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28, 1863.]

walked very slowly homeward through the hot, breathless summer night. She was too sorrowful, too much depressed by the sudden disappointment which had fallen like a dark shadow upon the close of the day which had begun so brightly, to be embarrassed by any uncomfortable sense of her loneliness in the crowded thoroughfare.

No one molested or assailed her—she walked serene in her youth and innocence; though the full radiance of the lamplight rarely fell upon her face without some passing glance of admiration resting there also. She never once thought that her father had done wrong in leaving her to walk alone through that crowded Parisian street. In the unselfishness of her loving nature she scarcely remembered her disappointment about the theatre: not even when she passed the brilliantly lighted edifice, and looked, a little wistfully perhaps, at the crowd upon the threshold.

She was uneasy and unhappy about her father, because in all her Chelsea experiences she remembered evil to have resulted from his going out late at night; vague and mysterious trouble, the nature of which he had never revealed to her, but whose effects had haunted him and depressed him for many dreary days. He had been sometimes, indeed, very often, poorer after a late absence from his shabby Chelsea lodging; he had been now and then richer; but he had always been alike remorseful and miserable after those occasional nights of dissipation.

His daughter was sorrowful therefore after painting with him. She knew that, in spite of his declaration that he would be home at eleven, it would be between one and two in the morning when he returned; not tipsy—no, thank Heaven, he was no drunkard—but with a nervous, wretched, half- demented manner, which was perhaps more sad to see than any ordinary intoxication.

“I was in hopes papa would always stay at home with me now that I am grown up,” the young lady thought very sadly. “When I was little, of course it was different; I couldn’t amuse him. Though we were very happy sometimes then; and I could play écarté, or cribbage, or whist with two dummies. If I can get on very well with my education at Madame Marly’s, and then get a situation as morning governess for a large salary—morning governesses do get high salaries sometimes—how happy papa and I might be.”

Her spirits revived under the influence of cheering thoughts such as these. I have said before that it was scarcely possible for her to be long unhappy. Her step grew lighter and faster as she walked homeward. The glory of the gas lights brightened with the brightening of her hopes. She no longer felt her loneliness in the indifferent crowd. She began to linger now and then before some of the most attractive of the shops, with almost the same intense rapture and delight that she had felt in the morning.

She was standing before a book-stall, or rather an open shop perhaps, reading the titles of the paper-covered romances with the full glare of the shadeless gas lights on her face, when she was startled by a loud, hearty English voice, which exclaimed without one murmur of warning or preparation:

“Don’t tell me that this tall young woman with the golden curls, is Miss Eleanor Vandeleur Vane, of Regent Gardens, King’s Road, Chelsea, London, Middlesex. Please don’t tell me anything of the kind, for I can’t possibly believe anybody but Jack-and-the-beanstalk could have grown at such a rate.”

Eleanor Vane turned round with her face lit up with smiles to greet this noisy gentleman.

“Oh, Dick,” she cried, putting both her hands into the broad palm held out before her, “is it really you? Who would have thought of seeing you in Paris?”

“Or you, Miss Vane? We heard you were at school at Brixton.”

“Yes, Dick,” the young lady answered; “but I have come home now. Papa lives here, you know, and I am going to a finishing school in the Bois de Boulogne, and then I am going to be a morning governess, and live with papa always.”

“You are a great deal too pretty for a governess,” said the young man, looking admiringly at the bright face lifted up to him; “your mistress would snub you. Miss Vane, you’d better—”

“What, Dick?”

“Try our shop.”

“What, be a scene-painter, Dick?” cried Eleanor, laughing. “It would be funny for a woman to be a scene-painter.”

“Of course, Miss Vane. But nobody talked of scene-painting. You don’t suppose I’d ask you to stand on the top of a ladder to put in skies and backgrounds, do you? There are other occupations at the Royal Waterloo Phœnix besides scene-painting. But I don’t want to talk to you about that: I know how savage your poor old dad used to be when we talked of the Phœnix. What do you think I am over here for?”

“What, Richard?”

“Why, they’re doing a great drama in eight acts and thirty-two tableaux at the Porte St. Martin, Raoul l’Empoisonneur it’s called, Ralph the Poisoner, and I’m over here to pick up the music, sketch the scenery and effects, and translate the play. Something like versatility there, I think, for five-and-thirty shillings a week.”

“Dear Richard, you were always so clever.”

“To be sure; it runs in the family.”

“And the Signora, she is well, I hope?”

“Pretty well; the teaching goes on tant bon que mauvais, as our friends over here say. The Clementi is a little thinner in tone than when you heard it last, and a little further off concert pitch; but as most of my aunt’s pupils sing flat, that’s rather an advantage than otherwise. But where