watcher, for the Signora had sat by many sick-beds, hoping against hope, until despair crept into her heart, as the grey shadows of approaching death came over a beloved face, never again to pass away.
The fever lasted for several days and nights, but throughout every change the English doctor declared that Eleanor Vane’s constitution would carry her through a worse attack than this.
“I am glad you told her,” he said one morning to the Signora, “there will be less to tell her by-and-by, when she begins to get strong again.”
There was, therefore, something more to be told.
Little by little the fever passed away; the crimson spots faded out of the invalid’s hollow cheeks; the unnatural lustre of the grey eyes grew less and less vivid; little by little the mind grew clearer, the delirious wanderings less frequent.
But with the return of perfect consciousness there came terrible bursts of grief—grief that was loud and passionate in proportion to the impulsive vehemence of Eleanor Vane’s character. This was her first sorrow, and she could not bear it quietly. Floods of tears drowned her pillow night after night; she refused to be comforted; she repulsed the patient Signora; she would not listen to poor Richard, who came sometimes to sit by her side, and tried his best to beguile her from her grief. She rebelled against their attempted consolation.
“What was my father to you?” she cried, passionately. “You can afford to forget him. He was all the world to me!”
But it was not in Eleanor’s nature to be long ungrateful for the tenderness and compassion of those who were so patient with her in this dark hour of her young life.
“How good you are to me,” she cried sometimes, “and what a wretch I am to think so little of your goodness. But you don’t know how I loved my father. You don’t know—you don’t know. I was to have worked for him; I was to have worked for him by-and-by, and we were to have led such a happy life together.”
She was growing strong again in spite of her grief. Her elastic temperament asserted itself in spite of her sorrow, which she never ceased to think of night and day, and she arose after her illness like a beautiful flower which had been beaten and crushed by the storm.
Richard Thornton’s leave of absence had expired for some days, but the Royal Phœnix Theatre closed its doors in the hot summer months, and he was therefore comparatively free. He stayed in Paris with his aunt, for they were both bent upon one purpose, to be accomplished at any sacrifice to themselves. Thank Heaven! there are always good Samaritans in the world, who do do not mind turning backward upon their life’s journey when there is a desolate and wounded traveller in need of their help and tenderness.
The Parisian atmosphere was cooling down in the early days of September—faint but refreshing breezes were beginning to blow away the white mists of summer heat upon the boulevards, when Eleanor Vane was well enough to sit in the little saloon above the butcher’s shop, and drink tea in the English fashion with her two friends.
She was well enough to do this, and Richard and the Signora were beginning to think of turning homewards; but before they could well leave Paris there was something that ought to be told to Eleanor—something that 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 muslin dressing-gown, and with her long golden curls falling upon her shoulders. She had been silent for a long time: her two companions watching her furtively, observant of every change in her countenance. Her cup of tea stood untasted on a little table at her side, and she was sitting with her hands loosely locked together in her lap.
She spoke at last, and asked that very question which must inevitably lead to the revelation her friends had to make to her.
“You have never told me how papa died,” she said; “his death must have been sudden, I know.”
Eleanor Vane spoke very quietly. She had never before mentioned her dead father’s name with so little outward evidence of emotion. The hands loosely locked together upon her lap stirred with a slightly tremulous motion; the face, turned towards the Signora and Richard Thornton, had a look of fixed intensity.
“Papa died suddenly, did he not?” she repeated.
“Yes, my dear, very suddenly.”
“I thought so. But why was he not brought home? Why couldn’t I see—”
She stopped abruptly, and turned her face away towards the open window. She was trembling violently now from head to foot.
Her two companions were silent. That terrible something which was as yet unrevealed must be told sooner or later; but who was to tell it to this girl, with her excitable nature, her highly wrought nervous temperament?
The Signora shrugged her shoulders despondingly, as she looked at her nephew. Mr. Thornton had been painting all the afternoon in the little sitting-room. He had tried to interest Eleanor Vane in the great set scenes he was preparing for Raoul. He had explained to her the nature of a vampire trap in the wainscot of the poisoner’s chamber, and had made his pasteboard model limp in his repeated exhibition of its machinery. The vampire trap was a subtle contrivance which might have beguiled any one from their grief, Dick thought; but the wan smile with which Eleanor watched his work only made the scene-painter’s heart ache. Richard sighed as he returned his aunt’s look. It seemed quite a hopeless case as yet. This poor lonely child of fifteen might go melancholy mad, perhaps, in her grief for a spendthrift father.
Eleanor Vane turned upon them suddenly while