Eleanor Vane laughed heartily at her old friend’s random talk, as she wished him good night. All the light-heartedness of her careless childhood seemed to return to her in Richard Thornton’s society. Her childhood had not been an unhappy one, remember; for in all 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 under every 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 sound of her footstep, and gave her the key, with some kindly word of greeting, which Eleanor scarcely understood.
She could only say, “Bon soir, madame,” in her school-girl French, as she dragged herself slowly up the little winding stair, thoroughly worn out, physically and mentally, by this time.
The little entresol seemed very close and stifling. She drew back the curtains, and looked out through the open window; but even the street itself seemed oppressively hot in the moonless, 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 Féval’s in a dirty and tattered cover, on the little marble-topped writing-table. The leaves were crumpled, and smeared with stains and splotches of grease, for it was Mr. Vane’s habit to amuse himself with a work of fiction while he took his matutinal roll and coffee. He had taken to novel reading in his frivolous old age, and was as fond of a sentimental story as any school-girl,—as his daughter herself.
Miss Vane drew the lumbering little table to the open window, 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 window, and saw a pretty picture by the dim glimmer of that solitary 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 light.