinselly grandeur with which George Vane tried to invest his fallen state. She died within five years of her mar- riage, leaving a distracted and despairing old man as the sole guardian and protector of her only child. This calamity was the bitterest blow that George Vane had ever been called upon to endure. He had loved his second wife, the wife of his poverty and humiliation, far more dearly than he had loved the obedient partner of his splendour and prosperity. She had been more to hira a thousand tunes, this gentle girl who had so uncomplainingly accepted the hardships of her lot, because there had been no idle vanities, no hollow glories, no Princes and Beefsteak Clubs, to stand between him and his love of her. She was lost, and he remembered how little he had done to prove his affection for her. She had never reproached him ; no word of upbraiding had ever crossed those tender lips. But how did he know that he had not wronged her as cruelly as he had wronged those noisy cliildren who had betrayed and deserted him? He remembered how often he had sUghted her advice, her loving counsel, so pure and true, so modestly offered, so gently spoken. He remembered how many humihations he had forced upon her, how many falsehoods he had compelled her to tell ; how often he had imposed upon her affection, suffering her to slave for him in his blind selfishness. He could remember all these things now that she was gone, an no, my love, no, no ; for an hour or so ; not longer.*' Eleanor looked up sorrowfully in the face she loved so dearly. Yague memories of grief and trouble in the past, mingled wiui Upon the Threshold of m 0-reat Sorrow. 43 as va^e a presentiment of trouble in the future, filled her mind : she clasped her hands imploringly upon her father's arm, " Come home with me to-night, papa," she said. " It is my first night at home. Come back, and we'll play ecarte as we used at Chelsea. You remember teaching me." Mr. Vane started, as if the tender grasp upon his arm had Btung into his flesh. " I— I can't come home to-night, Eleanor. At least, not for an hour. There — there are social laws, my dear, which must be observed ; and when — when a gentleman is asked to give another his revenge, he — can't refuse. I'll put you into a carriage, my darHng, if you tliink you can't find your way." " oil, no, papa, dear, it's not that. I can find my way." Th« Frenchman here interposed for the second time with some complimentary speech, addressed to Eleanor, who very imper- fectly understood its purport. He had slipped his arm through that of George Yane, taking possession of him in a manner by that friendly gesture. In all this time the other man had never stirred from his sulky attitude upon the edge of the pavement. Mr. Vane took his daughter's hand. "I am sorry I can't take you to the theatre, my love," he said, in the same hesitating manner. " I — I regret that yoii should be disappointed, but — good night, my dear, good night. I sliall be home by eleven ; but don't sit np for me ; don't on any account sit up." He pressed her hand, held it for a few moments, as if scarcely knowing what to do with it, and then suddenly dropped it witli something of a guilty manner. The Frenchman, with his arm still linked in the old man's, wheeled sharply round, and walked away towards the Barricre Saint Antoine, leaving Eleanor standing alone amongst the {)a8sers-by, looking wistfully after her father. The other man ooked up as the Frenchman led Mr. Vane away, and slowly followed them, with his head bent and his hands in his pockets. Eleanor stood quite still, watching her father's erect figure, the short Frenchman, and the tall, sulky stranger following the other two, until all three were out of sight. Then turning homewards with a half-repressed sigh, she looked sadly dowjx the long lamp-lit vista. It was very beautiful, very gay, briUianl, and splendid ; but all that splendour and gaiety made her feel only the more lonely, now that her father had left her. The first day, the natal day of her new life, seemed to end very drearily, after alL 44 Eleanor's Tictorjf. CHAPTER V. ■WAITING. Miss YAira walked very slowly homeward tliroiigli the hot, breathless summer night. She was too sorrowful, too much depressed by the sudden disappointment which had fallen like a dark shadow upon the close of the day that had begun so brightly, to be embarrassed by any uncomfortable sense of her loneliness in the crowded thoroughfare. No one moleeted or assailed her — she walked serene in her youth and innocence ; though the full radiance of the lamphght rarely fell upon her face without some j^assing glance of admira- tion resting there also. She never once thought that her father had done wrong in leaving her to walk alone through that crowded Parisian street. In the unselfishness of her loving nature she scarcely remembered her disappointment about the theatre : not even when she passed the brilliantly lighted edifice, and looked, a httle wistfully perhaps, at the crowd upon the threshold. She was uneasy and unhappy about her father, because in all her Chelsea erperiences she remembered evil to have resulted from his going out late at night ; vague and mysterious trouble, the nature of which he had never revealed to her, but whose effect.^ had haunted him and depressed him for many dreary days. He had been sometimes — indeed, very often — poorer after a late absence from his shabby Chelsea lodging ; he had been now and then richer ; but he had always been ahke remorseful au'i miserable after those occasional nights of dissipation. His daughter was son'owful therefore at parting with him. She knew that, in spite of his declaration that he would be home at eleven, it would be between one and two in the morning when he returned ; not tipsy — no, thank Heaven, he was no drunkard • — but with a nervous, wretched, half-demented manner, which was perhaps more sad to see than any ordinary intoxication. " I was in hopes papa would always stay at home with me now that I am grown up," the young lady thought, very sadly. " When I was little, of course it was diflferent; I coiddn't amuse him. Though we were very happy sometimes then ; and I could play ecarte, or cribbage, or whist with two dummies. If I can get on very well mth my education at Madame Marly's, and then get a situation as morning governess for a large salary — morning governesses do get high salaries sometimes — how hapj^ papa and I might be ! " Her spirits revived under the influence of cheering thoughts Buch as these. I have said before that it was scarcely possible for her to be long unhappy. Her step grew lighter and faster as sh© Waiting. 4S walked homeward. The glory of the gaslights brightened with the brightening of her hopes. She began to Unger now and then before some of the most attractive of the shops, with almost the Bame intense rapture and delight that she had felt in the morning. She was standing before a book-stall, or rather an open shop, reading the titles of the paper-covered romances, with the full glare of the shadeless gaslights on her face, when she was startled by a loud, hearty English voice, which exclaimed without one murmur of warning or preparation, — " Don't tell me that this tall young woman with the golden curls is Miss Eleanor Vandeleur Vane, of Regent's Gardens, Ki n g's Eoad, Chelsea, London, Middlesex. Please don't tell me anything of the kind, for I can't possibly beUeve anybody but Jack-and-the-beanstalk could have grown at such a rate." Eleanor Vane turned round to greet this noisy gentleman. " Oh, Dick," she cried, putting both her hands mto the broad palm held out before her, "is it really you? Who would have thought of seeing you in Paris ? " " Or you, Miss Vane P We heard you were at school at Brixton." " Yes, Dick," the young lady answered, " but I have come home now. Papa lives here, you know, and I am going to a finishing school in the Bois de Boulogne, and then I am going to be a morning governess, and live with papa always." " You are a great deal too pretty for a governess," said tha young man, looking admiringly at the bright face lifted up to him; " your mistress would snub you. Miss Vane, you'd better "^ "AVhat, Dick?" " Try our shop." " What, be a scene-painter, Dick P " cried Eleanor, laughing , " It would be funny for a woman to be a scene-painter." " Of course. Miss Vane. But nobody talked of scene-painting. You don't suppose I'd ask you to stand on the top of a ladder S> put in skies and backgrounds, do you P There are other occu- pations at the Royal Waterloo Phconix besides scene-painting. B lit I don't want to talk to you about that : I know how savage your poor old dad used to be when we talked of the Phoenix. \\niat do you tliink I am over here for P " "What, Richard?;' " Why, they're doing a great drama in eight acts and thirty- two tableaux at the Porte St. Martin ; Raoul I'Empoisonnenr R's called, Ralph the Poisoner; and I'm over here to pick up the music, sketch the scenery and effects, and translate the play. Smuething like versatility there, I think, for five-and-tnirty Blullings a week." " Dear Richard, you were always so clever.' " To be sure ; it run* in the family." 46 Eleanor's Victory. " And the Signora, she is well, I Hope ? " " Pretty well ; the teachincf goes on tant ton que mauvaia, as onr friends over here say. The dementi is a little thinner vs tone than when you heard it last, and a httle farther off concert pitch ; but as most of my aunt's pupils sing flat, that's rather an advantage than otherwise. But where are you going, Miss Yane ? because wherever it is, I'd better see you there. If we stand before this book-stall any longer, the proprietor may think we're going to buy something, and as the Parisians don't seem a buying people, the delusion might be too much for his nerves. Where shaU I take you. Miss Vane ? " "To the Rue de I'Archeveque, if you please, behind the Madeleine. Do you know it ? " " Better than I know myself, Miss Y. The Signora. lived in that direction when I was a boy. But how is it that you are all alone in the streets at this time of night ? " " Papa had an appointment with two gentlemen, and he " " And he left you to walk home alone. Then he still " " Still what, Eichard?" The young man had stopped hesitatingly, and looked far- tively at Eleanor. " He stUl stays out late at night sometimes : a bad habit, !Miss Yane. I was in hopes he would have been cured of it by this time ; especially as there are no dens in the Palais Royal now-a-days ; to the honour and glory of Napoleon the Third be it spoken." " No dens in the Palais Royal," cried Eleanor. " What do you mean?" " Nothing, my dear IVIiss Nelly, except that Paris used to be a very wild and wicked place." "But it isn't now?" " Oh dear, no. Our modem Lutetia is a very paradise of in- nocent dehghts, whose citizens enjoy themselves ^'irtuously under the sheltering dictatoriaUsm of a paternal government. You don't understand me — well, never mind, you are still the bright-faced child you were in the King's Road, Chelsea, only taller and prettier — that's aU." Miss Yane had taken her companion's arm, and they were walking away towards the Madeleine by this time ; the young lady clinging to her new friend almost as confidingly as she had done to her father. I don't think the confidence was mispiaced. Thia young man, with the loud voice and the somewhat reckless manner, was only assistant scene-painter and second violin-player at a trans- pontine theatre. He was bound by no tie of relationship to the beautiful girl hanging upon his arm. Indeed, his acguaint- ance with Mr. Yane and ms dau;jhter had been of that accidental Waiting. 47 and desnltory kind out of which the friendships of poor people generally arise. The yount? man had lodged with his aunt in the same house that for nearly six years had sheltered the proud old spendtlirift and his motherless cliild, and some of Eleanor's earHest memo- ries were of Signora Picirillo and her nephew Richard Thornton. She had received her first lessons upon the pianoforte from the kind Signora, whose Neapohtan husband liad died years and f fears before, leaving her nothing but an Italian name, which ooked very imposing at the top of the circulars which the music-mistress was wont to distribute amongst her pupils. Richard Thornton, at eight-and-twenty, seemed a very elderly person in the eyes of the school-girl of fifteen. She could re- member him years, and years, and years ago, as it seemed to her, iitting in his shirt sleeves through the long summer afternoons, ander the shadow of the scarlet-runners in the Uttle garden at 3helsea, smoking dirty clay pipes and practising popular melo- dies upon his fiddle. Her father had thought him a nuisance, and had been lofty and reserved in his patronage of the young man ; but to Eleanor, Dick had been the most delightful of play- fellows, the %visest of counsellors, the most learned of instruc- tors. "Whatever Richard did. Miss Vane insisted upon also doing, humbly following the genius she admired, with Uttle toddling steps, along the brilliant pathway his talents adorned. I am afraid she had learned to play " God save the Queen," and " Rory O'More," upon Richard's viohn before she had mastered Haydn's " Surprise," or " Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman ?" upon the Signora's shabby old grand piano. She smeared her pinafores mth poor Dick's water-colours, and insisted upon pro- ducing rephcas of the young scene-painter's sketches, with all the houses lop-sided, and the trunks of all the trees gouty. If Dick kept rabbits or silkworms, there was no greater happiness for Miss Yane than to accompany him to Covent Garden Market in quest of cabbage or mulberry leaves. I do not mean that she ever deserted her father for the society of her friend ; but there were times when Mr. Vane absented liimself from his Uttle ^1 ; long days, in which the old man stroUed about the streets ot the West-End, on the look-out for the men he had known in his prosperity, with the hope of borrowing a pound or two, or a handful of loose silver, for the love of Auld Lang Syne ; and longer nights, in which he disappeared from the Chelsea lodging for many dreary hours. Then it was that Eleanor Vane was thrown into the com- panionship of the Signora and her nephew. Then it was that she read Richard's books and periodicals, that she revelled in " Jack Sheppard," and gloated over " Wagner, the Wehr AVolf." Then it was that she played upon the young man's violin, and 48 Eleanor'a Victory. copied his pictures, and destroyed iia water-colours, and gorged his rabbits and silkworms, and loved, and tormented, and ad- mired him, after the manner of some beautiful younger sister, who had dropped from the clouds to be his companion. This is how these two stood towards each other. They had not met for three years until to-night ; and in the interim Miss Eleanor "Vane had grown from a hoyden of twelve into a tall, slender damsel of fifteen. " You are so altered. Miss Vane," Eichard said, as they walked ttiong the boulevard, " that I can't help wondering how it was I knew you." " And you're not altered a bit, Dick," answered the young lady ; " but don't call me Miss Vane — it sounds as if you were laughing at me. Call me Nell, as you used to do, at Chelsea. Do you know, Dick, I contrived to go to Chelsea once last sum- mer. It was against papa's wish, you know, that I should let them find out where I came from at Brixton ; because, you see, Chelsea, or at least the King's Koad, sounds vtdgar, papa thought. Indeed, I beheve he said he lived in Cadogan Place, when the Miss Benjietts asked him the question. He explained it to me afterwards, you know, poor dear ; and it wasn't exactly a story, for he had lodged there for a fortnight once, just after his marriage with mamma, and when he was beginning to get poor. So I was obhged to manage so cleverly to get toKegent'a Gardens, Dick ; and when I did get there you were gone, and the Signora's rooms were to let, and there was a nasty cross old woman in our lodgings, and the scarlet-runners in the garden were so neglected, and I saw your rabbit-hutches, all broken and forgotten in the comer by the dust-hole, but the rabbits were gone. The dear old place seemed so changed, Dick, though Mr. and Mrs. Migson were very kind, and very pleased to see me, but they couldn't teU me where you and the Signora were Hving,** "No, we moved two or three times after leaving Eegent's Gardens. You see we're obhged to study the pupils, NeU, rather than our own convenience. Chelsea was a long way from the "Waterloo Phoenix, in spite of the short cuts ; but wherever thy Signora's pupils are thickest, we're obhged to pitch our tents. They're thickest about Tottenham- court Road and Euston Square way now ; so we're Uving in the Pilasters, Dudley Street." " The Pilasters ! That sounds quite grand, Dick." " Yes, doesn't it ? Magnifique et pas cher. "We've a chimney- Bweep next door but one, and no end of mangles. The Pilasters would be very nice, if we'd two sides of the way, but unfortu- nately we haven't; the other side's stables. It isn't my preju- dices make me object to that ; but the grooms make such an abominable noise cleaning down their horses, and I wake every Waiting. 49 morning ont of a dream in which it's Boxing-night, and my transformation scene is getting the goose." The young man laughed cheerily, and guided his companion across the road to the other side of the boulevard. It was past ten o'clock when they reached the comer of the Rue de I'Arche- vfique, and the butcher's shop was closed. Eleanor knew that she had only to push open the little side door, and that she would find the key of her father's rooms in the custody of the butcher's wife. She was very tired, almost ready to drop, poor girl, for she had walked a long way since ahghting at the Palais Royal with her father; but she was almost sorry that she had reached her destination. The sense of her loneliness returned, now that she was to part with her old friend. " Thank yon very much for seeing me home, Dick," she said, shaking hands with the young scene-painter. " It was very BcLfish of me to bring you so far out of your way." " Selfish of you ! \Vliy, you don't suppose I'd let yon prowl about the streets by yourself, Nell ?" Eleanor's face flushed as her friend said this : there was a reproach to her father implied in the speech. " It was my own fault that I was so late," she said. " It was only just nine when papa left me ; but I loitered a httle, looking at the shops. I shall see you again, Dick, I hope. But of course I shall, for you'U come and see papa, won't yon ? Hew long do you stay in Paris ? " " About a week, I suppose. I've a week's leave of absence, and double salary, besides my expenses. They know the value of a clever man at the Phoenix, Miss Vane," " And where are you staying, Dick ?" " At the Hotel des Deux Mondes, near the markets. I've an apartment in convenient proximity to the sky, if I want to study atmospheric efiects. And so you live here, Nell P " " Yes, those are our windows." Eleanor pointed to the open sashes of the entresol : the flufiy worsted curtains were drawn, but the windows were wide open. " And you expect your papa home " " At eleven o'clock at the latest," she said. Richard Thoniton sighed. He remembered Mr. Vane's habits, and he remembered that the httle girl in pinafores had been wont to keep abnormal hours in her long watches for her father's coming. He had often foimd her, on his return from the trans pontine theatre at one or two o'clock, with the door of the httla sitting-room ajar, waiting patiently for the old man's coming. " You won't sit up for your papa, Nell," he said, as he shook hands with her. " Oh, no, papa told me not to sit up." D 60 Eleanor's Victory. " Good night, then. Yon look tired, Nell. I'll call to-morrow, and I'll take you to tlie theatre, if your papa -will let you go, and you shall see ' Raoul I'Empoisonneur.' Such a scene, NeU. in the seventh act. The stage divided into eight comj-iartment^ ■with eight different actions going on simultaneously, and fivi murders before the fall of the curtain. It's a great piece, and #ught to make Spavin and Cromshaw's fortune." " And yours, Dick." " Oh, yes. Cromshavf will shake me by the hand in that dehghtful, gentlemanly manner of his : and Spavin — -why Spavin will give me a five-pound no+e for my adaptation of ' Raoul,' and tell every member of the company, in confidence, that all the great scenes have been written in by him, and that the piece was utter rubbish till he reconstructed it." "Poor Richard!" " Yes, Nell, poorer than the gentleman who wrote the alma- nack, I dare say. But never mind, Nell. I don't think the game of hfe pays for much expenditure in the way of illumina- tion. I think the vrisest people are those who take existence easily. Spavin's wealth can't give him anytliing better than diamond studs and a phaeton. The virtuous peasant, Nell, who can slap his chest, and defy his enemies to pick a hole in his green-baize jerkin, gets the best of it in the long run, I dare " But I wish you were rich, Dick, for the Signora's sake," Eleanor said, gently. " So do I, Nelly. I wish I was the lessee of the Phoenix, and I'd bring you out as JuHet, with new palace arches for the ball- room, and a Hme-light in the balcony scene. But, good night, my dear; I mustn't keep you standmg here Hke this, though Earting is such sweet sorrow, that I really shouldn't have the eart to go away to-night if I didn't mean to call to-morrow. That line's rather longer than the original, Nell, isn't it ? " Eleanor Vane laughed heartily at her old friend's random talk, as she wished him good night. AU the hght-heartedness of her careless childhood seemed to return to her ia Richard Thornton's Bociety. Her childhood had not been an unhappy one, remem- ber ; for iQ aU her father's troubles he had contrived to keep his head above water, somehow or other, and the influence of his over-sanguine spirit had kept Eleanor bright and hopeful xmder ivery temporary cloud in the domestic sky. But she felt very desolate and lonely as she pushed open the door and entered the dark passage at the side of the shop. The butcher's wife came out at the sotmd of her footstep, and gave her the key, with some kindly word of greeting, which Eleanof scarcely understood. She could only say, " Bon Boir, madatoe," in her school-girl Waiting. 