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 the first which she had shed in all her trouble; the first relief after long hours of agonising suspense, of weary watching.
“Oh, how can papa treat me so?” she cried, amid her sobbing. “How can he treat me so?”
Then, suddenly raising her head, she looked at Richard Thornton, her clear grey eyes dilated 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 if shrinking in terror from the awful suggestion in her own words:—
“What should happen to him? he is so well and strong, poor darling. If he is old, he is not like an old man, you know. The people of the house in the Rue de l’Archevêque have been very kind to me; they say I am quite foolish 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’s 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 all this time the scene-painter had not spoken. He seemed utterly unable to offer any word of comfort to the poor girl who clung to him in her distress, looking to him for consolation and hope.
She looked wonderingly into his face, puzzled by his silence, which seemed unfeeling, and it was not like Richard to be unfeeling.
“Richard!” she cried, almost impatiently. “Richard, speak to me! You see how much misery I’ve suffered, and you don’t say a word! You’ll 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 in 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 of 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 knows 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 at home till he returned; but if he should not come to-night, you’ll look for him, won’t you, Richard? You’ll search all Paris till you find him?”
“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 saying the same prayer all to-day, Richard; even just now, when you found me standing by the parapet 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 that He can always grant our prayers.”
“If it seems best and wisest in His sight, Nell.”
“Yes, of course; sometimes we pray for foolish 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 had need to ask the question, for Richard Thornton was leading her into a labyrinth of streets in the direction of the Luxembourg, and 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 further and further away from home. Will you take me back to the Rue de l’Archevêque, 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 will, my dear. We’ll cross the water further on, by the Louvre; and now tell me, Eleanor—I—I can’t very well make inquiries about your father, unless I fully understand the circumstances 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 were very few passers-by. The houses stood back behind ponderous gates, 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 fashionable world seemed to have deserted this quiet quarter for the leafy avenues leading away from the Champs Elysées.
Richard and Eleanor walked slowly along the broad footway. The stillness of the soft summer night had some effect upon the school-girl’s fever of impatience. The grave, compassionate tones of her friend’s voice soothed her. The burst of passionate weeping which had almost convulsed her slight frame half an hour before, had been an unspeakable relief to her. She clung to her companion’s arm confidingly, and walked patiently by his side, without questioning him as to where he was leading her, though she had a vague idea that he was not taking her homewards.
“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, Richard, we are all the world to each other; and my poor darling looks so hopefully forward to the