“My dear Eleanor, if I regret the vehemence of your feeling upon this subject, I do not defend the man whose treachery hurried your father to his unhappy death; I only wish to convince you of the folly you commit in cherishing these ideas of vengeance and retribution. Life is not a three-volume novel or a five-act play, you know, Nelly. The sudden meetings and strange coincidences common in novels are not very general in our everyday existence. It is not at all likely that in the whole course of your life you will ever again encounter this man. From the moment of your father’s death all clue to him was lost; for it was only your father who could have told us who and what he was, or, at least, who and what he represented himself to be. He is lost in the vast chaos of humanity now, my dear, and you have not the frailest clue by which you might hope to find him. For Heaven’s sake, then, abandon all thought of an impossible revenge! Have you forgotten the words we heard in the Epistle a few weeks ago—‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord’? If the melodramatic revenge of the stage is not practicable in real life, we know at least, my dear—for you see we have it from very high authority—that wicked deeds do not go unpunished. Far away at the remotest limits of the earth, this man, whom your puny efforts would be powerless to injure, may suffer for his crime. Try and think of this, Eleanor.”
“I cannot,” answered the girl. “The letter which my father wrote me before he died was a direct charge which I will never disobey. The only inheritance I received from him was that letter—that letter in which he told me to avenge his death. I dare say you think me mad as well as wicked, Richard; but, in spite of all you have said, I believe that I shall meet that man!”
The scene-painter sighed and relapsed into despondent silence. How could he argue with this girl? What could he do but love and admire her, and entrust himself to her direction if she had need of a slave? While he was thinking this, Eleanor clasped both her hands upon his arm and looked up earnestly in his face.
“Richard,” she said, in a low voice, “I think you would serve me if you had the power.”
“I would go through fire and water to do so, Nelly.”
“I want you to help me in this matter. You know as little of this man as I do, but you are much cleverer than me. You mix with other people and see something of the world; not much, I know, but still a great deal more than I do. I am going away into a quiet country place, where there is no possible chance of meeting this man; you will stay in London”——
“Where I may brush against him in the streets any day, Nell, without being a shade the wiser as to his identity. My dear child, for any practical purpose you will be as near the man in Berkshire as I shall be in Bloomsbury. Don’t let’s talk of him any longer, Nelly. I can’t tell you how this subject distresses me.”
“I won’t leave off talking of him,” said the young lady, resolutely, “until you have made me a promise.”
“What promise?”
“That if ever you do come across any clue which may lead to the identification of the man I want to find, you will follow it up, patiently and faithfully, sparing neither trouble nor cost. For my sake, Richard, for my sake, will you promise?”