to the Phœnix, 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 Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs without Words’ to me, and darn my stockings, 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 blacking as an embellishment 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 apostrophised his adopted sister. Were his feelings quite brotherly? was there no twinge of the fatal torture so common to mankind mingled with this young man’s feelings as he looked at the beautiful face opposite to him, 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 landscape in distemper by reason of the many coloured splashes which adorned it.
“My poor Dick would have fallen in love with her, and would have broken his good, honest heart,” Eliza Picirillo 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 affectionate and the indifferent alike conspired to urge her onward. It was only her own inclination 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. All 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. Darrell 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 light. 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 be 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 truth. No questions will be asked of you, as Mrs. Darrell 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 little extra expenditure as may be necessary. Hazlewood is thirty miles from London, and about seven from Windsor. You will go down by the Great Western, and stop at Slough, where a conveyance will meet you; but I will write further upon this 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 expected at Hazlewood on the 6th of April.
“I have only one other remark to make. I know that your father cherished a foolish notion upon the subject of the Woodlands property. Pray bear in mind that no such idea has ever been entertained by me. I know the Darrell family quite well enough to feel assured that they will take care of their own rights, which I am content to acknowledge, Remember, therefore, that I have no wish or expectation with 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 his dying a bachelor, he would leave that money to my father or his heirs.”
Eleanor Vane took very little notice of this final paragraph in her sister’s letter. Who cared for Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune? What was the good of it now? It could not bring her father back to life; it could not blot out that quiet, unwitnessed death-scene in the Parisian café; it could not rehabilitate the broken name, or restore the shattered life. What could it matter who inherited the vile and useless dross?
The fortnight passed in a feverish unsatisfactory manner. Richard and the Signora took care to conceal the poignancy of their regret at parting with the gay-hearted girl, who had brought such new brightness into their narrow lives. Eleanor wept by stealth; dropping many bitter tears over her work, as she remodelled Mrs. Bannister’s silk dresses, reducing those garments to the dimensions of her own girlish figure. The last night came by-and-bye, 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 together in the quiet Bloomsbury streets while the bells were ringing for evening service, and the lamps glimmering dimly from the church windows. They chose the loneliest streets in the old-fashioned middle-class quarter. Eleanor was very pale, very silent. This evening walk had been her express desire, and Richard watched her wonderingly. Her face had an expression which he remembered in the Rue l’Archevêque, when he had told her the story of her father’s death—an unnaturally rigid look, strangely opposed to the changeful brightness 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 gray twilight was stealing into the streets and squares, and the lights began to shine out from the lower windows.
