“My dear,” the music-mistress said presently, with rather a sharp accent, “do you know that Richard and I will be compelled to leave Paris to-morrow?”
“Leave Paris to-morrow, Signora!”
“Yes. The Phœnix opens early in October, and our Dick will have all the scenes to paint for the new piece. Besides, there are my pupils; you know, my love, they cannot be kept together for ever unless I go back to them.”
Eleanor Vane looked up with almost a bewildered expression, as if she had been trying to comprehend all that Signora Picirillo had said; then suddenly a light seemed to dawn upon her, and she rose from her chair and flung herself upon a hassock at the feet of her friend.
“Dear Signora,” she said, clasping the music-mistress’s hand in both her own, “how wicked and ungrateful I have been all this time! I forget everything but myself and my own trouble. You came over to Paris on my account. You told me so when I was ill, but I had forgotten, I had forgotten. And Richard has stopped in Paris because of me. Oh! what can I do to repay you both—what can I do?”
Eleanor hid her face upon the Signora’s lap, and wept silently. Those tears did her good; they beguiled her for a little while, at least, from the one absorbing thought of her father’s melancholy fate.
Signora Picirillo tenderly smoothed the soft ripples of auburn hair lying on her lap.
“My dear Eleanor, shall I tell you what you can do to make us both very happy, and to pay us tenfold for any little sacrifice we may have made on your account?”
“Yes, yes; tell me.”
“You have to choose your pathway in life, Nelly, and to choose it quickly. In all the world you have only your half-sisters and brothers to whom you can appeal for assistance. You have some claim upon them, you know, dear; but I sometimes think you are too proud to avail yourself of that claim.”