61 French, as she dragged herself slowly up the little winding stair, Ihoroughly worn out, physically and mentally, by this time. The little entresol seemed very close and stiflmg. She drew back the curtains, and looked out through the open window; but even the street itself seemed oppressively hot in the moon- less, airless August night, Eleanor found half a wax-candle in a flat china candlestick, and a box of matches set ready for her. She lighted this candle, and then flung off her bonnet and mantle, before she sat down near the window. " I shall have a very short time to wait, if papa comes home at eleven o'clock," she thought. Alas ! she remembered in her old childish experiences, that he had never come home at the promised hour. How often, ah, how often, she had waited, counting the weary hours upon the church clocks, — there was one which chimed the quarters ; and trembling sometimes at those strange sounds which break the night silence of every house. How often she had "hoped against hope," that he might, for this once, return at the time he had promised. She took the candle in her hand and looked about for a book. She wanted to while away the dreary interval which she knew must elapse before her father's return. She found a novel of Paul Feval's in a dirty and tattered cover, on the Httle marble- topped writing-table. The leaves were crumpled, and smeared with stains and splotches of grease, for it was Mr. Yane's habit to amuse himself Avith a work of fiction while he took his matu- tinal roll and coffee. He had taken to novel reading in his frivolous old age, and was as fond of a sentimental story as any Bchool-girl, — as his daughter herself. ISIiss Vane drew the lumbering little table to the open win- dow, and sat down before it, with her candle close to her elbow, and the tattered book spread out before her. No breath of air flickered the flame of her candle, or ruffled the golden hair swept back from her brow. The passers-by upon the opposite side of the street — ^they were few and far between by this time — looked up at the lighted win- dow, and saw a pretty picture by the dim gHmmer of that sohtary candle. The picture of a girl, serene in her youth and innocence, bending over her book : her pale muslin dress and auburn hair faintly visible in the subdued hght. Tlie rattle of wheels and the cries of coachmen sounded far off upon the boulevard, and in the Rue de Rivoli, and only made the sdence more palpable in the Rue de I'ATcheveque. Now ajid then a carriage came into that quiet comer, and Eleanor Vane looked up from her book, breathless, eager, expectant, fondly hoping that her father might have come back to her in 62 mieanor's Victory. some hired vehicle : but the solitary carriage always rolled away, until the sound of its wheels mixed with the rattle of the dis- tant wheels upon the boulevards. There were clocks in the distance that struck the quarters. How long those quarters seemed ! Paul Feval was very inte- resting, no doubt. There was an awful mystery in those greasy tattered pages : a ghastly mystery about two drowned young women, treacherously made away with, as it seemed, upon the shore of a dreary river overshadowed by wiUows. There were villains and rascals paramount throughout this delightful ro- mance ; and there was mystery and murder enough for half a dozen novels. But Eleanor's thoughts wandered away from the page. The dreary river bank and the ghostly poUard-willows, the drowned young women, and the ubiquitous villains, aU mingled themselves with her anxious thoughts about her father ; and the trouble in the book seemed to become a part of the trou- ble in her own mind, adding its dismal weight to her anxieties. There were splotchy engravings scattered here and there through the pages of Monsieur Feval's romance, and Eleanor fancied by-and-by that the villain in these pictures was like the stdky stranger who had followed her father and the Frenchman away towards the Barriere Saint Antoine. She fancied this, although she had scarcely seen that silent stranger's face. He had kept it, as it seemed, purposely averted, and she had only caught one glimpse of the restless black eyes tmder the shadow of his hat, and the thick moustache that shrouded his mouth. There is always something mysterious and unpleasant in the idea of anything that has been hidden from Tis, however trivial and insignificant that thing may be. Eleanor Yane, growing more and more nei-vous as the slow hours crept away, began to worry herself with the vivid recollection of that one brief glimpse in which she had seen the silent stranger's face. " He cannot have a good countenance," she thought, " or the recollection of it would not make me so uncomfortable. How rude he was, too ! I did not much hke the Frenchman, but at least he was pohte. The other man was veiy disagreeable. I hope he is not a friend of papa's." And then she returned to the drowned young women, and the water-side, and the willows ; trying in vain to bury herself in the romance, and not to Hsten 60 eagerly for the striking of the quarters. Sometimes she thought, " Before I turn over to the next page, papa will be home," or, " Before I can finish this chapter I shall hear hia etep upon the stairs." Breathless though the night was, there were many sounds that disturbed and mocked this anxious watcher. Sometimes the door below shook — as if by some mysterious agency, there being no wind — and Eleanor fancied that her father's hand was on the The Black BuiXavntj hy the Eiver. 63 latcb. Sometimea the stairs creaked, and she started from her chair, eager to run and receive him, and firmly beheving that ho ■was steaUng stealthily up to his apartments, anxious not to disturb the sleeping inmates of the house. She had known his cautious footfall sound exactly thus in her old midnight watches. But all these sounds were only miserable delusions. Quarter after quarter, each quarter longer than the last, hour after hour Btruck from the clocks distant and near. The ratthng of the wheels upon the boulevards had died gradually away, and at last had ceased altogether. It was long past four, and Eleanor had pushed aside her book. It was dayhght, — grey, cold, morning, chill and dismal after the oppressive August mght, and she stood now in the window watching the empty street. But still the quarters chimed from the distant clocks : those distant chimes had become terribly distinct now in the early morning stillness. But the silence was not of long duration. The rumble of waggon wheels sounded far away in the Rue St. Honor6. The rush and clatter of a detachment of cavalry clashed upon the asphalte of the Place de la Concorde. The early sound 01 a horn called out some wretched recruits to perform their morning exercise in the court-yards of the Louvre. The cheer- ful voices of workpeople echoed in the streets ; dogs were barking, birds singing, the yellow sun mounting in a cloudless heaven. But there were no signs of the coming of George Vane with the morning sunhght ; and as the day grew older and brighter, the anxious face of the pale watcher at the open window only grew paler and more anxious. CHAPTER VL THE BLACK BUILDING BT THE EIVEIL RiCHABD Thornton was by no means an early riser. He was generally one of the last of those gentlemen who shuffled into the orchestra at the ten o'clock rehearsal of a new melodrama, in which all the effect of a murder or an abduction depended upon the pizzicato tmttering of violins, and the introduction of explosive chords at particular crises in the action of the piece. Mr. Thornton was a sluggard, who complained most bittorly of the heartlessness of stage managers and prompter's minions, who seemed to take a malicious delight in nailing cruel shps of paper to the door-post of the Phoenix; terrible mandates, wherein the Full Band was called at ten ; " no ten minutes ; " the meaning of this last mysterious clause being that the ten minutes' grace which is usually accorded to the tardy performer shall on this occasion be cut off and done away with. 54f JEleanor*s Victory. But Ricliard was out for a holiday now. The eyes of MessrsL Spavin and Cromshaw would fain have followed him in hii Parisian wanderings, to see that he did double work for his double wage ; but the proprietors of the Royal Waterloo Phoenix not being blessed with the gift of clairvoyance, Mr. Thornton defied and snapped his fingers at them, secure in the conscious- ness of his own value. " If J. T. Jumballs, the author of all the original dramas they have done at the Phoenix; for the last ten years, understood French, he'd do ' Raoul ' for two pound ten," thought Richard, , as he stood before his looking-glass in the blazing August sun- shine, rubbing his chin contemplatively, and wondering whether the bristles would be too strong if he let them stop till another morning. If the honest truth is to be recorded, it must be acknowledged that Mr. Thornton was by no means too scrupulous in the per- formance of his toilet. He had a habit of forgetting to shave until his chin was covered by an appearance of red stubble, dappled here and there by patches of blue and brown, for his beard was wont to crop up in unexj^ected hues, which surprised even himself. He sympathized with the great lexicographer in not having any overstrained partiahty for clean linen, and, indeed, usually wore a coloured shirt, the bosom of which was arabesqued with stray splashes of whitewash and distemper, to say nothing of occasional meandering evidences of the numerous })ints of porter imbibed by the young artist during his day's abour. When Mr. Thornton bought a new suit of clothes he put them on, and wore them continuously ; and ate and drank and painted in them until they were so worn and frayed, and enfeebled by ill treatment, that they began to drop away from him in rusty fragments Like the withered leaves which fall from a sturdy young oak. There were people who declared that Mr. TTiomton slept in his ordinary costume ; but of course this was a cruel slander. To walk eight or nine miles a day to and fro between the place of your abode and the scene of your occupation ; to paint the best part of the scenery for a large theatre in which new pieces are brought out pretty frequently ; to play second fiddle, and attend early rehearsals upon cold mornings ; to jot down the music cues in a melodrama, or accompany Mr. Grigsby in his new comic song, or Madame Rosalbini in her latest cachuca; %nd to adapt a French drama, now and then, by way of adding a few extra pounds to your income, is not exactly to lead an idle life ; so perhaps poor Richard Thornton may be forgiven if his friends had occasion to laugh at his indifi'erence upon the sub- ject of soap and water. They even went so far as to call him "Dirty Dick," in their more facetious moments; but I don't I7z« Black Building hy the River. 55 think the obnoxious sobriquet wounded Richard's feelings. Everybody liked him and respected him as a generous-hearted, genial-tempered, honourable-minded fellow, who would scarcely have told a he to save his Ufe, and who scorned to drink a pint of beer that he couldn't pay for, or to accept a favour which he didn't mean to return. People at the Phoenix knew that Richard Thornton's father had been a gentleman, and that the young man had a certaia pride of his own. He was the only man in the theatre who neither abused nor flattered his employers. The carpenters and gasmen touched their caps when they talked to him, though ha was shabbier than any of those employes ; the Uttle ballet girli were fond of him, and came to tell him their troubles when the cruel stage-manager had put their names down for shilling fines in a honible book which was to be seen on the treasury table every Saturday morning. The old cleaners of the theatre told Mr. Thornton about their rheumatic knee-joints, and came to hiTTi for sympathy after dreary hours of scouring. He had patience with and compassion for every one. People knew that he was kind and tender-hearted ; for his pencil initials always appeared in some obscure comer of every subscription list, against a sum which was bulky when taken in relation to the amount of his salary. People knew that he was brave, for he had once threatened to fling Mr. Spavin into the pit when that gentleman had made some insinuation impeaching Richard's onour as to the unfair use of gold-leaf in the Enchanted Caves of Azure Deep. They knew that he was dutiful, and kind, and true to the old music-mistress with whom he Hved, and whom he helped to supiDort. They knew that when other men made hght of sacred things, and were witty and philosophical upon very solamn subjects, Richard Thornton would leave the assembly gravely and quietly, how eloquent or Hvely soever he might have been before. People knew all this, and were respectful to the young scene-painter, in spite of the rainbow smears of paint upon his shabby coat, and the occasional fringe of mud upon the frayed edges of his trousers. Upon this August morning Mr. Thornton made very short work of his toilet. " I won't go out to breakfast," he thought, " though I can get two courses and a dessert in the Palais Royal, to say nothing of half a bottle of sour claret, for fifteen pence. I'll get some coffee and rolls, and go to work at some of the scenes for ' Raoul.' " He rang a bell near his bed, pushed a table to the window, which looked out into the quadrangle of the hotel, and sat down with a battered tin box of water-colours and a few squares of Bristol board before him. He had to ring several times before one of the waiters condeacended to answer his summons, but he 56 MUanor'a Victory, worked away cheerily, smoking as lie worked, at a careful water- coloured copy of a rough pencil sketch which he had made a couple of nights before in the pit of the theatre. He didn't leave off to eat his breakfast when it came, by-and- by; but ate his rolls and drank his coffee in the pauses of his work, only laying down his brush for a minute or so at a time. The scene was a street in old Paris, the houses very dark and brown, with over-hanging latticed windows, exterior staircases, practicable bridges, and all sorts of devices which called for the employment of a great deal of glue and pasteboard in Richard's model. This scene was only one out of eight, and the young scene-painter wanted to take perfect models of all the eight scenes back to the Phoenix. He had M. Michel Levy's sixty centimes edition of the new play spread open before him, and referred to it now and again as he painted. " Humph ! Enter Baoul down staircase in flat. Baoul's a doctor, and the house with the staircase is his. The house at tho vomer belongs to Gohemouche, the comic barber, and the prac- ^cable lattice is Madeline's. She'll come to her window by-and- by to talk to the doctor, whom she thinks a very excellent man ; though he's been giving her mild doses of aqua tofana for the last three weeks. Catherine de Medicis comes over the practicable bridge, presently, disguised as a nun. I wonder how many melo- dramas poor Catherine has appeared in since she left this mortal Btage ? Did she ever do anythmg except poison people, I wonder, while she was ahve ? She never does anything else at the Porte Saint Martin, or on the Surrey side of the Thames. I must sketch the costumes, by-and-by. Eaoul in black velvet and scarlet hose, a pointed beard, straight eyebrows, short black hair, — austere and dignified. Cromshaw will do Baoul, of course ; and Spavin will play the light- comedy soldier who gets drunk, and tears off Catherine's velvet mask in the last scene. Yes, that'U be ft great scene on our side of the water. Charles the Ninth — he's a muff, so anybody can play him — has just finished reading the arsenicated edition of a treatise on hawking, closes the last page )of the book, feels the first spasm. Catherine, disguised as a nun. Las been followed by Spavin — by the comedy-soldier, I mean — to the Louvre, after a conversation having been overheard between her and Baoul. The King, in the agonies of spasmodic affection, asks who has murdered him. ' That woman — that sorceress — that fiend in human form ! ' cries the soldier, snatching the mask from Catherine's face. — 'Merciful Heaven, it is my mother!' Bhrieks the King, falling dead with a final spasm. That 'It ia my mother!' ought to be good for three rounds of applause at least. I dare say Spavin mil have the speech transferred from the King's part to his own. ' Merciful He,iven, it is Ms mother l* would do just as welL" The Black Building hy the Biver. 67 Poor Richard Thornton, not having risen very early, worked on till past five o'clock in the afternoon before his model was finished. He got up with a sigh of rehef when the pasteboard presentment of the old Parisian street stood out upon the Uttle table, square and perfect. He filled his pipe and walked up and down before the table, smokmg and admiring his work in an innocent rapture. " Poor Nelly," he thought presently. " I promised I would call in the Rue de 1' Archeveque to-day, to pay my respects to th* old chap. Not that he'd particularly care to see me, I dare say, but Nell is such a darUng. If she asked me to stand on my head, and do poor old Gofiie's ^ome-fiy business, I tliink I should try and do it. However, it is too late to call upon Mr Vandeleur Vane to-day, so I must put that ofi" till to-morrow. I must drop in again at half-price at the Porte Saint Martin, to have another look at the scene in eight compartments. That'll be rather a poser for the machinist at the Phoenix, I flatter myself. Yes, I must have one more look at it, and — Ah! by the bye, there's the Morgue!" Mr. Thornton finished his pipe and rubbed his chin with a reflective air. "Yes, I must have a look at the Morgue before I go," he thought ; " I promised that old nuisance, J. T. Jumballs, that I'd refresh my memory about the Morgue. He's doing a great drama in which one-half of the drcmiatis personce recognize the other half dead on the marble slabs. He's never been across the Channel, and I think his notions of the Morgue are somewhat foggy. He fancies it's about as big as Westminster Abbey, I know, and he wants the governors to give him the whole depth of the stage for his great scene, and set it obhquely, like the Assyrian hall in ' Sardanapalus,' so as to give the idea of illimit- able extent. I'm to paint the scene for nim. ' The interior of the Morgue hy lamplight. The meeting of the living and the dead.' That'll be rather a strong line for the bill, at any rate. I'll go and have some dinner in the Palais Royal, and then go down and have a look at the gloomy place. An exterior wouldn't be bad, with Notre Dame in the distance, but an interior — Bah ! J. T. J. is a clever fellow, but I wish his genius didn't he so much in the charnel-house." He put on his hat, left his room, locked the door, and ran down the pohshed staircase, whisthng merrily as he went. He was glad to be released from his work, pleased at the prospect of a lew hours' idleness in the foreign city. Many people, inhabitanta and visitors, thought Paris dull, dreary, and deserted in this hot August weather, but it was a delightful change from the Pilasters and the primajval solitudes of Northumberland Square, that quaiat, grim quadrangu: of big houses, whose prim middle-clasa 68 El4anor'$ Victory. mhabitants looked coldly over their smart wire ■window-blinds at poor Richard's shabby coat. Mr. Thornton got an excellent dinner at a great bnstling restaurateur's in the Palais Eoyal, where for two francs one might dine upon all the dehcacies of the season, iu a splendid saloon, enlivened by the martial braying of a brass band in the garden below. The carte de jour almost bewildered Richard by its extent and grandeur, and he chose haphazard from the catalogue of soups which the obhging waiter gabbled over for his instruction. He read aU the pleasing by-laws touching the non-division of dinners, and the admissibihty of exchanges in the way of a dish for a dessert, or a dessert for a dish, by payment of a few extra centimes. He saw that almost all the diners hid themselves behind great wedges of orange-coloured melon at an early stage of the banquet, and generally wound up with a small white washing-basin of lobster salad, the preparation of which was a matter of slow and solemn care and thought. He ordered hia dinner in humble imitation of these accompKshed hahituSs, and got very good value for his two francs. Then he paid his money; bowed to the graceful lady who sat in splendid attire in a very bower of salads and desserts, and went down a broad staircase that led into a street behind the Palais Royal, and thence to the Rue RicheUeu. He treated himself to a cup of coffee and a cigar at a cafe in the Place de la Bourse, and then strolled slowly away towards the Seine, smoking, and dawdKng to look at this and that as he walked along. It was nearly eight o'clock, therefore, when he emerged, from some narrow street, upon the quay, and made his way towards that bridge beneath whose shadow the Morgue hides, hke some foul and unhallowed thing. He did not much like the task which Mr. JumbaUs had imposed upon him, but he was too good-natured to refuse comphance with the transpontine dramatist's desire, and far too conscientious to break a promise once made, however disagreeable the performance of that promise might prove. He walked on resolutely, therefore, towards the black shed-like building. "I hope there are no bodies there to-night." he thought. " One glance roimd the place wUl show me aU I want to see. I hope there are no poor dead creatures there to-night." He stopped before going in, and looked at a couple of women who were standing near, chattering together with no little gesticulation. He asked one of these women the question. Were there any 6odies in the Morgue ? Yes, — the women both answered with one voice. There had Suspense. 59 not long been 'bro-nglit the body oT a gentleman, an officer it waa tbougbt, poisoned in a gaming-house. A murder, perhaps, or a suicide ; no one knew which. Eichard Thornton shrugged his shoulders as he turned away from the idle gossips. " Some people would call me a coward if they knew how I dislike going into this place," he thought. He threw away his cigar, took off his hat, and slowly crossed the dark threshold of the Parisian dead-house. When he came out again, whic^h was not until after the lapse of at least a quarter of an hour, his face was almost as white as the face of the corpse he had left \vithin. He vent upon the bridge, scarcely knowing where he went, and walking Uke a man who walks in liis sleep. Not more than half a dozen yards from the Morgue he cam© suddenly upcm the lonely figure of a girl, whose arm rested on the parapet of the bridge, and whose pale face was turned towards the towers of Notre Dame. She looked up as he approached, and called him by his name. "You here, Eleanor?" he cried. "Come away, child; come away, for pity's sake I " CHAPTER Vn. SUSPENSE. Bleanoe Vaxe and the scene-painter stood upon the bridge looking at each other for a few moments after Richai-d's cry pf mingled terror and astonishment. Had not Eleanor's mind been entirely absorbed by one cruel anxiety, she would have wondered at her old friend's strange greeting. As it was she took no heed of his manner. The shadows of the summer night were gathering over the city and upon the quiet river ; the towers of Notre Dame loomed dimly through the twihght. "Oh, Richard!" Eleanor cried, "I have been so unhappy. Papa didn't come home all last night, nor yet to-day. I waited for bim hour after hour until late in the afternoon ; and then the house seemed unbearable ; I couldn't stay in any longer, and I came out to look for him. I have been far up on the Boulevard where I parted with him last night, and all the way along the crowded streets about there : and then through other streets, till I found myself down here by the water, and I'm so tired ! Oh, Dick, Dick, how unkind of papa not to come home ! How unkind of my darling father to give me this misery." She clasped her hands convulsively upon her companion's arm, and bending her head, burst into tears. Those tears were I 60 Eleanor's Vietoty. the first whicli she had shed in all her trouble ; the first relief after long hours of agonizing suspense, of weary watching. " Oh, how can papa treat me so?" she cried, amid her sob- bing. " How can he treat me so P" Then, suddenly raising her head, she looked at Richard Thorn- ton, her clear grey eyes dUated with a wild terror, which gave her face a strange and awful beauty. " Richard !" she cried, "Richard! you don't think that there — that there is — anything wrong — ^that anything has happened to my father?" She did not wait for him to answer, but cried out directly, as ix shrinking in terror from the awful suggestion in her own words : " ^Vhat should happen to him ? he is so well and strong, poor darling. If he is old, he is not lihe an old man, you know. The eople of the house in the Rue de I'Archeveque have been very iind to me; they say I'm quite fooKsh to be frightened, and they told me that papa stopped out all night once last summer. He went to Versailles to see some friends, and stayed away all night without giving any notice that he was going to do so. I know it is very silly of me to be so frightened, Richard. But I always was frightened at Chelsea if he stayed out. I used to fancy all sorts of things. I thought of all kinds of dreadful things last night, Dick, and to-day; until my fancies almost drove me mad." During aU this time the scene-painter had not spoken. He seemed unable to offer any word of comfort to the poor girl who clung to him in her distress, looldng to him for consolation and hope. She looked wonderingly into his face, puzzled by his silence, which seemed unfeehng; and it was not like Richard to be unfeeling. " Richard !" she cried, almost impatiently. " Richard, speak to me ! You see how much misery I have sufiered, and you don't say a word ! You'U help me to find papa, won't you ? " The young man looked down at her. Heaven knows she would have seen no lack of tenderness or compassion ia his face, if it had not been hidden by the gathering gloom of the August evening. He drew her hand through his arm, and led her away towards the other side of the water, leaving the black roof o! the dead-house behind him. " There is nothing I would not do to help you, Eleanor," he said, gently, " God knows my heart, my dear ; and He knowe how faithfully I will try to help you." " And you will look for papa, Richard, if he should not come home to-night, — he may be at home now, you know, and he may be angry with me for coming out alone, instead of waiting quietly till he returned ; but if he should not come to-night^ Suspense, 61 youTl look for him, won't you, Richard ? You'll search all Paris till you find liimp" " I'll do everything that I could do for you if I were your brother, Eleanor," the young man answered, gravely; "there are times in our lives when nobody but God can help us, my dear, and when we must turn to Him. It's in the day of trouble that we want His help, Nelly." " Yes, yes, I know. I prayed, last night, again, and again, and again, that papa might come back soon. I have been say- ing the same