“Are you sick?” Lisette asked, as Mrs. La Rue dropped suddenly into a chair when she heard where Margery had gone and with whom. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.” Making an excuse that she was tired, and not feeling quite as well as usual, Mrs. La Rue soon went back to her own apartment, and kneeling down by the wooden chair before the fire, cried bitterly, as people only cry when some great wrong done in the past, or some terrible memory which they had thought dead and buried forever, rises suddenly from the grave and confronts them with all the olden horror. “Reinette and Margery together, side by side!” she said. “Oh, if I could see it—see _her_; but no, I have promised, and I must keep my vow. I dare not break it.” For a long time she lay with her head upon the chair, and then remembering that Margery would soon be coming home and must not find her thus, she arose, and wiping the tear stains from her face, busied herself with preparations for the evening meal until she heard upon the stairs the bounding step which always sent a thrill of joy to her heart, and in a moment Margery came in with her blue eyes shining like stars and her cheeks glowing with excitement, as she talked of the wonderful things she had seen, and of Queenie, “who,” she said, “acted as if I was just as good as she, and her father so rich, too, with such a lovely chateau, and she was like a picture, as she sat talking to me on this hard old chair,” and she indicated the one by which her mother had knelt, and on which the tears were scarcely yet dried. “_This_ one? Did she sit on _this one_?” Mrs. La Rue asked, eagerly, laying her hand caressingly on the chair where Queenie Hetherton had sat and talked to Margery. “And what is the very best of all,” Margery continued, “she goes to an English school, and when I told her how much I wanted to learn English, she said she’d tease her father for the money to pay for me, too; and she knew she’d get it, for he gives her every thing she wants. Oh, I do hope he will. I mean to ask God to-night to make him. Lisette says I must ask for what I want, and Jesus will hear and answer. Do you think he will? Does He answer you?” “Oh, Margery, Margery, I never pray. I am too wicked, too bad. God would not hear _me_, but he will you: so pray, child, pray,” Mrs. La Rue replied, and seizing the little girl she hugged her passionately, and raining kisses upon her forehead and lips, released her as suddenly, and turned quickly away to hide her anguish from her. CHAPTER XVII. QUEENIE AND MARGERY.