Not more than half a dozen yards from the Morgue he came suddenly upon 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!”
CHAPTER VII.
SUSPENSE.
Eleanor Vane and the scene-painter stood upon the bridge looking at each other for a few moments after Richard’s cry of 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 twilight.
“Oh, Richard!” Eleanor cried, “I have been so unhappy. Papa didn’t come home all last night, nor yet to-day. I waited for him 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 the first which 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 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.