prayer all to-day, Eichard ; even just now, when you found me standing by the jmrapet of the bridge, I was praying for my dear father. I saw the church towers looking so grand and solemn in the twilight, and the sight of them made me remember how powerful God is, and tnat He ean always grant our prayers." " If it seems best and wisest in His sight, Nell." " Yes, of course ; sometimes we pray for fooUsh things, but there could be nothing foolish in wishing my darling father to come back to me. Where are you taking me, Dick ?" Eleanor stopped suddenly, and looked at her companion. She liad need to ask the question, for Richard Thornton was leading her into a labyrinth of streets in the direction of the Luxem- bourg, and he seemed to have very little notion whither he was going. " This is not the way home, Richard," Eleanor said ; " I don't know where we are, but we seem to be going farther and far- ther away from home. Will you take me back to the Rue de I'Archeveque, Dick? We must cross the river again, you know, to get there. I want to go home at once. Papa may have come home, and he'll be angry, perhaps, if he finds me absent. Take me home, Dick." " I win, my dear. We'll cross the water farther on, by tha Louvre ; and now tell me, Eleanor — I — I can't very well make inquiries about your father, unless I fully understand the cir- cumstances under which you parted from him last night. How was it, my dear? What happened when Mr. Vane left you upon the Boulevard?" They were walking in a broad, quiet street in which there wem very few passers-by. The houses stood back behind ponderou* p,tes, and were hidden by sheltering walls. The stately mansions between court and garden had rather a decayed aspect, which gave a certain dreariness to their grandeur. The fashionablft World seemed to have deserted this quiet quarter for the leafy- avenues leading away from the Champs Elys^es. Richard and Eleanor walked ^owly along the broad footway. The stillness of the soft summer night had some effect upon the ichool-girl's fever of impatience. The grave, compassionate 02 Eleanor's Victory. tones of her friend's voice soothed her. The hnrst of passionate weeping which had ahnost convulsed her sHght frame half an hour before, had been an unspeakable rehef to her. _ She clung to her companion's arm confidingly, and walked patiently by his side ; without questioning him as to w^here he was leading her, though she had a vague idea that he was not taking her home- wards. . " I will not be foolish about papa," she said ; " I will do as you tell me, Richard; I will trust in God. I am sure my dear father will return to me. We are so fond of each other ; you know, Eichard, we are all the world to each other ; and my poor darling looks so hopefully forward to the day in wliich he will have Mr. de Crespigny's fortune. I don't hope for that quite so much as papa does, Dick ; for Mr. de Crespigny may Hve to be a very, very old man, and it seems so wicked to wish for any cue's death. The day I look forward to is the day when I shall have finished my education, and be able to work for papa. That must be almost better than being rich, I should think, Dick. I can't imagine any happier fate than to work for those we love." Her face brightened as she talked, and she turned to her com- panion, looking to him for sympathy ; but Eichard's head was averted, and he seemed to be staring absently at the houses upon the opposite side of the way. He was silent for some moments after Eleanor had left off Bpeaking ; and then he said, rather abruptly : " Tell me, my dear, how did you part with your father last night?" "Why, we had been dining on the Boulevard; and after dinner papa took me for a long walk, ever so far, past all the theatres, and he had promised to take me to the Ambigue or the Poi-te Saint Martin ; but as we were coming back we met two gentlemen, friends of papa's, who stopped him, and said they had an appointment with him, and persuaded him to go liack with them." " Back with them ! Back where ? " " I mean back towards a big stone gateway we had pas'^ed a little time before. I only know they turned tb.vt way, but I don't know where they went. I stood and watched them till they were out of sight." " And the two men, what were they like ? " " One of them was a Httle Frenchman, stout and rosy-faced, with a Hght moustache and beard hke the Emperor's. He waa nnartly dressed, and had a cane, which he kept twirling when he talked to papa." " Did you hear what he saidP " " No, ne spoke in a low voice, and he talked Frencli." " But yon speak French, Eleanor ? " Suspenie. 63 ** Yea, but not as thejr speak it here. The people seem to talk BO fast here, it's quite difficult to understand them." " But the other man, Nell ; what was he Uke ? " " Oh, he was a disagreeable-looking man, and seemed to have a sulky manner, as if he was offended with papa for breaking his appointment, and didn't care how the matter ended. I ecarcely saw his face — at least only for a moment — just long enough to see that he had black eyes, and a thick black mous- tache. Ho was tall, and shabbily dreesed, and I fancied he was an Enghshman, though he never once spoke." " He never spoke ! It was the Frenchman, then, who per- suaded your father to go away with him ? " " Yes." " And he seemed very anxious P " " Oh, yes, very anxious." Kichard Thornton muttered something between his set teeth, something which sounded like a curse. " Tell me one thing, Eleanor," he said. " Your poor father never was too well off, I know. He could not be likelj^ to have much money about him last night. Do you know if he had any ? " " Yes, he had a great deal of money." " What do you mean by a great deal P A few pounds, I suppose ? " " Oh, much more than that," Eleanor answered. " He had a hundred pounds — a hundred pounds in new bank notes — French notes. It was the money my half-sister, Mrs. Ban- nister, had sent him, to pay for my education at Madame Marly's." " Mi-s. Bannister," said Eichard, catching at the name. " Ah, to be sure, I remember now. Mrs. Bannister is your sister. She is very well off, is she not, and has been kind to you? If you were in any trouble, you would go to her, I suppose, Eleanor ? " " Go to her if I were in trouble ! Oh, no, no, Dick, not for the world ! " " But why not ? She has been kind to you, hasn't she, NeU ? " " Oh, yes, very kind in paying money for my education, and aU that ; but you know, Kichard, there are some people who Beem to do kind things in an unkind manner. If you knew the cruel letter that Mrs. Bannister wrote to papa — the cruel, humiliating things she said only a few days ago, you couldn't wonder that I don't Kke her." " But she is your sister, Nell ; your nearest relation." " Except papa." " And she ought to love you, and be kind to you. She live* at Bayewater, I think I've heard you say ? " 64 Eleanor's Victory. " Yes, in Hyde Park Gardens." " To be sure. Mrs. Bannister, Hyde Park Gardens, Bayswater." He repeated the name and address, as if lie wished to impress tliem upon liis memory. " I will take you home now, Nell," lie said. " My poor child, you must be tired to death." " How can I tliink about being tired, Richard," exclaimed Eleanor, " when I am so anxious about papa ? Oh, if I only find him at home, what happiness it will be !" But she hung heavily upon her friend's arm, and Richard knew that she was very tired. She had been wandering about Paris for several hours, poor child, hither and thither, in the long, unfamiliar streets, following all sorts of unlikely people who looked in the distance something like her father ; hoping again and again, only again and again to be disappointed. They turned into a wider thoroughfare presently, and the scene-painter called the first hackney vehicle which passed him, and lifted Eleanor into it. She was almost fainting with fatigue and exhaustion. " What have you had to eat to-day, Nell ? " he asked. She hesitated a little, as if she had forgotten what she had eaten, or indeed whether she had eaten at all. ' There was some cofiee and a couple of rolls sent for papa fcfais morning. He has his breakfast sent him from a traiteur's, you know. I had one of the rolls." " And you've had nothing since ? " " No. How could I eat when I was so wretched about papaP" Richard shook his head reproachfully. •' My darling Nell ! " he said, " you promised me just now that you'd be a good girl, and trust in Providence. I shall take you somewhere and give you some supper, and then you must promise me to go home and get a good night's rest." " I will do whatever you tell me, Richard," Eleanor answered, submissively, " but let me go home first, please, and see if papa has come back." The scene-painter did not for a few moments reply to this request, but he answered presently in an abstracted tone : " You shall do what you hke, Nell." He told the coachman to drive to the Rue de I'Archeveque, but he would not let Eleanor alight from the vehicle when they reached the comer of the street and the Httle butcher's shop, eager as she was to spiing out and run into the house. " Stay where you are, Nell," he said authoritatively. "I will make all inquiries." Eleanor obeyed him. She was exhausted by a weary night of watching, a long day of agitation and anxiety, and she was too weak to oppose her old friend. She looked hopelessly tip at the Suspend. 6S open windows on tte entresol. They were exactly as she had left them four or five hours ago. No glimmer of light gave friendly token that the rooms were occupied. Richard Thornton talked to the butcher's wife for a long time, as it seemed to Eleanor ; but he had very little to tell her when he came back to the carriage. Mr. Vane had not returned : that was aU he said. He took his companion to a cafe near the Madeleine, where he insisted u]X)n her taking a large cup of cofiee and a roll. It was all he could jiorsuade her to take, and she begged to be allowed to sit at one of the tables outside the cafe. " She might see her father go by," she said, " on his way to the Rue de I'Archeveque." The two friends sat at a Uttle iron table rather apart from the groups of animated loungers sitting at other tables drinking coffee and lemonade. But George Mowbray Yandeleur Vane did not pass that way throughout the half hour during which Eleanor lingered over her cup of coffee. It was past ten o'clock when Richard Thornton bade her good, night at the thi-eshold of the httle door beside the butcher's shop. " You must promise me not to sit up to-night, NeUy," he said, as he shook hands with her. " Yes, Richard." " And mind you keep your promise this time. I will come and see you early to-morrow. God bless you, my dear, and good night ! " He pressed her hand tenderly. "When she had closed the door behind her, he crossed the narrow street, and waited upon the other side of the way until he saw a Hght in one of the entresol windows. He watched while Eleanor came to this window and drew a dark curtain across it, and then he walked slowly away. " God bless her, poor child," he murmured, in a low, compas- sionale voice, " poor lonely child ! " The grave thoughtfulness of his expression never changed as he walked homewards to the Hotel des Deux Mondes. Late as it was when he reached his chamber on the fifth story, he seated himself at the table, and pushing aside his clay pipe and tobacco- pouch, his water-colours and brushes, his broken palettes and scraps of Bristol board, and all the Utter of his day's work, he took a few sheets of foreign letter jjaper and a bottle of ink fi*om a shabby leather desk, and began to write. He wrote two letters, both rather long, and folded, sealed, and directed them. One was addressed to Mrs. Bannister, Hyde Park Gardens, Baycwater ; the other to Signora Picirillo, the Pilasters, Duiley Street, Northumberland Square. E W Eleanor's Victory. Eicliard Thornton put both tBese letters in his pocket and went out to post them. " I think I have acted for the best," he muttered, as he went back to the hotel near the market-place; "I can do nothing more until to-morrow." CHAPTER Vni. GOOD SAMARITANS. Geokge Yane did not come home. Eleanor kept the promise made to her faithful friend, and tried to sleep. She flung her- self, dressed as she was, upon the Uttle bed near the curtained alcove. She woiild 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 iipon 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 liim warning of his danger, though a word would have done so. The agony of her endeavour to utter the one ciy which would have called that idoHzed father from his death, awoke her. But she had other dreams, dreams of quite a different cha- racter, in which her father was restored to her, rich and pros- perous, and he and she were laughing merrily at all the fooUsh 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 footstejDS upon the stair, the opening of the door, and her father's voice in the next room calHng 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 intermi- nable to her in this wretched, bewildered, half- sleeping, half- waking state ; even longer than they had appeared when she sat tip watching for her father's return. Every fresh dream was a Blow agony of terror and perplexity. At last the grey daylight stole in through the half-cloaed Oood Samaritans. 67 Bhutters, the vague outlines of the furniture gre\t out of tlie darkness; duskily impalpable and f,diastly at first, then sharp and distinct in the cold morning hght. 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 mth her forehead rest- ing on the ■RTiidow sill. "I ^vill 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 Bo Uttle 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 gulf of blackness and horror. A thousand conflicting soimds — 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 aU melted away in the fast-gathering darkness. The sun was shining brightly into the room when the com- gassionate mistress of the house found Mr. Yane's daughter alf kneehng, half lying on the ground, with her head upon the cold sill of the open -svindow, 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. Eichard Thornton came to the Eue de I'Archeveque half an hour after- wards, and went away again directly to look for an Enghsh 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 nen-ous temperament, he said, and that she required httle to be done for her ; she only wanted repose and quiet. Her constitu- tion was superb, and would triumph over a far more serioua attack than tliis. Eichard Thornton took the doctor into the adjoining room, the Httle sitting-room which bore the traces of Mr. Vane's occu- pation, 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 ^vill be better to tell her the truth, if possible, as soon as she recovers from the delirium. The 68 ^Eleanor's Victory. anxiety and suspense have overtaken her brain. Anything "vould be better than that this overstrained state of the mind should continue. Her constitution will rally after a shock ; but with her higlily nervous and imaginative nature, eveiything is to be dreaded from prolonged mental irritation. She is related to you, I suppose P" " 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. Eichard Thornton went into the Uttle 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 youjig woman, and had taken up her post by the invaUd'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, pcmvrette !" Richard sat down quietly by the open window. He took out Michel Levy's edition of " Raoul," a stump of lead pencil, and tlie back of an old letter, and set to work resolutely at his adap- ;ation. 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 Httle room. He sat long and patiently, turning the Poison drama into EngHsh 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 hoxirs of the day. Eleanor awoke at last, and began talking in a rambling, inco- herent 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 Thorn- ton went to the bedside and linked down tenderly at his c h ildish 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 liim ; but the delirium was not over, for she mixed the events of the present with the Chelsea Good Samaritan*. 60 experiences 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 retnm till late at night, when the butcher's wife told him that her charge had been very restless, rfnd had asked repeatedly for her fathei. " What are we to do ?" the good woman said, shrugging her shoulders with a despairing gestiu-e. " 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 teU 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 j^assed, this time very peaceftilly 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 I'Archeveque several times during this second day of Eleanor's illness, but he ordy 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 steahug 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 tne 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 conld the?* 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. Wlien Richard came, he did not come alone. He brought a lady ^^'ith him ; an elderly grey-headed woman, dressed in shabby black. When this lady appeared upon the threshold of the dimly- lighted little bedchamber, Eleau'w Vane suddenly sprang up in 70 Eleanor's Victory. her Viod, and tlirew out her arms witli a wild cry of snrprise and deliglit. "The Signora!" slie 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, di-ew Eleanor's fair head upon her bosom, smoothing the tangled hair vrith xmspeakable tenderness. " My poor child ! " she murmtired again and again. " My poor, poor child !" " But, dear Signora," Eleanor cried, wonderingly, " how is it that you are here ? Why didn't Eichard 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 Kichard sat in the darkness. Eleanor Yane and the Signora were therefore quite alone. Hitherto the invahd's head had rested very quietly upon her friend's bosom, but now she hfted it suddenly and looked full in the Signora's face. " You came to me because I was in trouble," she said. " How ghould I be in trouble so long as my father Uves ? What sorrow can come to me while he is safe ? He is iU, they say, but he will get better ; he wiU 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 sud- denly, 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 impatieni gesture, and, with her hands stiU 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 clasi^ed 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 alBicts us. If there were no sorrow Oood Samaritans. ^ in 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 Hfe than this, Eleanor, Borrow and death would indeed be teirible. 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 you xo!" The Signora waited in vain for some change in the rigid attitude, the stony face. Eleanor Yane still stared blankly at the dead wall before her. " You have all deceived me," she repeated ; " my father ia dead!" It was useless talking to her ; the tenderest words were duU and meaningless jar,^on 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 vn\\ be less to tell her by-and-by, when she begins to get stroncj again." There was, therefore, something more to be told. Little by_ little the fever passed awav ; the crimson spots faded out of the invaUd's hollow cheeks ; the unnatiu-al 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 woukl not listen to poor Eichard, who came sometimes to sit by her side, and tried nis best to beguile her from her grief. She rebelled against their attempted consolation. 72 Realtor's Victory. " What was my father to you P " she cried, passiouately. " You can aflford to forget him. He was all the world to me 1 " But it was not in Eleanor's nature to be long ungi-ateful for the tenderness and compassion of those who were so patient with her in this dark hour of her young Ufe. " How good you are to me," she cried sometimes, " and what a wretch I am to think so Uttle 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 Uke 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 Phoenix 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 coohng down in the early days of September — faint biit refreshing breezes were beginning to blow away the white mists of summer heat upon the Boulevards, when Eleanor Vane was well enough to sit m the httle saloon above the butcher's shop, and drink tea in. the EngHsh 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 she must know 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 mushn dressing-gown, and with her long auburn carls falling upon her shoulders. She had been silent for a long time : her two com- panions watching her furtively, observant of every change in hei countenance. Her cup of tea stood untasted on a Httle table at her side, and she was sitting with her hands loosely locked together in her lap. Good Samaritant. 73 She epote at last, and asked that very qnestion which must inevitably lead to the revelation her friends had to make to her. •' You have never told me how papa died," she said ; " hia death must have been sudden, I know." Eleanor Vane spoke very quietly. She had never before men- tioned her dead father with so httle outward evidence of emo- tion. The hands loosely locked together upon her lap stirred with a slightly tremulous motion ; the face, turned towards the Signora and Eichard Thornton, had a look of fixed inten- sity ; and that was all. " Papa died suddenly, did he notP " she repeated. "Tes, my dear, very suddenly." " I thought so. But why was he not brought home P 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 aU the afternoon in the little sitting-room. He had tried to interest Eleanor Vane in the great set scenes he was preparing for Raotd. He had explaiaed 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 machi- nery. The vampire trap was a subtle contrivance which might have beguiled any one irom their grief, Dick thought; but the wan smile with which Eleanor watched his work only made the scene-painter's heart ache. Kichard sighed as he retimied 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 spendthrilt 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 1 " she said, in a strangely quiet voice. The Signora started and rose suddenly, as if she would have gone to Eleanor. Eichard 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 tl.at 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. And 74 Eleanor's Victory, even now, wten I have suffered so mucli that it seems as if no fiu-ther suflering could touch me, you still deceive me, you still try to keep the tnith from me. My father parted from me in health and spirits. Don't tiifle with me, Signora; I am not a child any longer ; I am not a fooHsh school-girl, whom you can deceive as you hke. I am a woman, and will know the worst. My father kiUedhimself ! ;' 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 shght tremljhng 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 Yane repeated. " It is not certain, then? " The Signora was silent. " Wliy don't you tell me the truth ? " cried the girl, passion- ately. " 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 tnith. 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 teU 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 ; teU 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 tiU 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 botk afraid of her, she looked so grand in her beauty and despair. She seemed indeed, as she had said, no longer a child or a Good SamaHtans. 75 Bchool-girl ; but a woman, desperate and almost terrible in the intensity of her despair. " Let me teU Eleanor the truth of this sail story," Richard Baid ; " it may be told very briefly. ^Vhen 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 cafo in one of the streets near the Barriere Saint Antoine. They were in the habit of going there, it seems, sometimes plaj-ing billiards in the large open room on the ground floor, sometimes playing cards in a cabinet farticulier on 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 playing ecarte, their usual game ; and the Frenchman was looking over your father's hand, now and then advising his play, now and then api^lauding and encouraging liim. All this came out upon inquiry. The Frenchman quitted the cafe at a little betore twelve : your father and the young Englishman stayed till long after midnight, and towards one o'clock they ^^'ere heard at high words, and almost immediately afterwards the Englishman went away, lea\'ing your father, who sent the waiter for some brandy and Avriting materials. He wanted to write a letter before he left, he said." Tlie scene-painter paused, looking anxiously at the face of his listener. The rigid intensity of that pale young face had under- gone 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 hid'len in his hands. The man placed the brandy and writing materials upon the table, and then wont away, but not before he had noticed a strange faint smeU — the smell of some drug, he thought ; but he had no idea then what drug. The waiter went down stairs ; fill the ordinary frequenters ot the place were gone, and the lights were out. The man waited up to let your father out, expecting liim 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 miich as he had left him, except that this time his head was resting ui)on 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 waitt: had smelt was opium, atnl your father had taken a quantity which would have kiEed the .strong- est man in Paris." 