“What do you mean by a great deal? A few pounds, I suppose?”
“Oh, much more than that,” Eleanor answered. “He had a hundred pounds—a hundred pounds in new bank notes—French notes. It was the money my half-sister, Mrs. Bannister, had sent him, to pay for my education at Madame Marly’s.”
“Mrs. Bannister,” said Richard, catching at the name. “Ah, to be sure, I remember now. Mrs. Bannister is your sister. She is very well off, is she not, and has been kind to you? If you were in any trouble, you would go to her, I suppose, Eleanor?”
“Go to her if I were in trouble! Oh, no, no, Dick, not for the world!”
“But why not? She has been kind to you, hasn’t she, Nell?”
“Oh, yes, very kind in paying money for my education, and all that; but you know, Richard, there are some people who seem to do kind things in an unkind manner. If you knew the cruel letter that Mrs. Bannister wrote to papa—the cruel, humiliating things she said only a few days ago, you couldn’t wonder that I don’t like her.”
“But she is your sister, Nell; your nearest relation.”
“Except papa.”
“And she ought to love you, and be kind to you. She lives at Bayswater, I think I’ve heard you say?”
“Yes, in Hyde Park Gardens.”