Eleanor Vane lifted her head with a gesture of superb defiance.
“I would starve rather than accept a penny from Mrs. Bannister, or from her sister or brothers. If they had been different, my father would never have died as he did. He was deserted and abandoned by all the world, except his helpless child, who could do nothing to save him.”
“But if you don’t mean to apply to Mrs. Bannister, what will you do, Nelly?”
Eleanor Vane shook her head hopelessly. The whole fabric of the future had been shattered by her father’s desperate act. The simple dream of a life in which she was to have worked for that beloved father was over, and it seemed to Eleanor as if the future existed no longer; there was only the sad, desolate present,—a dreary spot in the great desert of life, bounded by a yawning grave.
“Why do you ask me what I mean to do, Signora?” she said, piteously. “How does it matter what I do? Nothing I can do will bring my father back. I will stay in Paris, and get my living how I can, and look for the man who murdered my father.”
“Eleanor,” cried the Signora, “are you mad? How could you stay in Paris, when you don’t know a single creature in the whole city? How, in mercy’s name, could you get your living in this strange place?”
“I could be a nursery-governess; or a nursery-maid; anything! What do I care how low I sink, if I can only stay here, where I am likely to meet that man?”
“Eleanor, my dear! For pity’s sake do not delude yourself in this manner. The man you want to find is an adventurer, no doubt. In Paris one day, in London another, or away in America perhaps, or at the farthest extremity of the globe. Do you hope to find this man by walking about the streets of Paris?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you expect to meet him?”