76 Meanor*8 Victory, " Why did he do this P " " 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 intelhgible than the rest. It is evidently part of a letter addressed to you ; but it is very mldly and iucoherently worded ; and you must remember that it was written under cir- cumstances of great mental excitement." "Give it me!" Eleanor stretched out her hand with an authoritative gestttre. Richard hesitated. " I wish you to fuUy 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 mis- taken kindness," the girl said, in an unfaltering voice ; " I wiU 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 chUd," said the Signora. Eichard Thornton took a leather memorandimi-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 Yane 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 injured worst your cruel sister, Hortensia Bannia 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 V)ok in my child's face after money which was tci have education. Better td die and rid But my blood be uf>'jn the head of •who has cheated me this night out of Good Samaritan** Ti May ho suffer as he has forget, Eleanor, never forget Robert Lan murderer of your helpless old a cheat and a villain who some day Uve to revenge the fate Eoor old father, who i>rays that God will elpless old man whose iblly 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 atrip of the first, had been torn away. Tnis 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 Uttle chamber. "Oh, my God!" she cried; "hear the vow of a desolate creature, who has only one purpose left in life." Signora PiciriUo knelt down beside her, and tried to clasp her in her arms. " My dear, my dear ! " she pleaded ; " remember how this let- ter 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 hirn 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 liim to die ii\ 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 aim for my father's cruel death." " Eleanor, Eleanor ! " cried the Signora : " is this womanly ? la this Christian-like ? " _ The girl turned upon her. There was almost a supematura) 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 tresaea until they glittered hke molten gold. She looked, in her 78" Uleanor^s Victorjf. desperate resolution and virginal beanty, like some yotmg martyr of the middle ages waiting to be led to the rack. " I don't know whether it is womanly or Christian-Kke," she said, " but I know that it is henceforward the purpose of my life, and that it is stronger than myself." CHAPTER IX. iookiing to the ftjtijee. The story which Eichard Thornton had told Eleanor Yane was the simple record of an unhappy truth. The gay and thought- less spendthrift, the man about town, who had outlived Ids age and sj)ent three fortunes, had ended his life, by his own despe* fate hand, in an obscure cafe near the Barriere Saint Antoine. Amongst other habits of the age in which George Vane had lived, gambhng was pretty prevalent. Mr. Vane's sanguine nature was the very nature which leads a man to the gaming- table, and holds him there under the demoniac fascination of the fatal green cloth, hoj^ing against hope, uaitil his pockets are empty, and he must needs crawl dispirited away, having no more money to lose. This was the one vice of George Vane's life. He had tried to redeem his every-day extravagances by the gamester's frenzied speculations, the gamester's subtle combinations ; wliich are so infallible in theory, so ruinous in practice. Eleanor had never known this. If her father stayed out late at night, and she had to wait and watch for liim through long weary hours of suspense and anxiety, she never knew why he stayed, or why he was often so broken down and wretched when he came home. Other people could guess the reason of the old man's midnight absences from his shabby lodging, but they were too merciful to tell his Uttle girl the truth. In Paris, in a strange city, where his acquaintance were few, the old vice grew stronger, and George Vane spent his nights in gambHng for j^itifxil stakes ia any low haunts to which his disreputable associates deluded him. He picked up strange acquaintance in. these days of hig •decadence, as poor people very often do : young men who were n^andering about the world, j^enniless adventurers, professionlcss young reprobates, getting a very doubtful living by the exercise of their wits ; men who were content to flatter and pay court to the old beau so long as they could win a few francs from liim to pay for the evening's diversion. With such men George Vane had associated for a long time. They won pitiful sums of him, and cheated him without scruple ; but his Ufe was a very dull one, remember ; he had hved for the world, and Bociety of some kind or other was absolutely neces* Loolcing to the Future. 79 iary to him. He clung, therefore, to these men, and wag fain to accept their homage in the hour of his decUne ; and it was with such men as these he had spent the night before his death. It was such men as these who had robbed liim of the money which, but for an unhappy accident, would have been safely handed over to the schoolmistress in the Bois de Boulogne. The old man's death caused very httle excitement in Paris. PubUc gambling-houses had been abolished by the order of the Government long before ; and it was no longer a common thing for desperate men to scatter their brains upon the table on which they had just squandered their money ; but still people knew very well that there was plenty of card-playing, and dice throw- ing, and billiard-playing, always going on here and there in the brilliant city, and the suicide of a gambler more or less was not a thing to make any disturbance. ]\Irs. Bannister wrote a stiffly-worded letter in reply to that in which Richard Thornton told her of her father's death, enclosing an order on Messrs. Blount for the sum she considered sufficient to pay for the old man's funeral, and to support Eleanor for a few weeks. " I should advise her early return to England," the stock- broker's widow wrote, " and I will endeavour to find her some decent situation — as nursery governess or milliner's apprentice, perhaps — but she must remember that I expect her to support herseli', and that she must not look to me for any further assist- ance. I have performed my duty to my father at a considerable loss to myself, but with his death all claim upon me ceases." George Vane had been buried during the early days of his youngest daughter's illness. They placed him amongst a cluster of neglected graves, in a patch ot gi-ound upon the outskirts of P5re la Chaise, a burial place for heretics and suicides, and Eichard Thornton ordered a roughly-hewn cross from one of tho stonemasons near the cemetery. So, far away from the lofty monuments of the Russian princes and the marshals of the "First Empire ; far away from Abelard and Heloise, and all the marble chapels in which devoted survivors pray for the souls of tho beloved dead ; in a desolate and unhallowed patch of weedy turf, where the bones of the departed were only suffered to rest; peaceably for a given number of years, and were stirred up out t)f their coffins periodically to make room for new-comers, George Vane slept the last sleep. He might have been buried as a nameless suicide, biit for the chance which had taken Ricliard Thornton to the Morgue, where he recognized Eleanor's father in the unknown man w^o had been last brought to that gloomv shelter ; for he had had no papers whiob could give any clue to his identity about him at the time of liis death. Upon the momiag after that quiet September afternoon on 80 Eleanor'e Victory. Which. Eleanor Yane had learned tlie true story of her father's death, Signer Picirillo for the first time sjjoke seriously of the future. In the intensity of her first great grief, Eleanor Yane had never once thought of the desolation of her position, nor yet of the sacrifices which the Signora and Richard were making for her sake. She never remembered that they were both lingering in Paris solely on her account : she only knew that they were there, and that she saw them daily, and that the sight of them, good and kind as they were, was pain and weariness to her, like the sight of everything else in the world. She had been singularly quiet since the revelation made to her. After the first burst of passionate vehemence which had succeeded her perusal of her dead father's letter, her manner had grown almost unnaturally calm. She had sat all the evening apart near the window, and Eichard had tried in vain to beguile her attention even for a moment. She kept silence, brooding upon the scrap of paper which lay in her bosom. This morning she sat in a hstless attitude, with her head resting on her hand. She took no heed of the Signora's busy movements from room to room. She made no efibrt to give her old friend any assistance in all the httle household arrangements which took so long to complete, and when at last the music- mistress brought her needlework to the window, and sat down opposite the invahd, Eleanor looked up at her with a dull gaze that struck despair to the good creature's heart. " Nelly, my dear," the Signora said, briskly, " I want to have a htUe serious conversation with you." "About what, dear Signora? " " About the future, my love." " The future ! " Eleanor Yane uttered the word almost as if it had been meaningless to her. " Yes, my dear. You see even I can talk hopefully of the future, though I am an old woman; but you, who are only fifteen, have a long life before you, and it is time you began to look forward to it." " I do look forward," Eleanor said, with a gloomy expression upon her face. " I do look forward to the future ; and to meet- ing that man, the man who caused my father's death. How am I to find him, Signora ? Help me in. that. You have been kind to me in everythmg else. Only help me to do that, and I will love you better than ever I have loved you yet." The Signora shook her head. She was a Ught-henrted, ener- getic creature, who had borne very heavy burdens through a long hfe ; but the burdens had not been able to crush her. Perhaps her unselfishness had uj^held her throughout all her trials. She had thought and cared so much for other people, that she had had little time left for thinking of herself. LooJcing to the Future. 81 *' My dear Eleanor," ste said, gravely ; " tliis -TnH uever do. You must not be influenced by that fatal letter. Your poor father had no right to lay the responsibility of his own act upon another man. If he chose to stake this unfortunate money upon the hazard of a pack of cards, and lost it, he had no right to charge this man with the consequences of his own folly." " But the man cheated him ! " " As your father thought. People are very apt to fancy them« selves cheated when they lose money." " Papa would never have written so positively, if he had not known that the man cheated him. Besides, Richard says they were heard at high words ; that was no doubt when my poor dear father accused this wretch of being a cheat. He and his companion were wicked, scheming men, who had good reason to hide their names. They were pitiless wretches, who had no compassion upon the poor old man who trusted them and believed in their honour. Are you going to defend them, Signora Picirillo?" " Defend them, Eleanor ? no : they were bad men, I have no doubt. But, my darling child, you must not begin life with hatred and vengeance in your heart." " Not hate the man who caused my father's death ? " cried Eleanor Vane. " Do you tliink I shall ever cease to hate him, Signora ? Do you think that I shall ever forget to pray that the day may come when he and I will stand face to face, and that he may be as helpless and as dependent upon my mercy a3 my father was on his r Heaven help him on that day ! But I don't want to talk of this, Signora : what is the use of talking? I may be an old woman, perhaps, before I meet this man ; but surely, surely I shall meet him, sooner or later. If I only knew his name — if I only knew his name, I think I could trace him from one end of the earth to the other. Robert Lan — Lan — what?" Her head sank forward on her breast, and her eyes fixed themselves dreamily on the sunlit street below the open window. The French poodle, Fido, lay at her feet, and Ufted up his head every now and then to lick her hand. The animal had missed his master, and had wandered about the little rooms, sniffing on the thresholds of closed doors, and moaning dismally for several days after Mr. Vane's disappearance. The Signora sighed as sno watched Eleanor. What was she to do with this girl, who had taken a horrible vendetta upon herself at fifteen years of age, and who seemed as glooinily absorbed in her scheme of vengeance as any Corsican cmeftain ? " My dear," the music-mistress said presently, with rather a Bharp accent, " do you know that Richard and I will be compelled to leave Paris to-morrow P " 83 Eleanor's Victory. " Leave Paris to-morrow, Sigoora ! " " Yes. The Phoenix oj^ens eaiiy in October, and our Dick will have all the scenes to paint for the new piece. Besides, there are my pupils ; you know, my love, they cannot be kept together for ever imless I go back to them." Eleanor Vane looked up with almost a bewildered expression, as if she had been trying to comprehend all that Signora Picirillo had said ; then suddenly a light seemed to dawn upon her, and she rose from her chair and flung herself upon a hassock at the feet of her friend. " Dear Signora," she said, clasping the music-mistress's hand in. both her own, " how wicked and ungrateful I have been all this time ! I forget everything but myself and my ovm trouble. You came over to Paris on my account. You told me so when I was ni, but I had forgotten, I had forgotten. And Richard has stopped in Paris because of me. Oh ! what can I do to repay you both — what can I do ? " Eleanor hid her face upon the Signora's lap, and wept silently. Those tears did her good ; they beguiled her for a Uttle while, at least, from the one absorbing thought of her father's melancholy fate. Signora Picirillo tenderly smoothed the soft ripples of auburn haJT lying on her lap. " My dear Eleanor, shall I tell you what you can do to make us both very happy, and to pay us tenfold for any little sacrifice we may have made on your account ? " " Yes, yes ; teU me." " You have to choose your pathway in Ufe, Nelly, and to choose it quickly. In all the world you have only your half-sisters and brothers to whom you can apj^eal 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. Ban- nister, or from her sister or brothers. If they had been different, my father would never have died as he did. He was deserted •nd abandoned by aU the world, 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 Hfe 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 pre- sent, — a dreary spot in the great desert of life, bounded by a yawning grave. * ZooJcing to tTie Future. 8S " "WTiy do yon ask me what I mean to do, Si^i^ora?" she Baid, piteously. " How does it matter what I do ? Nothing I can do will bring my father back. I will stay in Paris, and get ray living how I can, and look for the man who murdered my father." " Eleanor," cried the Signora, " are yon mad ? How could yon stay in Paris, when you don't know a single 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 ; any- thing ! 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 farthest extremity of the globe. Do you hope to find this man by walking about the streets of Pans V " " I don't know." " How do you expect to meet himP " " I don't know." " But, Eleanor, be reasonable. It is utterly impossible that yon 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 hsten 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 Hve with them, if I mustn't stay here. I must earn some money, I sup- pose, Ijefore 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 afiectionate devices. " Then we may consider it settled, Nelly, my dear," the Signora said, cheerfully. " You %viLl leave Pans to-morrow morning, ^vith Eichard and me. You can stay ^vith us, my dear, till you've made up your mind what to do. We've a Uttle 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 darhng, 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 iU 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 P " 84 Eleanor's Victory. " Your sister, Mrs. Bannister, my dear ; slie sent some money in answer to a letter from Richard." Eleanor's face crimsoned suddenly, and the music-mistresa understood the meaning of that angry flush. " Eichard 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 aU 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 bsen 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 cHng to them, and depend upon them yet. She had loved them long ago, in her father's lifetime ; but now that ha was dead, every Hnk that had bound her to Hfe, and love, and happiness, seemed suddenly severed, and she stood alone, groping bliiidly in the thick darkness of a new and dreary woi'ld, with only one Hght shining far away at the end of a wearisome and obscure pathway; and that a lurid and fatal star, which beckoned her onward to some imknown 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 Ufe 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 voliunes and three-quarters of successful iniquity. George Vane's sanguine and romantic visions of wealth and grandeur, of retaHation upon those who had neglected and for- gotten him, had not been without effect upon the mind of his youngest daughter. That plastic mind had been entirely in the old man's hands, to mould in what form he pleased. Himself the slave of impulse, it was not to be supposed that he could teach his daughter those sound principles without which man, Hke a rudderless vessel, floats hither and thither before every current on the sea of life. He sufiered Eleanor's impulsive nature to have full sway ; he put no curb ujMin the sanguine tempeia- Mrs. Bannister holds out a Helping Hand. 85 ment wluch took everything in the extreme. As blindly as the eirl loved her father, so blindly she was ready to hate those whom ne called his enemies. To investigate the nature of the wron^ they had done liim would have been to take their side in the quarrel. Reason and Love could not go hand-in-hand in Eleanor's creed; for the questions which Reason might ask would be so many treacheries against Love. It is not to be wondered, then, that she held the few broken sentences written by her father on the threshold of a shameful death, as a solemn and sacred trust, not to be violated or lost eight of, though her future life should be sacrificed to the fulfil- ment of one purpose. Such thoughts as these — indistinct, ignorant, and childish, perhaps, but not the less absorbing — filled her mind. It may be that this new purpose of revenge enabled her the better to endure her loss. She had something to Uve for, at least. There was a light far away athwart the long gloomy pathway through an ttnkncwn world ; and, however lurid that guiding star might be, it was better than total darkness. CHAPTER X. HORTEKSIA. BANNISTER HOLDS OUT A HELPING HAND. SiGXOR.v PicmiLLO was very well contented with her morning's work. She had obtained Eleanor's consent to a speedy departure from Paris; that was the grand point. Once away from the scene of George Vane's death, the young gii-l's sunshiny nature would reassert itself, and httle by httle the great grief would b<» forgotten. In all this dreary period of sickness and misery the good music-mistress bad grown to love Mr. Vane's daughter even more than she had loved her long ago, when Eleanor's childish fingers had first stumbled slowly over the keys of the pianoforte, m a feeble endeavour to master the grand difficulties of Haydn's " Surprise." The widow's hfe had been a very sorrowful one. Perhaps its most tranquil period had come witliin the last ten years. It was ten years since, her ItaUan husband and her children having one by one died, she had found herself alone in the world, with a gaunt, long-legged hobbledehoy of eighteen, her dead sister's orphan son, for her sole protector. Tliis long-legged hobbledehoy was Richard Thornton, the only child of the Signora's pretty younger sister and a dashing cavalry ofiicer, who had married a penniless and obscure girl for the love of her pretty face, and had died within a couple of years of hia marriage, leaving his widow to drag out the remnant of a fretful. 8fi Eleanor's Yictory. helpless life in dependence upon lier sister. Tlie Signora had been used to cai-rying other people's burthens from a very early age. She was the eldest child of a clever violinist, for twenty years leader of the orchestra in one of the principal London theatres ; and from babyhood she had been a brave-hearted self- rehant creature. When her sister died, therefore, and, with the last words upon her pale, tremulous Hps, prayed the Signora to protect the helpless boy, Richard Thornton, Eliza Picirillo freely accepted the charge, and promised to perform it faithfully. The poor faded beauty died with a smile upon her face, and when Signor Picirillo — who was a teacher of languages at a few sub- urban schools, and a lazy good-tempered nonentity — came home that evening, he found that there was to be another member of his domestic circle, and another mouth to be fed henceforth. The Signora' 3 cruse of oil held out bravely, in spite of the demands upon it; and by-and-by, when the honest-hearted music- mistress would otherwise have been terribly desolate, there was Richard, a tall lad, ready to stand by her sturdUy in the battle of hfe, and as devoted to her as the most affectionate of sons. The boy had shown considerable talent at a very early age, but it was a versatile kind of talent, which did not promise ever to burst forth into the grander gift of genius. His aunt taught him music, and he taught himself painting, intending to be sometliing in the way of MacHse or Turner, by-and-by, and scraping together some of the shillings he earned with his vioUn in order to attend a dingy academy somewhere in Bloomsbury. But the great historical subjects after Machse — "The Death 01 the Bloody Boar at Bosworth," a grand battle scene, with a Itirid sunset in the background, and Richmond's face and armour all ablaze with crimson, lake and gamboge, from the flaming reflection of the skies, was the magnutn opus which poor Dick fondly hoped to see in the Royal Academy — were not very sale- able; and the Turneresque landscapes, nymphs and ruins, dryads and satyrs, dimly visible through yellow mist and rose-coloured fog, cost a great deal of time and money to produce, and Avere not easily convertible into ready cash. So when Richard had gone the usual weary round amongst the picture-dealers, and had endured the usual heart-burnings and agonies which wait upon ambitious youth, he was glad to accept the brush flung aside by a scene-painter at the Phoenix, where Dick received a scanty salary as second violinist; a salary which was doubled when the young man practised the double duty of second violin and assistant scene-painter. These simple people were the only friends of Eleanor Vane's childhood. They were ready to accept the responsibility of her future welfare now, when her rich sister would have sent her into the world, lonely and helpless, to sink to the abject drudgery Mrs. Bannister holds out a Helping Sand. 87 which well-to-do people speak bo complacently of, when they recomraend their poor relations to get an honest Uving and trouble them no longer. Kichard Thornton was enraptured at ihe idea of taking this beautiful younger sister home with liim, although that idea involved the necessity of working lor her till she was able to do something for herseli. " Nothing could be better for us than all this sad business, aunty," the scene-painter said, when he called in the Rue de I'Archevuque, and found liis aunt alone in the httle sitting-rooni. Eleanor was lying down after the morning's excitement, while her friend packed her slender wardrobe and made all preparations for departure. "Nothing could be better for us," the young man said. " Why, Nell's golden hair wiU lieht up the Pilasters with perpetual