“By Jove, Ethel, if I had never seen Queenie, I should say this dressmaker of yours was the loveliest woman I ever saw. Look at that figure, and the way she carries her head. I don’t wonder Queenie raves over her; such eyes, and hair, and complexion I never saw.” Meanwhile Margery was walking rapidly toward the cottage where she and her mother had rooms. “Oh, mother,” she began, as she took off her hat and scarf and began to arrange her hair before the little mirror, “I have such news to-day! Queenie—Miss Hetherton—is here!” “Here! Reinette Hetherton here! and her father!” Mrs. La Rue exclaimed, springing to her feet as suddenly as if a bullet had pierced her. But Margery’s back was toward her, and she did not see how agitated she was, or how deathly white she grew at the reply. “Her father died on shipboard just as they reached New York, and Queenie is all alone in Merrivale.” “Mr. Hetherton dead!” Mrs. La Rue repeated, as she dropped back into her chair, while the hot blood surged for a moment to her face and then left it pallid and gray as the face of a corpse. Something unnatural in the tone of her voice attracted Margery, who turned to look at her. “Why, mother, what is it? Are you sick?” she cried, crossing swiftly to her and passing her arm around her as she leaned back heavily in the chair. “I have been very dizzy-like all the morning. It is nothing: it will soon pass off,” Mrs. La Rue replied. But when Margery insisted that she should lie down and be quiet, she did not refuse, but suffered her daughter to lead her to the lounge and bring her the hartshorn and camphor. “Cover me up, Margery,” she said, as a shiver like an ague chill ran through her veins. “I’m so cold. There, that will do; and now sit down beside me, and let me hold your hand while you tell me of your friend and her father, and how he died, and who told you. It will interest me, may be, and make me forget my bad feelings.” So Margery sat down beside her, and took the hot hand which held hers with a grasp which was sometimes actually painful as the narrative proceeded, and Margery told all she had heard from the Rossiters. “And to think, her mother was an American, and that the Rossiters are her cousins, and her father’s old home is Merrivale, where I thought of going! Oh, if I could only go there now!” Margery said; but her mother did not express surprise at anything. On the contrary, a more suspicious person than Margery would have said that the story was not new to her, for she occasionally asked some question which showed some knowledge of Queenie’s antecedents. But this Margery did not observe. She only thought her mother a little strange and sick, and was glad when her closed eyes and perfectly motionless figure indicated that she was sleeping.