sunshine, and I shall always have a model for my subject-pictures. Then what a companion she'U be foryou in the long dreary nights, when I am away at the Phoenix, and how capitally she'll be able to help you with your pupils; for, of course, she plays and sings like anything by this time." " But she wants to go back to the people at the Brixton school, Dick." "But, Lord bless you, aunty, we won't let her go," cried Mr. Thornton ; " we'll make a prima donna or a leading tragedy- actress, or something of that kind, of her. We'll teach her to make a hundred pounds a week out of her white arms, and her flashing grey eyes. How beautiful she looked last night when she was on her knees, vowing vengeance against that scoundrel who won her father's money. How splendid she looked, with her yellow hair aU streaming over her shoulders, and her eyes flashing sparks of fire! Wouldn't she bring the house down, if she did that at the Phoenix ? She's a wonderful girl, aunty ; the sort of girl to set all London in a blaze some day, somehow or other. Miss Bennett's and Brixton, indeed ! " cried Eichard, snapping his fingers contemptuously ; " you could no more chain that girl down to a governess's drudgery, than you could make a flash of forked lightning do duty for a farthing candle." So Eleanor Vane w&ni back to England with her friends. They chose the Dieppe and Newhaven route for its economy; and over the same sunlit landscape upon which she had gazed so rapturously less than a month ago, Eleanor's eyes wandered now wearily and sadly, seeing nothing but desolation wherever they looked. She recognized swelling hills and broad patches of low verdm-e, winding glimpses of the river, far-away villages glimmer- ing whitely in the distance, and she wondered at the change in herself which made all these things so different to her. What a child she had been a month ago ; what a reckless, happy child, looking forwar(J in foolish certainty to a long life with her father } 88 Eleanor's Victory. ignorant of all son-ows except the petty troubles slie liad shared with him ; ready to hope for anything in the boundless future ; %vith a whole fairy-land of pleasure and delight spreading out before her eager feet ! Now she was a woman, alone in a horrible desert, over whose dreary sands she must toil slowly to the end she hoped to reach. She sat back in a comer of the second-class carriage, with her face hidden in a veil, and with the dog Fido curled up in her lap. Her father had been fond of the faithful creature, she remem- bered. It was early in the grey bleakness of a September morning when the cab, carrying Eleanor and her friends, rattled under an archway leading out of Dudley Street, Bloomsbury, into tho queer httle retreat called the Pilasters. The grooms were already at work in the mews, and the neighbourhood was enlivened by that hissing noise with which horses are generally beguiled during the trials of the equine toilet. The chimney-sweep had left his abode and was whooping dismally in Northiunberland Square. Life began early in the Pilasters, and already the inmates of many houses were astir, and the sharp voices of mothers clamoured denunciations on the elder daughters who acted as unsalaried nursemaids to the younger branches of the family. The place popularly known as the Pilasters is one of the queerest nooks in London. It consists of a row of tumble-down houses, fronted by a dilapidated colonnade, and filled with busy hfe from_ cellar to attic. But I do not beheve that the inhabitants of the Pilasters are guilty of nefarious practices, or that vice and crime find a hiding-place in the cellars below the colonnade. The retreat stands by itself, hidden between two highly respectable middle-ckiss streets, whose inhabitants would scarcely tolerate Alsatian habits or Field Lane proclivities in their near neigh- botirs. Small tradesmen find a home in the Pilasters, and emerge thence to work for the best families in Dudley Street and " the Squares." Here, amongst small tailors and mantua-makers, cheap eating- houses, shabby beer-shops, chimney-sweeps and mangles, Signora PiciriUo had taken up her abode, bringing her faded goods and chattels, the remnants of brighter times, to furnish the first-floor over a shoemaker's shop. I am afraid the shoemaker was oftener employed in mending old shoes than in making new ones, but the Signora was fain to ignore that fact, and to be contented with her good fortune in having found a very cheap lodging in a central neighbourhood. This was a shabbier place than any that Eleanor Vane had ever Hved in, but she showed no distaste for its simple arrange- ments. The Signora's hopes were realized by-and-by. At first Mrs. Bannister holds out a Helping Hand. 89 the girl sat all day in a despondent attitude, with the French poodle in her lap, her head drooping on her breast, her eyes fixed on %'acaiicy, her whole manner giving evidence of an all-absorbing grief which was nearly akin to despair. She went to Brixton very soon after her return to England ; but here a cruel dis- appointment awaited her. The Misses Beimett heard her sorrowful story with pitiful murmurs of regret and compassion ; but they had engaged a young person as junior teacher, and could do nothing to help her. She returned to the Pilasters, looking the image of pale despair ; but the Signora and Richard both declared to her tnat nothing could be happier for them than her consenting to remain with them. So it seemed very much as if the PUasters was to be Eleanor Yane's permanent abode. The neighbours had stared at her a great deal at first, admiring her pale face and flowing hair, and pitying her because of her black frock ; but they were familiar with her now, and gave her good day in a friendly manner as she passed under the shadow of the colonnade on her way out or in. Little by little the air of duU despondency gave way before this young woman's earnest desire to be of use to the people who were so kind to her. She played remarkably well, for she had had plenty of the drudgery of pianoforte-inlaying at the Brixton school, and she was able to take some of the Signora's pupils off lier hands. She sang, too, in a rich contralto, which promised to be powerful and beautiful by-and-by ; and she practised the ballads in the old operas which the Signora kept, neatly bound, but yellow \vith age, in her feeble music-stand. As her friends had hoped, her sunshiny nature reasserted itself. The outer evidences of her great sorrow gradually passed away, though the memory of her loss still filled her mmd ; the image of her father, and the thought of that father's unhappy death, were stiU for ever present with her. It was not in her nature to be long reserved or unsocial ; and by-and-by, when she had been nearly six months in her new home, and the London sparrows were cliirping in the bright spring sunshine about the mews and under the colonnade. Miss Vane began to sing at her work as she flitted to and fro in the low rooms, dusting the grand piano- forte and the old china — touching up the irame of Richard's unsaleable picture, the flaring battle of Bosworth, which illuminated one side of the room. Wherever she went the faithful French poodle ran frisking by her side ; whatever sun- shine could find its way into the dusky London chamber seemed to concentrate itself about her golden head. Gaiety, Ufe, and brightness went with her up and down the dark staircase — in and out of the dingy rooms. Her youth and beauty turned the ahabby lodgings into a fairy palace, as it seemed to Richard and 90 Eleanor^s Victory. his acnt. "WTien she sat down and ran her agile fingers over the piano, dashing into fantasias and scenas, sparkling and rippling with joyous treble meauderings among the upper notes, tho old Clementi grew young again beneath her touch, the worn-out stiings were revivified by the wondrous magnetism of her youth and vitaUty. The flute-like treble trills and triplets seemed like the joyous chirpings of a hundred birds. The music-mistress and the scene-painter used to sit and watch her as she played ; their admiring eyes followed her as she flitted to and fro, and they wondered at her grace and beauty. She had her father's aristocratic elegance, her father's power of fascination. All the dangerous gifts which had been so fatal to George Vane, were inherited by his youngest daughter. Like him, a creature of impulse, spontaneous, sanguine, volatile, she influenced other people by the force of her own superabundant vitality. In her bright hopefulness she made an atmosphere of hope in which other people grew hopeful. The dullest rejoiced in her joyous vivacity, her unconscious loveliness. Yes, perhaps Eleanor Vane's greatest charm lay in her utter ignorance of the fact that she was charming. In the three years' drudgery of a boarding-school she had never learned the power of her own fascination. She knew that people loved her, and she was grateful to them for their affection ; but she had never discovered that it was by some wondrous magnetic attraction inherent in herself that she obtained so much love and devotion. Nobody had ever taken the trouble to tell her that she was beautiful. She had generally worn shabby frocks, and the rip- pling golden hair had not very often been smooth ; so perhaps the school-girls at Brixton scarcely knew how lovely their com- panion was. The dehcate aquiline profile, the flashing grey eyes, pale face, red hps, and amber hair, were counterbalanced by the silk dresses and lace furbelows of young ladies, whose wealthy fathers paid full price for their education. Poverty learns its place in the Httle world of a young ladies' boarding-school quite as surely as in the larger world beyond the garden wall which bounds that establishment. But Eleanor od held her own at the Misses Bennett's seminary, by sok^ mysterious power against which her richer companions had ra -vain rebelled. Her frank acknowledgment of her poverty, coupled with the fact of her father's former wealth and grandeur, perhaps enabled her tc* do this. If she wore shabby frocks, she looked more aristocratic in her shabbiness than the other young ladies in their stifi" silks and prim finery. They recognized this fact, they acknowledged something in their playfellow which lifted her above themselves, and the half-boarder dealt out patronage and regal condescensions to the most remunerative pupils in the school. She reigned by reason of her unacknowledged beauty, and that divine some- Mrs. Bannister holds out a Helping Hand. 91 tiling, dimly recopcnized by all about her, but as yet wholly undeveloped. The school-girl was clever, brilliant, fascinating, but it was yet to be discovered what the woman would be. It was yet to be discovered whether these budding qualities would develope into the many flowers of a bright and versatile mind, or burst forth suddenly and mysteriously into that rare trojiical blossom, that mental once-in-a-century-flourishing aloe, which . men call Genius. The good music-mistress watched her young protegee with love and wonder, not unalloyed hj fear. What was she to do with this strange and beautiful bird which she had brought home to her nest ? Would it be right to fetter this bright spirit forever? Was it fair to immure aU this joyous loveUness in that shabby lodging ; to stifle such superabundant vitahty in the close atmosphere of a duU and monotonous ex- istence ? The faithful creature had been accustomed to consider others, and she thought of this seriously and constantly. Eleanor was contented and happy. She was earning money now by giving lessons here and there, and she contributed to the family purse. The days shpped by very rapidly, as it seemed, in that peaceful monotony. Miss Vane's frocks appeared to grow shorter and shorter as the young lady sprang up into bright womanhood. She was nearly seventeen now, and had been more than a year and a half hving under the shadow of the Bloomsbury Pilasters. Richard and his aunt consulted together as to what her future life ought to be ; but they never came nearer to any conclusion. "It's all very well to talk of her going away from us, you know, aunty," the scene-painter said ; " but what are we to do without her ? All the sunshine and poetry of our lives will go away with her when she leaves us ! Besides ! what is she to be ? A governess ? Bah ! who would doom her to that lady-like irudger}'^ ? An actress ? No, aunty carissima, I should never like to see that bright young beauty behind the glare of the foot-lights. I think I'd rather she should hve here for ever and ever, than that her nature should ever be vulgarized by contact with the world. Let us keep her, aunty ; she doesn't want to leave us. Those who have any actual claim upon her have abandoned her. She came across my pathway hke some wan- dering homeless angel. I shall never forget her face when I first saw it on the lamplit boulevard, and recognized the Httle ffirl I had known three years before in the fair-haired young beauty of fifteen. She doesn't want to go away. Why should you talk of her leaving us, aunty dear?" Signora Picirillo shnigged her shoulders with a sigh. " Heaven knows I have no wish to part with her, Dick." she said ; " but we ought to do what's right for her sake. This ie tie place for George Vane's daughter." 92 Eleanor's Victory. But wlille the music-mistress and lier nephew were speculating and theorizing upon the future of their protegee, practical Mrs. Bannister was contemplating the infliction of a death-blow which was to shatter the happiness of the humble Bloomsbury circle with. one merciless stroke. Early in the bleak March of 1855, Eleanoi received a coldly- worded epistle from her half-sister, to the eflfect that an opportunity had now arisen for her advancement in hfe-, and that i-f she wished ever to attain a respectable position — the adjective was mercilessly njiderlined — she would do well to avaU herself of it. For further information and advice she was to call early the next morning in Hyde Park Gardens. IVIiss Vane would fain have left this letter xmanswered, and at first stoutly refused to obey Mrs. Bannister's summons. "What do I want with her condescension and patronage?" she said, indignantly. " Does she think that I forget the cruel letter she wrote to my father; or that I forgive her for its heartless insolence ? Let her keep her favours for those who sohcit them. I want nothing from her. I only want to be left in peace with the friends I love. Do you wish to get rid of me, Signora, that you persuade me to dance attendance npon Mrs. Bannister ? " It was very hard for poor Signora Picirillo to be compelled to urge the child's acceptance of the hand so coldly extended to her, but the good creature felt that it was her duty to do so, and Miss Vane loved her protectress far too dearly to persist in op- Eosing her. She went, therefore, early the next morning to her alf-sister's house at Bayswater, where the spacious rooms seemed doubly spacious when compared with the Uttle sitting- room over the colonnade, the sitting-room which was more than half filled by Clementi's old-fashioned piano. Here the gorgeous Erard's grand, in a case of carved walnut wood and ebony, and with aU manner of newfangled improvements, was only an oasia upon the great desert of velvet piles. Hortensia Bannister was pleased to be very gracious to her half-sister. Perhaps she was all the more so because Eleanor made no pretence of afi"ection for her. This cold, hard-natured woman would have been suspicious of mercenary motives lurk- ing beneath any demonstration of sisterly love. " I am glad to hear you have been learning to get your own living, Eleanor," she said, " and above all, that you have been cultivating your talent for the piano. I have not forgotten you, you will find. The people with whom you have been Hving sent me their address when they brought you from Paris, and I knew where to find you when any opportunity should present itself for your advancement. This opportunity has now presented itself. My old acquaintance, Mrs. DarreU, the niece of your father's friend, Maurice de Ciespigny, who is etUl living, though very Mrs.. Bannister holds out a Helping Hand. 93 old and infirm, has written to me saying that she requires a young persun who would act as companion and musical governess to a lady who lives with her. This young lady is no relation of Mrs. DarreU's, but is a kind of ward or pupil, I believe. Your youth, in tliis instance, Eleanor, happens to be an advantage, as the young lady requires a companion of her o^vn age. You will receive a moderate salary, and will be treated as a member of the family. Let me hear you play, by the bye, in order that I may be able to speak positively as to your qualifications." Eleanor Vane sat down to the piano. The strings of the Erard vibrated under her touch. She was almost frightened at the gTand tones that came out of the instrument as she dashed oyer the keys. She played very brilliantly, however, and her sister condescended to say so. " I think I may conscientiously give a good account of your playing," she said. " You sing, I suppose ?" " Oh, yes." " Very well, then ; I tliink you may consider the engagement a settled thing. There is only one question to arrange. Of course you must be aware that the position which your father occupied was once a very elevated one. Mrs. Darrell and her sisters knew your father in his most prosperous days, and lost sight of him before he became poor. They know nothing of his second marriage, or of your birth. His most intimate friend was Mr. de Cresplgny, the uncle of the lady whose house I wish you to enter. Under these circumstances you cannot wonder when I tell you that I should strongly object to Mrs. DarreU's knowing who you really are." " How do you mean, Hortensia ? " " I mean that I shall recommend you as a young person in whose career I feel interested. If you go to Hazlewood at all, you must go under an assumed name." "Hortensia!" "Well!" cried Mrs. Bannister, lifting her handsome black eyebrows. " I don't want tliis situation, and I should hate to take a false name. I would rather stay with my friends, please. I love tiem very dearly, and am very happy with them." " Good Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Bannister, "what is the use of trying to do some people a service? Here have I been scheming as to how I could manage to avail myself of this chance, and now this ungrateful girl turns round and tells me she doesn't want the situation. Do you know what you are re- fusing, Eleanor Vane ? Have you learnt your father's habit of pauperism, that you prefer to be a burden upon this pennilesa music-teacher and her son, or nephew, or whatever he 13, rather tiian make an honest efiort to get your own living?" 94 Eleanor's Victory. Eleanor started up from the piano : she had been sitting before it until now, softly fingering the keys, and admiring the beauty of the tones. She started up, looking at her sister, and blushing indignantly to the very roots of her auburn hair. Could this be true ? Could she be indeed a burden to the friends she loved so dearly ? " If you think that, Hortensia," she said, " if you tliink I am any burden to the dear Signora, or Kichard, I will take any situation you like, however hard. I'll toil night and day, and work my fingers to the bone, rather than lie a trouble or a burden to them any longer." She remembered how little she earned by her few pupils. Yes, Hortensia was no doubt right. She was a burden to those good peojile who had taken her to their home in her hour of desola- tion and misery. " I'll take the situation, Hortensia," she cried. " I'll take a false name. I'U do anything in the world rather than impose upon the goodness of my friends." " Very well," answered Mrs. Bannister, coldly. " Pray do not let us have any heroics about it. The situation is a very good one, I can assure you ; and there are many girls who would be glad to snap at such a chance. I will %vrite to my friend, Mrs. Dan-ell, and recommend you to her notice. I can do no more. I cannot, of course, ensure you success ; but Ellen DaiTell and I wers great friends some years since, and I know that I have considerable influence with her. I'U write and tell you the result of my recommendation." _ Eleanor left Hyde Park Gardens after taking two ov three sips of some pale sherry wliich her half-sister gave her. The •wine seemed of a sorry vintage, and tasted very much as if the grapes of which it was made had never seen the sun. Misg Vane was glad to set down her wine-glass and escajDC from the cold splendour of her half-sister's drawing-room. She walked slowly and sorrowfully back to Bloomsbury. She was to leave her dear friends there — leave the shabby rooms in which she had been so happy, and to go out into the bleak world a dependant upon grand people, so low and humiliated that even her own name must be abandoned by her before she could enter upon the state of dependence. The Bohemian sociality of the Pilasters was to be exchanged for the dreary splendoiu* of a household in which she was to be something a httle above the servants. But it would be cowardly and selfish to refuse this situation, for no douljt cruel Mrs. Bannister had spoken the truth. Eleanor began to tliink that she had been a burden upon her poor friends. She was very gloomy and despondent, brooding ujDon these tilings; but through every gloomy thought of the present a BicTiard Thornton's Fromiae. 95 darker image loomed, far a way in the black future. TKia was the image of her vengeance, the vagiie and uncertain shadow that had filled her girhsh dreams ever since the great sorrow of her father's death had fallen upon her. " If I go to Hazlewood," she thought, " if I spend my life at Mrs. DarreU's, how can I ever hope to find the murderer of mt father?" CHAPTER XI. EicnAKD tuorxton's promise. Eleanor Yane looked very sadly at all the common everyday sights connected with the domestic economy of the Pilasters, when she went back to Bloomsbury after her mterview with Mrs. Bannister. She had only Uved a year and a half in that humble locaUty, but it was in her nature to become quickly attached to pkces as well as persons, and she had grown very fond of the Pilasters. Everybody about the place knew her and loved her. The horses looked out of their open stable-doors as she passed ; the dogs came tumbling from their kennels, (bagging half-a-dozen yards of rusty iron chain and a heap of straw at their heels, to greet her as she went by ; the chimney-sweeps' children courted her notice ; and at all the little shops where she had been wont to give orders and pay bills for the Signora, the simple tradespeople tendered her their admiration and homage. Her beauty was a pride to the worthy citizens of the Pilasters. Could all Blooms- bury, from Dudley Street to the Squares, produce sunnier golden hair, or brighter grey eyes than were to be seen under the shadow of the dilapidated colonnade when Eleanor Vane went by ? In this atmosphere of love and admiration, the girl had been very happy. She had one of those natures in which there lies a wondrous power of assimilation with the manners and habits of others. She wasnever out of place ; she was never in the way. Slie was not ambitious. Her sunny temperament was the centre of perpetual peace and happiness, only to be disturbed by very terrible thunderclaps of sorrow. She had been very happy with the Signora ; and to-day she looked sadly round the little sitting- room, her eyes resting now on the old piano, now on a shelf of tattered books — romances dear to Richard and herself, and not too well treated by either — now on the young man's flaming magnum opus, the_ picture she had loved to criticise and abuse in mischievous enjoyment of the painter's anguish. As she looked at these things, and remembered how soon she must go away from them, the slow tears trickled down her cheeks, and she stood despondent on the gloomy threshold of her new life. She had foimd the fami l iar rooms empty upon her return from Bayswater, for the Signora was away teaching beyond the 96 Uleanor't Victory. regions of tlie ITew Road, and Richard was hard at work at the Phoenix, where there were always new pieces to be produced and new scenes to be painted. Eleanor had the Uttle sitting-room all to herself ; she took off her bonnet and sat down upon th« old-fashioned chintz-covered sofa. She buried her head in the cushions and tried to think. The prospect of a new existence, which would have been de- lightful to most girls of her age, was utterly distasteful to her. Her nature was adhesive ; she would have gone to the farthest end of the world with her father, if he had hved, or with Richard and the Signora, whom she loved only less than she had loved him. But to sever every tie, and go out alone into the world, svith nothing between her and desolation, was unspeakably terrible to this affectionate, impulsive girl. If it had been simply a question of her own advantage, if hy the sacrifice of her own advancement, her every prospect in life, she might have stayed with the friends she loved, she would not have hesitated for a moment. But it was not so. Mrs. Bannister had clearly told her that she was a burden upon these generous people, who had sheltered and succoured her in her hour of misery. The cruel word pauperism had been flung in her teeth, and with a racking brain this poor girl set herself to calculate how much her maintenance cost her friends, and how much she was able to contribute out of her own pitiful earnings. Alas ! the balance told against her when the sum was done. Her earnings were very, very small as yet, not because her talent was tmappreciated, but because her pupils were poor ; and a music-mistress whose address was Bloomsbury Pilasters could scarcely demand high payment for her services, or hope to obtaio a very aristocratic connection. No ; Mrs. Bannister — stem, uncompromising, and disagreeable a^ the truth itself — had no doubt been right. Her duty lay be- fore her, plainly indicated by that unpleasant monitor. She was bound to leave these dear friends, and to go out into the world to fight a lonely battle for herself. " I may be able to do something for them," she thought ; and this thought was the only gleam of light which Ulumined the darkness of her sorrow. " I may be able to save money enough to buy the Signora a black silk dress, and Richard a meerschaum. I should 80 like to buy Dick a meerschaum ; I know the one he'd like — a bull-dog's head, with a silver collar round the neck. We looked at it one night at a shop in Holbom." She rose fi-om the sofa at last with an aching heart and troubled brain, when the early shadows of the spring twilight were gather- ing in the room. She made up the fire and swept the hearth, and arranged the tea-things on the comfortable round table, and then *»at down on a low stool by the fender to toast great rounds of Bichard ThorntorCs Fromise, 97 bread, wliicli would be as nothing in comparison to Eichard's all- devouring capacity after a hard day's work in the scene-room at the Phoenix. How pleasant it was to perform all these little famiUar offices of love and duty ! How sorrowfully she looked back to her simple, free-and-easy life, now that she was to go amongst strangers who would exact all manner of ceremonious observances from her ! The Bohemianism of her existence had been its greatest charm ; and this poor benighted girl trembled at the i^rospect of a hfe in which she would have to go through all those terrible performances which she had read of, fearfully and wonderingly, in certain erudite essays ujoon Etiquetle, but which had never yei come within the range ot her experiences. " It is my duty to go away from them," she kept saying to herself; "it is my duty to go away." She had schooled herself in this difficult duty by the time her friends came home, and she told them very quietly that she had seen ]\Irs. Bannister, and had agreed to accept her patronage and services. " I am going to be a sort of companion or musical governess — I scarcely know which — to a young lady at a country house called Hazlewood," she said. " Don't think I am not sorry to leave you, dear Signora, but Hortensia says itis better that I should do so." " And don't think that I am not sorry to lose yon, Nelly, when I tell you that I think your sister is right," the Signora answered gently, as she kissed her protegee. Perhaps Eleanor was a little disappointed at this reply. She little dreamed how often EUza Picirillo had struggled against the selfishness of her affection before she had grown thus resigned to this parting. Mr. Eichard Thornton groaned aloud. " I shall go out and pull down a couple of the PUasters, and bury myself under them, a la Samson," he said, piteously. *' "NVTiat is to become of us without you, Eleanor ? Who will come over to the Phoenix, and applaud my great scenes with the ferule of an umbrella ? Who'll cut up half-quartern loaves into toast when I am hungry, or have Welsh rarebits in readiness on the hob when I come home late at night ? Who'll play Men- delssohn's ' Songs without Words ' to me, and dam my stock- ings, and sew buttons — absurd institutions, invented by ignorant people, who have never known the blessing of pins — upon my shirts ? Who'll abuse me when I go unshaven, or recommend clacking as an embelUshment for my boots ? Who'll career in and out of the room with a dirty white French poodle at her heels, looking like a fair-haired Esmeralda with a curly-coated goat ? What are we to do without you, Eleanor ? " There was a sharp pain at poor Dick's heart as he apostrophized his adopted sister. Were his feelings quite brotherly r Was there 98 Eleanor's Victory, no twinge of tlie fatal torture so common to mankind mingled with tliis 3''onng man's feelings as lie looked at the beautiful face opposite to liim, and remembered how soon it would have vanished from that shabby chamber, leaving only dismal emptiness behind? The Signora looked at her nephew and sighed. Yes, it was far better that Eleanor should go away. She could never have grown to love this honest-hearted, candid, slovenly scene-painter, •whose coat was a perfect landscaj^e in distemper by reason of the many-coloured splashes which adorned it. " My jioor Dick would have fallen in love with her, and would have broken his good honest heart," Ehza Picu-illo said. " I'm very glad she's going away." So from the road which Destiny had appointed for her to tread, there was not one voice to call Eleanor Vane aside. The affec- tionate and the indifferent ahke conspired to urge her onward. It was only her own inchnation that would have held her back. " If I could have stayed in London," she thought, " there might have been some chance of my meeting that man. AH scamps and villains come to hide themselves in London. But in a quiet country village I shall be buried alive. When I pass the threshold of Mrs. Darrell's house, I bid good-bye to the hope of crossing that man's pathway." The letter came very quickly from Mrs. Bannister. Mrs. Dan-ell had accepted her dear friend's recommendation, and was ready to receive Miss Vincent. It was under this name the stockbroker's widow had introduced her half-sister to the notice of her friend. " You will receive a salary of thirty pounds a year," Hortensia Bannister wrote, " and your duties will be very hght. Do not forget that your name at Hazlewood is to be Vincent, and that YOU are carefully to avoid all reference to your father. You will \'iz amongst people who knew him well, and must therefore be on your guard. I have described you as the orphan daughter of a gentleman who died in reduced circumstances, and have thus strictly adhered to the tnith. No questions will be asked of you, as Mrs. DarreU is satisfied with my recommendation, and is too well bred to feel any vulgar curiosity as to your past history. I send you, per parcel delivery, a box of dresses and other wearing apparel, which will be of use to you. I also send you five pounds for such Httlc extra expenditure as may be necessary. Hazlewood is thirty miles from London, and about seven from Windsor. You wiU go down by the Great Western, and stop at Slough, where a conveyance will meet you ; but I wiU write further u^ion tliis matter before you go. Mrs. Darrell has kindly accorded you a fortnight's delay for such preparations as you may require to make. You will be exjoected at Hazlewood on the 6th of April. " I have only one other remark to make. I know that your father cherished a foohsh notion rpon the subject of the Wood- Bicliard Thorntons Promise. 09 lands property. Pray bear in mind that no such idea has ever been entertained by me. I know the Darrell family quite well Rnongh to feel assured that thoy will take care of their own rights, which I am content to acknowledge. Eemember, there- fore, that I have no wish or expectation wth regard to Maurice de Crespigny's will ; but it is, on the other hand, perfectly true, that in his youth he did make a solemn promise that, in the event of liis dying a bachelor, he would leave that money to my father or his heirs." Eleanor Vane took very httle notice of this final paragraph in her sister's letter. "Who cared for Maurice de Crespigny's for- tune ? What was the good of it now ? It could not bring her father back to Hfe ; it could not blot out that quiet, unwitnessed death-scene in the Parisian cafe ; it could not rehabilitate thfe broken name, or restore the shattered life. "What could it matter who inherited the useless dross ? The fortnight passed in a feverish unsatisfactory manner. Richard and the Signora took care to conceal the poignancy of their regretat parting with the girl who had brought such new brightness into their narrow Uves. Eleanor wept by stealth; dropping niany bitter tears over her work, as she remodelled Mrs. Bannister's silk dresses, reducing those garments to the dimensions of her own girhsh figure. The last night came by-and-by, the night of the 5th of April, the eve of a sorrowful parting, and the beginning of a new existence. It happened to be a Sunday evening, and Eleanor and Richard walked out_ to.t^ether in the quiet Bloomsbury streets while the bells were rmging for evening service, and the lamps ghmmering dimly from the church windows. They chose the lonehest streets in the old-fashioned middle-class quarter. Eleanor was very pale, very silent. This evening walk had been her express desu-e, and Richard watched her wondei-ingly. Her face had an expression wliich he remembered in the Rue de I'Archeveque, when he had told her the story of her father's death — an un- naturally rigid look, strangely opposed to the changeful bright- ness common to that youthful countenance. They had strolled slowly hither and thither in the deserted streets for some time. The bells had ceased ringing, and the church-goers had all disappeared. The gi-ey twihght was steal- ing into the streets and squares, and the hghts began to shine out from the lower windows. "How quiet you are, Nelly," Richard said at last; "why were vou so anxious that we should come out together alone, my dear ? I fancied yoti had something particular to say to me." " I have something particular to say." ""What about? " asked Mr. Thornton. He looked thoughtfully at bis companion. He could only see 100 Eleanor's Victory. her profile — ttat clearly-defined, almost classical ontline — for she had not turned towai'ds him when she spoke. Her grey eyes looked straight before her into empty space, and her hps were tightly compressed. " Ton love me, don't yon, Richard ? " she asked presently, with a suddenness that startled the scene-painter. Poor Dick blushed crimson at that alarming inquiry. How could she be so cruel as to ask him such a question ? For the last fortnight he had been fighting with himself — sturdily and honestly — in the heroic desire to put away this one fatal thought from his mind ; and now the girl for whose sake he had been doing battle with his own selfishness, struck the tenderest of all chords with her ignorant hand, and wounded her victim to the very quick. But Miss Vane had no consciousness of the mischief she had done. Coquetry was an unknown science to this girl of seventeen. In aU matters connected with that womanly accomphshment she was as much a child, now that her seventeenth birthday was past, as she had been in the old days at Chelsea when she had upset Richard's colour-boxes and made grotesque copies of his paintings. "I know yon love me, Dick," she continued, "quite as much as if I were your real sister, instead of a poor desolate girl who flung herself upon you and yours in the day of her afiliction. I know you love me, Dick, and would do almost any- thing for my sake, and I wanted to speak to you to-night alone, because I am going to say something that would distress the dear Signora, if she were to hear it." " What is it, my dear? " " You remember the story of my father's death ? " " Only too well, Eleanor." " And you remember the vow I made when you told me that story, Richard ? " The young man hesitated. " Yes, I do remember, Nelly," he said, after a pause ; '* but I had hoped that you had forgotten that foohsh vow. For it was foohsh, you know, my dear, as weU as unwomanly," the young man added, gravely. Eleanor's eyes flashed defiance upon her friend, as she tttmed to him for the first time that evening. " Yes," she cried, " you thought that I had forgotten, because I was not always talking of that man who caused my father's death ! You thought my sorrow for my father was only childish grief, that was to be forgotten when I turned my back upon the country where he Hes in his abandoned grave — his uncon- secrated grave ! You thought that nobody would ever try to avenge the poor, lonely old man's murder — for it was a murder, Bichard ThorntorCs Promise. 101 Richard Tliomton 1 What did the wretch who robbed him care for the anguish of the heart he broke ? What did he care what became of his victim ? It was as base and cruel a murder as was ever done upon this earth, Richard, though the world would not call it by that name." "Eleanor, my dear Eleanor! why do you talk of these things?" The girl's voice had risen with the vehemence of her passion, aoid Richard Thornton dreaded the effect which this kind of con- versation might have upon her excitable nature. " Nelly, my dear," he said, " it would be better to_ forget all this. What good can you do by cherishing these painful recol- lections ? You are never likely to meet this man ; you do not even know his name. He was a scamp and an adventurer, no doubt ; he may be dead by this time. He may have done some- thing to bring himself within the power of the law, and he may be in prison, or transported." " He may have done something to bring himself within the power of the law," repeated Eleanor. " What do you mean ? " " I mean that he may have committed some cnme for which he could be punished." " Could he be punished by the law for having cheated my father at cards ? " " That sort of charge is always difficult to be proved, Nell ; impossible to be proved after the fact. No, I'm afraid the la-w could never touch him for that." " But if he were to commit some other crime, he might be punished?" " Of course." "If I met him, Richard," cried Eleanor Vane, with a dangerous light kindling in her eyes, " I would try and lure him on to com- mit some crime, and then turn round upon him and say, ' The law of the land could not avenge my father's death, but it can punish you for a lesser crime. I have t^visted the law to my own pui-pose, and made it redress my father's -wrongs.' " Richard Thornton started aghast at his companion. " Why, Eleanor," he exclaimed, " you talk Uke a Red Indian ! This is quite shocking! You frighten me, reaUy; you do, indeed." " I am sorry for that, Richard," Miss Vane answered, meekly. She was a child in all things which concerned her affections alone. "I wouldn't grieve you or the dear Signora for the world. But there are some things that are stronger than ourselves, Richard ; and the oath that I took a year and a half ago, in the Rue de I'Archeveque, is one of those things. I have never for- gotten, Dick. Night after night — thouwli I've been happy and ght-hearted enough in the day, for i could not be otherwise than happy with you and the Signora — night after night I have laia awake thinkmg of my father's death. If that death had 102 Eleanor's Victory. been a common one ; if he had died in my arms at the will of God, instead of by the cniclty of a wretch, my grief might have worn itself out by this time. But as it is, I cannot forget — I cannot forgive. If all the Christian people in the world were to talk to me, I could never have one merciful feeling towai'ds this man. If he were going to be hung to-morrow, I should be glad, and coidd walk barefoot to the place of his exe- cution to see him suffer. There is no treachery that I should think base if employed against him. There is no slow torture I could inflict upon him that would seem cruel enough to satisfy my hatred of him. Think what a helpless old man my father was ; a broken-down gentleman ; the sort of man whom every- 1»ody pities, whom everybody respects. Remember this; and Hien remember the cold-blooded deliberation of the wretch who cheated him out of the money which wa^i more than money to aim — which represented honour — ^honesty — his child's future — all he valued. Remember the remorseless cruelty of the wretch who looked on while this helpless old man suffered a slow agony of six or seven hours' duration, and then left him alone in his despair. Think of this, Richard Thornton, and don't wonder any longer if my feelings towards this man are not Christian-like." " My dear Eleanor, if I regret the vehemence of your feeling upon this subject, I do not defend the man whose treachery hurried your father to his unhappy death ; I only wish to convince you of the folly you commit in cherishing these ideas of vengeance and retribution. Life is not a three-volume novel or a five-act play, you know, Nelly. The sudden meetings and strange coin- cidences common in novels are not very general in our everyday existence. It ia not at all hkely that in the whole course of your life you will ever again encounter tliis man. From the moment of your father's death all clue to him was lost ; for it was only your father who could have told us who and what he was, or, at least, who and what he represented himself to be. He is lost in the vast chaos of humanity now, my dear, and you have not the frailest clue by which you might hope to find liim. For Heaven's sake, then, abandon all thought of an impossible revenge ! Have you forgotten the words we heard in the Epistle a few weeks ago — 'Vengeance is mine, I will repajr, saith the Lord ' ? If the melodramatic revenge of the stage is not practicable in real Hfe, we know at least, my dear — for you see we have it from very high authority — that wicked deeds do not go unpunished. Far away at the remotest hmits of the earth, this man, whom your pimy efforts would be powerless to injure, may suffer for his ciime. Try and think of this, Eleanor." "I ccmmot," answered the girl. " The letter which my father wrote me laefore he died was a direct charge which I will never disobey. The only inheritance I received from him was that 'Richard TTiorntori's Promise. 103 letter— that letter in -which he told me to avenge his death. I dare say yoti think me mad as well as wicked, Kichard ; but, in spite of aU you have said, I believe that I shall meet that man .'" The scene-painter sighed and relapsed into despondent silence. How could he argue with this girl ? What could he do but love and admire her, and entrust himself to her direction if she had need of a slave ? While he was thinking this, Eleanor clasped both her hands apon his arm and looked up earnestly in his face. " Richard," she said, in a low voice, " I think yon would serve me if you had the power." " I would go through fire and water to do so, Nelly." " I want you to help me in this matter. You know as little of this man as I do, but you are much cleverer than me. You mix with other people and see something of the world ; not much, I know, but still a great deal more than I do. I am going away into a quiet country place, where there is no possible chance of meeting this man ; you will stay in London" " Wiiere I may brush against him in the streets any day, Nell, without being a shade the wiser as to his identity. My dear child, for any practical purpose you will lie as near the man in Berkshire as I shall be in Bloomsbury. Don't let's talk of him any longer, Nelly. I can't teU you how this subject distresses me. " I won't leave off talking of him," said the young lady, reso- lutely, " until you have made me a promise." 'M\Tiat promise?" *' That it ever you do come across any clue which may lead to the identification of the man I want to find, you will follow it up, patiently and faithfully, sparing neither trouble nor cost. For my sake, Eichard, for my sake, will you promise ? " " I will, my dear," ]\Ir. Thornton answered. " I do promise, and I will keep my promise honestly if ever the chance of doing so should come to me. But I must tell you frankly, Nell, I don't beheve it ever will." " Bless you for the promise, notwithstanding, Kichard," Eleanor said, warmly. " It has made me much happier. There will be two people henceforth, instead of one, set against thia man." A dark frown overshadowed her face. It seemed as if she had uttered those last few words in the form of a threat and a defi- ance, which the man, whoever he was, and wherever he was, might hear. " You know all the strange things they say now about second- eight, clairvoyance, odic force, magnetic attraction — all sorts of long words whose meaning I don't understand, Eichard. I wonder sometimes if this man knows that I hate him, and that 104i Eleanor's Victory. I am watching for him, thinking of him, praying to meet him day and night. Perhaps he does know this, and will hold himself on his guard against me, and try and avoid me." Richard shrank from entering upon this subject; the conver- sation had been altogether disagi-eeable to him. There was a horrible discrepancy between this girl's innocent youthful beauty and all this deternrined talk of fierce and eager vengeance, which would have been more natural to a Highland or Corsican chief tain than to a young lady of seventeen. It was dark now, and they went back to the Pilasters, where EHza Picirillo was spending that last night very moumfolly. The shabby room was only illumined by the glimmer of a low fire, for the Signora had not cared to Ught the candles until her two cliildren came home. She had been sitting by the dingy window watching for their return, and had fallen asleep in the darkness. There is no need to dwell upon that last night. It was Uke the eves of all partings, very sad, very uncomfortable. Every- thing was disorganized by that approaching sorrow. Conver- sation was desultory and forced, and Richard was glad to be employed in cording Eleanor's boxes. She had two trunks now, and had a wardrobe that seemed to her magnificent, so hberally had Mrs. Bannister bestowed her cast-ofi" dresses upon her half- sister. So the last night passed away, the April morning came, and Eleanor's new life began. CHAPTER Xn. GILBERT MONCKTON. Eleakor Vake was not to go down to Berkshire alone. The beginning of her new hfe, that terrible beginning which she so much dreaded, was to make her acquainted with new people. She had received the following commtmication from Mra» " Hazlewood, April 3rd, 1855. "Madam, — As it would of course be very improper for a young lady of your age to travel alone, I have provided against that contingency. " My friend Mr. Monckton has kindly promised to meet you in the first-class waiting-room at the Great Western Station, at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. He will drive you here on Ids way home. ** I am, Madam, " Yours faithfully, "Ellen Daerell." Gilbert Monckton, 105 Eliza Picirillo worked harder upon a Monday than on any other day in the -week. She left the Pilasters immediately after an early breakfast, to ^o upon a wearisome round amongst her pupils. Richarel was in the thick of the preparations for a new piece, so poor Eleanor was obUged to go alone to the station, to meet the stranger who had been appointed as her escort to Eazlewood. She quite broke down when the time came for bidding fare- well to her old friend. She clung about the Signora, weeping tmrestrainedly for the first time. " I can't bear to go away from you," she sobbed piteously ; " I can't bear to say good-bye." " But, my love," the music-mistress answered, tenderly, " if you don't really wish to go " " No, no, it isn't that. I feel that I must go — that " "And I, too, my dear girl. I believe you would do very wrong in refusing this situation. But, Nelly, my darling, re- member that this is only an experiment. You may not be happy at Hazlewood. In that case you will not fail to remem- ber that your home is always here ; that, come to it when you may, you will never fail to find a loving welcome ; and that the friends you leave behind you here are friends whom nothing upon earth can ever estrange from you. Eemember this, Eleanor." " Yes, yes, dear, dear Signora." " If I could have gone with her to the station, I shouldn't have cared so much," Richard murmured, despondingly ; " but the laws of Spavin and Cromshaw are as the laws of Draco. If I don't get on with the Swiss chalet and moonht Alpine peaks, the new piece can't come out on Monday." So poor Eleanor went to the station alone, and was over- charged by the cabman who carried the two trunks which Richard had neatly addressed to Miss Yincent, Hazlewood, Berks. She was received by a civil porter, who took charge of her luggage while she wont to the waiting-room to look for the stranger who was to be her escort. She was no more a coquette than she had been nearly two years before when she travelled alone between London and Paris, and she was prepared to accept the services of this stranger quito as frankly as she had accepted the care and protection of the elderly gentleman who had taken charge of her upon that occa- sion. But how was she to recognize the stranger ? She could not walk up to every gentleman in the waiting-room, to ask him if he were Mr. Monckton. She had in almost all her wanderings travelled in second-clasa 106 Eleanors Victory. carriages, and waited in second-class waiting-rooms. She shrank back, therefore, rather timidly upon the threshold of the capa- cious carpeted saloon, and looked a little nervously at the occu- pants of that gorgeous chamDer. There was a group of ladies near the fireplace, and there were three gentlemen in difi'erent parts of the room. One of these gentlemen was a Httle man vnth. grey hair and a red face ; the other was very young and very sandy ; the third was a tall man of about forty, with close- cut black hair, and a square massive face and head — not exactly a handsome face, perhaps, but a countenance not easily to be overlooked. This tall man was standing near one of the windows, reading a newspaper. He looked up as Eleanor pushed open the swing- ing door. " I wonder which of them is Mr. Monckton," she thought. " Not that fidgety young man with the red hau-, I hope."_ While she still stood doubtfully upon the thi-eshold, hesitating what to do — she Httle knew what a pretty picture she made in that timid, fluttering attitude — the tail man threw down his newspajDcr upon the sofa beside him, and walked across the room to where she stood. " Miss Vincent, I beheve P " he said. Eleanor blushed at the sound of that false name, and then bent her head in reply to the question. She could not say yes. She could not fall into this disagreeable falsehood all at once. " I am Mrs. Darrell's friend and legal adviser, Mr. Monckton," the gentleman said, " and I shall be very happy to perform the duty she has entrusted to me. We are in very good time. Miss Yincent. I know that young ladies are generally ultra--gvJiciusl upon these occasions ; and I came very early in order to anti- cipate you, if possible." Eleanor did not speak. She was looking furtively at the face of Mrs. Dan-eU's friend and legal adviser. A good and wise adviser. Miss Vane thought : for the face, not strictly handsome, seemed to bear in its every feature the stamp of three quaUtiea — goodness, wisdom, and strength. " I am sure he is very good," she thought; "but I would not like to offend him for the -world, for though he looks so kind now, I know he must be temble when he's angiy." She looked almost fearfully at the strongly-marked black eye« brows, tlmiking what a stormy darkness must overshadow the massive face when they contracted over the grave, brown eyes — serious and earnest eyes, but with a latent fixe lurking some- where in their calm depths, Eleanor thought. The girl's mind rambled on thus while she stood by the stranger's side in the sunlit window. Already the blackness of her new life was broken by this prominent figure standing boldly Gilbert Iloncldon. 107 ont M^iGn its very threshold. Already she was learning to be interested in new peoj)le. "He isn't a bit like a lawyer," she thought; "I fancied lawyers were always shabby old men, with blue bags. The men who used to come to Chelsea after papa were always nasty disagreeable men, with papers about the Queen and Richard Roe." Mr. Monckton looked thoughtfully down at the girl by his side. There was a vein of silent poetry, and there were dim ghmpses of artistic feeUng liidden somewhere in the nature_ of this man, very far below the hard, bHsiness-hke exterior which he presented to the world. He felt a quiet pleasure in looking at Eleanor's young beauty. It was her youthfulness, perhaps, her almost childUke innocence, which made her gi-eatest charm. Her face was not that of a common beauty : her _ aquiline nose, frey eyes, and finnly-moulded mouth had a certain air of queen- ness very rarely to be seen ; but the youth of the soul shining out of the clear eyes was visible in eveiy glance, in every change of expression. " Do you know much of Berkshire, Miss Vincent P " the lawyer asked, presently. " Oh, no, I have never been there." " You are very young, and I dare say have never left home before? " Mr. Monckton said. He was wondering that no rela- tive or friend had accompanied the girl to the station. " I have been at school," Eleanor answered ; " but I have never been away from home before — to — to get my own living." " I thought not. Your papa and mamma must be very sorry to lose you." " I have neither father nor mother." " Indeed ! " said Mr. Monckton ; " that's strange.'' Then after a pause he said, in a low voice : " I think the young lady you are going to will like you all the better for that." " \Vhy ? " Eleanor asked involuntarily. " Because she has never known either father or mother." "Poor girl!" murmured Eleanor; "they are both dead, then ? " The lawyer did not answer this question. He was so far pro- fessional, even in his conversation wth Miss Vane, that he asked a great many more questions than he answered. "Do you like going to Hazlewood, IMiss Vincent?" he said, by-and-by, rather abruptly, " Not very much." "Why not?" " Because I am leaving very dear friends to go to " . " Strangers, who may ill-treat you, eh ? " muttered Mr. 108 Eleanors Victory. Monckton. " Yon need have no apprehension of that sort of tiling, I assnre you. Miss Vincent. Mrs. Darrell is rather rigid in her ideas of life ; she has had her disappointments, poor 3onl, and yon must be patient with her : but Laura Mason, the young lady who is to be your companion, is the gentlest and most affectionate girl in Christendom, I should think. She is a sort of ward of mine, and her future life is in my hands ; a very heavy responsibility, JMiss Vincent; she will have plenty of money by-and-by — houses, and horses, and carriages, and ser- vants, and all the outer paraphemaha of happiness : but Heaven knows if she will be happy, poor girl ! She has never known either mother or father. She has hved with all manna Df respectable matrons, who have promised to do a mother's duty to her, and have tried to do it, I dare say ; but she has never had a mother, Miss Vincent. I am always sorry for har when I think of that." The lawyer sighed heavily, and his thoughts seemed to wander away from the young lady in his charge. He still stood it the window, looking out at the bustle on the platform, but Qot seeing it, I think, and took no further notice of Eleanor until the bell rang for the starting of the train. " Come, IMiss Vincent," he said, rousing himself suddenly [rom his reverie ; " I have forgotten all about your ticket. I'll put you into a carriage, and then send a porter for it." Mr. Monckton scarcely spoke to his companion half-a-dozen times during the brief journey to Slough. He sat with a news- paper before him, but Eleanor noticed that he never turned its leaves, and once, when she caught a glimpse of the lawyer's face, she saw that it wore the same gloomy and abstracted ex- pression that she had observed upon it as Mr. Monckton stood m the window of the waiting-room. " He must be very fond of his ward," she thought, " or he ccnld never be so eorry because she has no mother. I thought lawyers were hard, cruel men, who cared for nothing in the world. I always used to fancy my sister Hortensia ought to have been a lawyer." By-and-by, as they drew very near to the station, Mr. Monck« ton dropped his newspaper with another sigh, and turning ta Eleanor, said, in a low, confidential voice : " I hope you will be very good to Laura Mason, Miss Vin- cent. Remember that she stands quite alone in the world : and that however friendless, however desolate you may be — I say this because you tell me you are an orphan — you can never be 10 friendless or bo desolate as she is." Eazlewood. 109 CHAPTER XIII. HAZLEWOOD. A PHAETON and pair was in waiting for Mr. Monckton outside the Slough station. The vehicle was very plain, but had a cer- tain quiet elegance of its own, and the horses had been sold at TattersaH's for something over five hundred pounds. Eleanor Vane's spirits rose in spite of herself as she sat by the la'NA'yer's side, driving at a rapid rate through the pretty pas- toral country. They crossed the river almost immediately after leaving Slough, and dashed into Berkshire. They skirted Windsor Park and Forest, leaving the black outline of the castle keep behind them ; and then turned into a quiet country road, where the green banks were dotted by clumps of early primroses, and the white-thorns were bursting into flower. Eleanor looked rapturously at all this rural beauty. She was a Cockney, poor child, and her experience of the country was confined to rambles in Greenwich Park, or on Richmond Ter- race ; happy rambles with her father, prior to expensive dinners at the Crown and Sceptre, or the Star and Garter, as the case might be. But the country, the genuine country, the long roads and patches of common, the gUmpses of wood and water, the great deserts of arable land, the scattered farm-houses, and noisy farm-yards ; all these were strange and new to her, and her soul expanded in the unfamiliar atmosphere. If that drive could have lasted for ever, it would have been very dehghtful ; but she knew that those splendid chestnut horses were carrying her at a terrible rate to her new home. Her new home ! What right had she to call Hazlewood by that name ? She was not going home. She was going to her first situation. All the pride of birth, the foohsh and mistaken pride in ship- wrecked fortune and squandered wealth which this girl's weak- minded father had instilled into her, arose and rebelled against this bitter thought. "What humiliation Mrs. Bannister's cruelty had inflicted upon her ! She was thinking this when Mr. Monckton suddenly turned his horses' heads away from the main road, and the phaeton entered a lane above which the branches of the still leafless trees made an overarching roof of deUcate tracery. At the end of this lane, in which the primroses seemed to grow thicker than in any other part of the country, there were some low wooden gates, and an old-fashioned iron lamp-post. On the other side of the gates there was a wide lawn shut in 110 Eleanor's Victory. by a sknibbery and a grove of trees, and beyond the lawn glimmered tlie sunlit windows of a low wliite house ; a rambling cottage, whose walls were half hidden by trelhs-work and ivy, and not one of whose windows or chimneys owned a fellowslup with the others. Pigeons were cooing and hens clucking somewhere behind the house, a horse began to neigh as the carriage stopped, and three dogs, one very big, and two very ] ittle ones, ran out upon the lawn, and barked furiously at the jihaeton. Eleanor Vane could not help thinking the low-roofed, white- walled, ivy-covered irregular cottage very pretty, even though it teas Hazlewood. "WTiile the dogs were barking their loudest, a delicate little figure, in fluttering draperies of white and blue, came floating out of a window under the shadow of a verandah, and ran towards the gates. It was the figure of a young lady, very fragile-looking and graceful. A young lady whose complexion was fairer than a snow-drop, and whose loose floating hair was of the palest shade of flaxen. -, " Be quiet, Julius Ceesar ; be quiet, Mark Antony," she cried to the dogs, who ran up to her and leaped and whirled about her, jumping almost higher than her head in an excess of canine spu-its. " Be quiet, you big, wicked Julius Caesar, or you shall go back to the stables, su*. Is this the way you behave yourself when I've had ever so much trouble to get you a half-hohday ? Please, don't mind them, Miss Yincent," the young lady added, opening the gate, and looking up pleadingly at Eleanor; *' they're only noisy. They wouldn't hurt you for the world; and they'll love you very much by-and-by, when they come to know you. I've been watching for you such a time, Mr. Monckton. The train must have been slow this afternoon ! " " The train travelled at its usual speed, neither slower nor faster," the lawyer said, with a quiet smile, as he handed Eleanor out of the phaeton. He left the horses in the care of the groom, and -walked on to the lawn with the two girls. The dogs left off barking at a word from him, though they had made very light of Miss Mason's entreaties. They seemed to know him, and to be accustomed to obey him. " I know the afternoon seemed dreadfully long," the young lady said. " I thought the train must be behind its time." *' And, of course, you never thought of looking at your watch. Miss Mason," the lawyer said, pointing to a quantity of jewelled toys which hung at *he young lady's blue sash. " What's the good of looking at one's watch, if one's watch won't go ? " said Miss Mason ; " the sun has been going down ever so long, but the sun's so changeable, there's no relying on Uazlewood. Ill it. Mrs. Darrell has gone out in the pony-carriage to call upon Bome people near Woodlands." Eleanor Vane started at the sudden mention of a name which had been so familiar to her from her dead father's lips. " So I am all alone," continued Miss Mason, " and I'm very glad of that ; because we shall get to know each other so mucn better by ourselves, shan't we, Miss Vincent ? " George Monckton had been walking between the two girls, but Laura Mason came round to Eleanor, and put her hand in that of Miss Vane. It was a fat Uttle childish hand, but ther? were rings glittering upon it, small as it was. " I think I shall hke you very much," Miss Mason whispered. " Do yoa think you shall like me ? " She looked up tato Eleanor's face, with an entreating expres- sion in her blue eyes ; they were really blue eyes, a bright forget- me-not, or turquoise blue, as different as possible from Eleanor's clear grey ones, which were for ever changing, sometimes purple, sometimes bro^^^l, sometimes black. How could Miss Vane reply to this childisn question, except in the affirmative ? She had every inchnation to love the babyish young lady, who was so ready to cHng to her and confide in her. She had expected to find a haughty heiress who would have flaunted her wealth before her penniless companion. But she had another reason for inclining tenderly towards this girl. She remembered what Mr. Monckton had said to her in the railway carriage. " However friendless or desolate you may be, you can never be so friendless and desolate as she is." Eleanor pressed the hand that clung to hers, and said, gravely, " I'm sure I shall love you. Miss Mason, if you'U let me." " And you'll not be dreadful about triplets, and arpeggios, and cinquepated passages ? " the young lady said, piteously. " I don't mind music a bit, in a general way, you know ; but I never could play triplets in time." She led the way into a sitting-room under the verandah, as she talked. Eleanor went with her, hand-iu-hand, and Mr. Monckton followed, keeping an attentive watch upon the two girls. The sitting-room was, like the exterior of the cottage, very irregular and very pretty. It stood at one end of the house, and there were -svindows upon three sides of the room, — an orie\ at the end opposite the door, a bay opening on to the verandah, and three latticed windows with deep oaken scats upon the other side. The furniture was pretty, but very simple and inexpensive. The chintz curtains and cnair-covers were sprinkled with rose« buds and butterflies; the chairs and tables were of shining maple-wood ; and there was a good supply of old china arranged 112 Eleanor's Victory. here and there upon brackets and cabinets of obsolete form. The pale cream-coloured walls were hung with a few prints and water- coloured sketches ; but beyond this the chamber had no adornments. Laura Mason led Eleanor to one of the window-seats, where a htter of fancy-work, and two or three open books tumblec' carelessly here and there amongst floss-silks and Berlin wools and scraps of embroidery, gave token of the young lady's habits. " Will you take off your things here," she said, " or shall I show you your own room at once ? It's the blue room, next t<» mine. There's a door between the two rooms, so we shall be able to talk to each other whenever we Hke. How dreadfully you must want something to eat after jour journey ! Shall I ring for cake and wine, or shall we wait for tea ? We always drink tea at seven, and we dine very early ; not like Mr. Monck- ton, who has a grand late dinner every evening." The lawyer sighed, " Eather a desolate dinner, sometimes. Miss Mason," he said, gravely ; " but you remind me that I shall be hardly in time for it, and my poor housekeeper makes herself wretched when the fish is sjDOLled." He looked at his watch. " Six o'clock, I declare ; good-bye, Laura ; good-bye, Miss Vincent. I hope you will be happy at Hazlewood." " I am sure I shall be happy with Miss Mason," Eleanor answered. " Indeed ! " exclaimed Mr. Monckton, elevating his straight black eyebrows, " is she so very fascinating, then ? I'm sorry for it," he muttered under his breath, as he walked off after fihaHng hands -with the two girls. They heard the phaeton driving away three minutes after- wards. Laura Mason shrugged her shoulders with an air of reUef. " I'm glad he's gone," she said. " But you hke him very much. He's very good, isn't he ? " " Oh, yes, very, very good, and I do Hke him. But I'm afraid of him, I think, because he's so good. He always seems to be watching one and finding out one's faults. And he seems so sorry because I'm frivolous, and I can't help being frivolous when I'm happy." " And are you always happy ? " Eleanor asked. She thoaght it very possible that this young heiress, who had never known any of those bitter troubles wmch IMiss Vane had found asso- ciated with " money matters," might indeed be always happy. But Laura Mason shook her head. "Always, except when I think," she said; " but when I think Sazlewood. 113 about papa and mamma, and wonder who they were, and why I never knew them, I can't help feeling very unhappy." " They died when you were very young, then ? " Eleanor said. Laura Mason shook her head with a sorrowful gesture. " I scarcely know when they died," she answered ; " I know that I can remember nothing about them; the first thing 1 recollect is being with a lady, far down in Devonshire — a lady who took the charge of several little girls. I stayed with her till I was ten years old, and then I was sent to a fashionable school at Bayswater, and I stayed there till I was fifteen, and then I came here, and I've been here two years and a half. Mr. Monckton is my guardian, you know, and he says I am a very- lucky girl, and will have plenty of money by-and-by ; but what's the use of money if one has no relations in all the wide world ? and he tells me to attend to my education, and not to be frivo- lous, or care for di-ess and jewellery, but to try and become a ^ood woman. He talks to me very seriously, and almost irightens me sometimes with his grave manner; but for all that, he's very kind, and lets me have almost everything I ask him for. He's tremendously rich himself, you know, though he's only a professional man, and he lives at a beautiful place four miles from here, called Tolldale Priory. I used to ask him questions about papa and mamma, but he would never tell m« anything. So now I never speak to him about them." She_ sighed as she finished speaking, and was silent for some few minutes ; but she very quickly recovered her spirits, and conducted Eleanor to a pretty rustic chamber with a lattice window looking on to the lawn. " Mrs. Darrell's man is gone to fetch your luggage," Miss Mason said, " so you must have my brushes and combs, please, for your hair, and then we'll go down to tea." She led Eleanor into the adjoining apartment, where the dressing-table was littered with all manner of womanly frivoli- ties, and here Miss Vane re-arranged her luxuriant golden-brown hair, which no longer was allowed to fall about her shoulders in rippling curls, but was drawn simply away from her forehead, and rolled in a knot at the back of her head. She was a woman now, and had begun the battle of hfe. A pony-carriage drove up to the gate while Eleanor was standing at the glass by the open window, and Mrs. Darrell got out and walked across the lawn towards the house. She was a tall woman, uniisnally tall for a woman, and she was dressed in black silk, which hung about her angular limbs in heavy, lustreless folds. Eleanor could see that her face waa pale and her eyes black and flashing. The two girls went down stairs hand-in-hand. Tea was pre- pared in the dining-room, a long wainscoted apartment, older H 114 Eleanor's Victory. than the rest of the house, and rather gloomy-looking. Three naiTow ■windows upon one side of this room looked towards the shrubbery and grove at the back of the house, and the trunks of the trees looked gaunt and black in the spring twilight. A fire was burning upon the low hearth, and a maid- servant was lighting a lamp in the centre of the table as the two girls went in. Mrs. DarreU welcomed her dejaendant very politely ; but there was a harshness and a stiffness in her politeness which reminded Eleanor of her half-sister, Mrs. Bannister. The two women seemed to belong to the same school. Miss Yane thought. The lamphght shone full upon Mrs. Darrell's face, and Eleanor could see now that the face was a handsome one, though faded and careworn. The widow's hair was grey, but her eyes retained the flashing brightness of youth. They were very dark and lustrous, but their expression was scarcely pleasant. There was too much of the hawk or eagle in their penetrating glance. But Laura Mason did not seem at all afraid of her protectress. " Miss Vincent and I are good friends already, Mrs. DarreU," she said, gaily, " and we shall be as happy together as the day is long, I hope." " And I hope Miss Vincent will teach you industrious habits, Laiu-a," Miss DarreU answered, gravely. Miss Mason made a grimace with her pretty red under-lip. Eleanor took the seat indicated to her, a seat at the end of the dining-table, and exactly opposite to Mrs. DarreU, who sat with her back to the fireplace. Sitting here, Eleanor could scarcely fail to observe an oil painting — the only picture in the room — which hung over the mantel-piece. It was the portrait of a young man, with dark hair clustering about a handsome forehead, regular features, a jDale complexion, and black eyes. The face was very hand- some, very aristocratic, but there was a want of youtlifulness, an absence of the fresh, eager spirit of boyhood in its expression. A look of Ustless hauteur hung hke a cloud over the almost faultless features. Mrs. DarreU watched Eleanor's eyes as the girl looked at this picture. " You are looking at my son, IVIiss Vincent," she said ; " but perhaps it is scarcely necessary to teU you so. People say there IS a strong likeness between us." There was indeed a very striking resemblance between the faded face below and the pictiired face above. But it seemed to Eleanor Vane as if the mother's face, faded and careworn though it was, was almost the younger of the two. The listless in- difference, the utter lack of energy iu the lad's countenance, was so much the more striking when contrasted with the youth- fulness of the features. Sazlewood. 115 "Yes," exclaimed Laura Mason, "that is Mrs. Darrell's only Bon, Laiincelot Darrell. Isn't that a romantic name, Miss Vincent?" Eleanor started. This Launcelot Darrell was the young man she had heard her father speak of; the man who expected to inherit the De Crespigny estate. How often she had heard his name ! It was he, then, who would have stood between her father and fortune, had that dear father lived ; or whose claim of kindred would, perhaps, have had to make way for the more sacred right of friendship. And this young man's portrait was hanging in the room where she sat. He lived in tlie house, perhaps. AVhere should he hve exce2it in his mother's house ? But Eleanor's mind was soon relieved upon this point, for Laura Mason, in the pauses of the business of the tea-table, talked a good deal about the original of the portrait. " Don't you think him handsome, Miss Vincent ? " she asked, without waiting for an answer. " But of course you do ; every- body thinks him handsome ; and then Mrs. Darrell says he's so elegant, so tall, so aristocratic. He is almost sure to have Woodlands by-and-by, and all Mr. de Crespigny's money. But of course you don't know Woodlands or Mr. de Crespigny. How should you, when you've never been in Berkshire before ? And he — not Mr. de Crespigny, he's a nasty, fidgety, hypochon — what's its name ? — old man — but Launcelot Darrell is so accom- plished. He's an artist, you know, and all the water-coloured sketches in the drawing-room and the breakfast-parlour are his ; and he plays and sings, and he dances exquisitely, and he rides and plays cricket, and he's a — what you may call it — a crack shot; and, in short, he's an Admirable Crichton. You mustn't fancy I'm in love ^vith him, j^ou know, IMiss Vincent," the young lady added, blushing and laughing, *' because I never saw him in my life, and I only know all this by hearsay." " You never saw him ! " repeated Eleanor. Launcelot Darrell did not Hve at Hazlewood, then. "No," the widow interposed; "my son has enemies, I am sorry to say, amongst his own kindred. Instead of occupying the position his talents, to say nothing of his birth, entitle' him to, he has been compelled to go out to India in a mercantile capacity. I do not wonder that his spirit rebels against such an injustice. I do not wonder that he cannot forgive." Mrs. Darrell's face darkened as she spoke, and she sighed heavily. By-and-by, when the two girls were alone together in the breakfast room, Laura Mason alluded to the conversation at the tea-table. "I don't think I ought to have talked about Launcelo' Darrell," she said ; " I know his mother is unhappy about him^ 116 Eleanor's Victory. though I don't exactly know why. You see his two aunts, who live at Woodlands, are nasty, scheming old maids, and they con- trived to keep liim away from liis great uncle, Mr. de Crespigny, who is expected to leave liim all his money. Indeed, I don't see who else he can leave it to now. There was an old man — a college friend of Mr. de Crespigny's — who expected to get the Woodlands estate ; but of course that was an absurd idea ; and the old man — tbe father of that very Mrs. Bannister who re- commended you to Mrs. Darrell, by the bye — is dead. So all chance of tbat sort of thing is over. " And Mr. Launcelot Darrell is sure to have tlie fortune P ' Eleanor said, interrogatively, after a very long pause. " Well, I don't know about that : but I've beard Mrs. DarreU say that Launcelot was a great favourite of Mr. de Crespigny's when he was a boy. But those two cantankerous old maids, Mrs. DarreU's sisters, are nagging at the old man night and day, and they may persuade him at last, or they may have succeeded in persuading him, perhaps, ever so long ago, to make a will io their favour. Of course all this makes Mrs. Darrell very un- happy. She idohzes her son, who is an only cliild, and was terribly spoiled when he was a boy, they say ; and she does not know whether he will be a rich man or a pauper." " And in the meantime, Mr. DaiTcU is in India ?" " Yes. He went to India three years ago. He's overseer to an indigo-planter up the country, at some jJace with an un- pronounceable name, hundreds and hundreds of miles from Calcutta. He's not at all happy, I beheve, and he very seldom writes — not above once in a twelvemonth." " He is not a good son, then," Eleanor said. " Oh, I don't know about that ! Mrs. DarreU never com- plains, and she's very proud of him. She always speaks of him as 'my son.' But, of course, what with one tiling and another, she is often very unhappy. So, if she is a httle severe, now and then, we'll try and bear with her, won't we, Eleanor? I may call you Eleanor, mayn't I ? " The pretty flaxen head dropped upon Miss Yane's shoulder, as the heiress asked this question, and the blue eyes were lifted pleadingly. " Yes, yes ; I would much rather be caUed Eleanor than Miss Vincent." "And you'll call me Laura. Nobody ever calls me Misa Mason except Mr. Monckton when he lectures me. We shall be very, very happy together, I hope, Eleanor." " I hope so, dear." There was a sudden pang of mingled fear and remorse at Eleanor Yane's heart as she said this. Was she to be happy, and to forget the purpose of her life ^ Was she to be happy, Sazleicood. lit >jid false to the memory of her murdered father ? In this quiet eountry life ; in this pleasant girlish companionshiii which was 80 new to her ; was she to abandon that one dark dream, that one deeply-rooted desire which had been in her mind ever since her father's untimely death ? She recoiled mth a shudder of dread from the simple happi- ness which threatened to lull her to a Sybarite rest ; in which that deadly design might lose its force, and, Httle by little, fade out of her mind. She disengaged herself from the shght arms which had en- circled her in a half-childish caress, and rose suddenly to her feet. " Laura," she cried, "Laura, you mustn't talk to me like this. My Ufe is not like yours. I have something to do, — I have a purpose to achieve ; a purpose before which every thought of my mind, every impulse of my heart, must give way." "What purpose, Eleanor?" asked Laura Mason, almost alarmed by the energy of her companion's manner. " I cannot tell you. It is a secret," Miss Vane replied. Then sitting down once more in the deep window-seat by Laura's side, JEleanor Vane drew her arm tenderly round the frightened girl's waist. "I'll try and do my duty to you, Laura, dear," she eaid, " and I know I shall be happy with you. But if ever you see me dull and silent, you'U understand, dear, that there is a secret in my Ufe, and that there is a hidden purpose in my mind that sooner or later must be achieved. Sooner or later," she repeated, with a sigh, "but Heaven only knows when." She was silent and absent-minded during the rest of the evening, though she played one of her most elaborate fantasias at Mrs. DarreU's request, and perfectly satisfied that lady's expectations by the brilliancy of her touch. She was very glad when, at ten o'clock, the two women servants of the simple household and a hobbledehopsh young man, who looked after the pony and pigs and poultry-yard, and smelt very strongly of the stable, came in to hear prayers read by Mrs. Darrell. " I know you're tired, dear," Laura Mason said, as she bade Eleanor g5od night at the door of her bedroom, " so I won't ask you to tjuk to me to-night. Get to bed, and go to sleep at once, dear." But Eleanor did not go to bed immediately ; nor did she fall asleep until very late that night. She unfastened one of her trunks, and took from it a Httle locked morocco casket, which held a few valueless and old- fashioned trinkets that had been her mother's, and the crumpled fragment of her father's last letter. She sat at the little dressing-table, reading the disjointed 118 "EReanors Victory. sentences in that melancTioly letter, before she undressed, and then replaced the scrap of paper in the casket. She looked at the lawn and shrubbery. The shining leaves of the evergreens trembled in the soft April breeze, and shim- mered in the moonlight. All was silent in that simple rustic retreat. The bare branches of the tall trees near the low white gates were sharply defined against the sky. High np in the tranquil heavens the full moon shone out from a pale back- ground of fleecy cloud. The beauty of the scene made a very powerful impression upon Eleanor Yane. The window from wliich she had been accustomed to look in Bloomsbury abutted on a yard, a naiTOw gorge of dirt and disorder, between the dismal back walls o/ nigh London houses. " I ought never to have come here," Eleanor thought, bitterly, as she let fall her dimity window curtain and shut oiit the splendour of the night. "I ought to have stayed in London; there was some hope of my meeting that man in London, where strange things are always nappening. But here " She fell into a gloomy revene. Secluded in that quiet rustic retreat, what hope could she have of advancing, by so much as one footstep, upon the dark road she had api^ointed for herself to tread ? It was very long before she fell asleep. She lay for hours, tumbling and tossing feverishly upon her comfortable bed. The memories of her old life mingled themselves with thoughts of her new existence. She was haunted now by the recollection of her father and her father's death ; now by her fresh expe- riences of Hazlewood, by the widow's grey hair and penetrating gaze, and by the pictured face of Launcelot DarreU CHAPTEE XrV. IHE prodigal's KETUBN. The course of Eleanor's life at Hazlewood was peaceful and monotonous. She had been engaged simply as a *' comi^anion " for Laura Mason. That common epithet, which is so often twisted into the signification of a household drudge — an upper- servant, who works harder than any of her fellows — in this case meant purely and simply what it was originally intended to mean. Eleanor's only duties were to teach Laura Mason music, and to be the companion and associate of all her girUsh pleasurea and industries. Not that Miss Mason was very industrious. She had a habit of beginning great undertakings in the way of fancy work, and the more gigantic the design the more ardent was her desire to The ProdigaTs Betum. 119 attempt it — but she rarely got beyond the initiative part of her iabour. There was always some "Dweller on the Threshold" in the shape of a stitch that couldn't be learnt, or a skein of silk that couldn't be matched, or a pattern that wouldnH come ncrht; and one after another of the gigantic undertakings was living aside to decay in dusty oblivion, or to be finished by Eleanor or Mrs. Darrell. Laura ]\Iason was not made for the active service of life. She was one of the hoUday soldiers in the great army, fit for nothing but to wear gilded epaulettes and gorgeous uniforms, and to turn out upon gala days to the sound of trumpet and drum. She was a loving, generous-hearted, confidmg creature; but, like some rudderless boat drifting hither and thither before a stormy ocean, this frivolous, purposeless girl flung herself, help- less and dependent, upon the mercy of other people. The rich City sohcitor, Mr. Monckton, the head of a celebrated _egal firm familiar in the Bankruptcy Court, took the trouble to Bay very little about his pretty, flaxen-haired, and blue-eyed ■ward. He spoke of her, indeed, with an almost pointed indifference. She was the daughter of some people he had kno\vn in his early youth, he said, and her fortune had been entrusted to Ids care. She would be rich, but he was none the less anxious about her future. A woman was not generally any the safer in this world for being an heiress. This was all Gilbert Monckton had ever said to Mrs. Darrell upon the subject of his ward's past history. Laura herself had talked freely enough of her first two homes. There was Httle to tell, but, upon the other hand, there seemed notliing to conceal. Upon one subject Mr. Monckton was very strict, and tliat waa the seclusion of the home he had chosen for his ward. " When Miss Mason is of age she will of course choose for herself," he said ; " but until that time comes, I must beg, Mrs. Darrell, that you will keep her out of all society." Under these circumstances it was especially necessarv that Laura Mason should have a companion of her own age. llazle- wood was a hermitage, never approached by any visitors except Bome half-dozen elderly ladies, who were intimate with Mrs. Darrell, and Mr. Monckton, who came about once a fortnight to dine and spend the evening. He used to devote himself very much to Laura and her com- panion during these visits. Eleanor could see how earnestly he watched the flaxen-haired girl, whose childish sunplicit_y no doubt made her very bewitching to the grave man ot busmess. He watched her and listened to her ; sometimes •with a pleased smile, sometimes with an anxious exj^ression on his face ; but his attention vary rarely wandered from her. 120 Eleanor^s Victory. " He must love her very dearly," Eleanor thonglit, remember* ing how earnestly he had spoken in the railway carriage. She wondered what was the nature of the affection which the Bohcitor felt for liis ward. He was old enough to be her father, it was true, but he was still in the prime of Ufe ; he had not that beauty of feature and complexion which a school-girl calls hand- some, but he had a face which leaves its impress upon the minds of those who look at it. He was very clever, or at least he seemed so to Eleanor ; for there was no subject ever mentioned, no topic ever discussed, with which he did not appear thoroughly familiar, and upon which his opinions were not original and forcible. Eleanor's intellect expanded under the influence of this superior masculine intelligence. Her plastic mind, so ready to take any impression, was newly moulded by its contact with this stronger brain. Her education, very imperfect before, seemed to com^Dlete itself now by this occasional association with a clever man. Of course all tliis came about by slow degrees. She did not very rapidly become famihar with Gilbert Monckton, for his grave manner was rather calculated to inspire diffidence in a very young woman ; but httle by Uttle, as she grew accustomed to his society, accustomed to sit quietly in the shade, only speaking now and then, while Laura Mason talked familiarly to her guardian, she began to discover how much she had gained from her association with the lawyer. It was not without some bitterness of spirit that Eleanor Yane thought of this. She felt as if she had been an interloper in that quiet Hazlewood house- hold. What right had she to come between Laura and her guardian, and steal the advantages Mr. Monckton intended for his ward? It was for Laura's sake he had been earnest or eloquent ; it was for Laura's benefit he had described this, or explained that. What right, then, had she, Eleanor, to remember what Laura had forgotten, or to avail herself of the advantages Laura was too frivolous to value ? There was a gulf between the two girls that could not be passed, even by affection. Eleanor Yane's mental superiority placed her so high above Laura Mason that perfect confidence could not exist between them. Eleanor's love for the hght- hearted, heedless girl, had something almost motherly in its nature. " I know we shall never quite understand each other, Laura," she said ; " but I think I could give up my Hfe for your sake, my dear." " Or I for you, Nelly." " No, no, Laura. I know you are unselfish as an angel, and you'd wish to do so ; but yours is not the giving-up nature, my darling. You'd die under a great sorrow." The FrodifjaVs Beturn. 121 ** I ttink I should, Nelly," the girl answered, drawing* closer to her friend, and trembling at the very thought of calamity ; " but how you speak, dear. Had you ever a great sorrow ? " " Yes, a very great one." " And yet you are happy with us, .and can sing and play, and K.nible about in the woods with me, Nell, as if you had nothing on your mind." "Yes, Laura, but I can remember my sorrow all the time. It is liidden bo deep in my heart that the sunflhine never reaches it, however happy I may seem." Laura Mason sighed. The spoiled child of fortune could - *t help wondering how she would act under the influence of a gi-eat misery. She would sit down upon the ground in some darkened room, she thought, and cry until her heart broke and she died. The summer faded into autumn, and autumn into winter, and the early spring flowers bloomed again in the shrubberies and on the lawn at Hazlewood. The primroses were pale upon the tender grass of the sloping banis in the broad lane near the gates, and still no event had happened to break the tranquil monotony of that secluded household. Eleanor had grown fami- liar with every nook in the rambling old cottage; even with Launcelot Darrell's apartments, a suite of rooms on the bedroom floor, looking out into the grove at the back of the house. Those rooms had been shut up for years, ever since Launcelot had sailed for India, and they had a desolate look, though fires had been lighted in them periodically, and every scrap of furniture was kejjt carefully dusted. " The rooms must always be ready," Mrs. Darrell said. " Mr. de Cresiiigny may die, and my son may be called home suddenly." So the three rooms, a bedroom, dressingroom, and sitting- room, were kept in perfect order, and Laura and Eleanor wan- dered into them sometimes, in the idleness of a wet afternoon, and looked at the pictures upon the walls, the unfinished sketches piled one upon the top of another on the easel, or tried the little cottage piano, upon which Mr. Darrell had been wont to accompany himself when he sang. His mother always insisted upon this piano being tuned when the tuner came from Windsor to attend to Laura Mason's modem grand. The two girls used to talk a good deal of the widow's handsome son. They had heard liim spoken of by his mother, by the servants, and by the few humble neighbours in scattered cottages near Hazlewood. They talked of his uncertain fortunes, his accomphshments, hia handsome, haughty face, which Laura declared was faultless. Miss Vane had by this time been a twelvemonth at Hazle- wood. Her eighteenth birthday was past, and the girlishness of her appearance had matured into the serene beauty of ear'y womanhood. The golden tints of her hair had deepened into 122 Eleanor'g Victory. ricli auburn, her grey eyes looked darker under the shadow of her dark brows. When she went to spend a brief Christmas hohday with her old friends, the Signora and Richard Thornton declared that she had altered veiy much since she had left them, and were surprised at her matured beauty. She bought the silk gown for Ehza Picirillo, and the meerschaum pipe for poor Dick, who needed no memorial of his adopted sister ; for her image haunted liim only too jierpetually, to the destruction of aU other images which might else have found a place in the scene- painter's heart. Eleanor Yane felt a pang of remorse as she remembered how very easdy she had borne her separation from these faithful friends. It was not that she loved them less, or forgot their goodness to her. She had no such ingratitude as that wherewith to reproach herself; but she felt as if she had committed a sin against them in being happy in the calm serenity of Hazlewood. She said this to Richard Thornton during the brief Christmas visit. They had walked out once more in the quiet streets and squares in the early winter twilight. " I feel as if I had grown selfish and indifferent," she said. " The months pass one after another. It is two years and a half since my father died, and I am not one step nearer to the dis- covery of the man who caused his death. Not one step. I am buried ahve at Hazlewood. I am bound hand and foot. What can I do, Richard ; what can I do ? I could go mad, almost, when I remember that I am a poor helpless girl, and that I may never be able to keep the oath I swore when I first read my dead father's letter. And you, Richard, in aU this time you have done nothing to help me." The scene-painter shook his head sadly enough. " What can I do, my dear Eleanor P What I told you nearly a year ago, I tell you again now. This man will never be found. What hope have we P what chance of finding him ? We might hear his name to-morrow, and we should not know it. If either of us met him in the street, we should pass him by. We might hve in the same house with him, and be ignorant of his presence." "No, Richard," cried Eleanor Yane. "I think if I met that man some instinct of hate and horror would reveal his identity to me." " My poor romantic Nelly, you talk as if life was a melodrama. No, my dear, I say again, this man wiU never be found; the story of your father's death is unhappily a common one. Let that sad story rest, Nell, with all the other moiimful records oi the past. Beheve me that you cannot do better than be happy at Hazlewood ; happy in your innocent hfe, and utterly forgetful of the fooliah vow you made when you were little better than a The JProdigaVs Ridurn. 123 child. If all the improbabilities that you have ever dreamt of were to come to j^ass, and vengeance were in yoiir grasp, 1 hopo and beUeve, Nell, that a better spiiit would arise vdtliin you, and prompt you to let it go." Kicnard Thornton spoke very seriously. He had never beea able to speak of Eleanor's scheme of retribution without grief and regi-et. He recognized the taint of her father's influence in this \nsion of vengeance and destruction. All George Vane's notions of justice and honour had been rather the meretricious and llirasy ideas of a stage play, than the common-sense views of real Ufe. He had talked mcessantly to his daughter about days of retribution; gigantic vengeances which were looming lomewhere in the far-away distance, for the ultimate annihilation of the old man's enemies. This foolish ruined spendthrift, who cried out against the world because his money was spent, and his place in that world usurped by wiser men, had been Eleanor's teacher during her most impressionable years. It was scarcely to be wondered at, then, that there were some flaws in the character of this motherless girl, and that she was ready to mistake a pagan scheme of retribution for the Christian duty of filial love. Midsummer had come and gone, when an event occurred to break the tranquiUity of that simple household. The two ^irls had lingered late in the garden one evening early in July. Mrs. Darrell sat writing in the breakfast-parlour. The lamphght glimmered under the shadow of the verandah, and the widow's tall flgure seated at her desk was visible through the open bay vrindow. Laura and her companion had been talking for a long time, but Eleanor had lapsed into silence at last, and stood against thf low white gate ^vith her elbow resting upon the upper bar, looking thoughtfully out into the lane. Miss Mason was never the first to be tired of talking. A sUvery torrent of innocent babble was for ever gushing from her red babyish Hps ; so, when at_ last Eleanor grew silent and absent-minded, the heiress was fain to talk to her dogs ; her darUng silky Skye, whose great brown eyes looked out from a ball of floss silk that represented the a n imal's head ; and her Itiihan greyhound, a slim shivering brute, who wore a coloured flannel paletot, and exhibited a fretful and whimpering disposition, far from agreeable to any one but his mistress. There was no moon upon this balmy July night, and the hulk- ing hobbledehoy-of-all-work came out to light the lamp while the two girls were standing at the gate. This lamp gave a pleasant aspect to the cottage upon dark nights, and threw a bright line of fight into the obscurity of the lane. T^e boy lu/d scarcely retired with his short ladder and flaming 124 Eleanor*9 Victory. lantern, wlien fhe two pet dogs began to bark violently, and a man came out of tbe darkness into the line of lamplight. Laura Mason gave a startled scream ; but Eleanor caught her by the arm, to check her foolish outcry. There was nothing very alarming in the aspect of the man. He was only a tramp : not a common beggar, but a shabby-genteel- looking tramp, whose threadbare coat was of a fashionable make, and who, in spite of his ragged slovenliness, had something the look of a gentleman. " Mrs. Darrell still lives here, does she not? " he asked, rather eagerly, " Yes." It was Eleanor who answered. The dogs were still barking, and Laura was still looking very suspiciously at the stranger. " Will you tell her, please, that she is wanted out here by some one who has something important to communicate to her," the man said. Eleanor was going towards the house to deliver this message, when she saw Mrs. Darrell coming across the lawn. She had been disturbed at her writing by the barking of the dogs. " What is the matter. Miss Vincent ? " she asked, sharply. "Who are you and Laura talking to, out here?" She walked from the two girls to the man, who stood back a little way outside the gate, with the lamphght shining full upon his face. The widow looked sternly at this man who had dared to come to the gate at nightfall, and to address the two girls under her charge. But her face changed as she looked at him, and a wild cry broke from her lijjs. , " Launcelot, Launcelot, my son ! " CHAPTER XV. LAUNCELOT. Mbs. Dareell stood for some time clasped in her son's embrace, and sobbing violently. The two girls withdrew a few paces, too bewildered to know what to do, in the first shock of the surprise that had come so suddenly upon them. This was Launcelot Darrell, then, the long absent son, whose portrait hung above the mantel-piece in the dining-room, whose memory was so tenderly cherished, every token of whose former presence was so carefully preserved. " My boy, my boy," murmured the widow, in a voice which eeemed strange to the two girls, from its new accent of tender- Launcelot. 125 ness ; " my own and only son, how is it that yon come back to me thus ? I thou