The lamp was brought and lighted, and then Queenie began her task, selecting first all the legal-looking documents which she knew must pertain strictly to her father’s business. A few of these were in English and related to affairs in America, but the most were in French, and pertained to matters in France and Switzerland, where her father held property. These Queenie knew Mr. Beresford could not decipher without her help, and so she went carefully over each document, finding nothing objectionable—nothing which a stranger might not see—nothing mysterious to her, though one paper might seem so to others. It was dated about twenty years before, and was evidently a copy of what was intended as an order setting apart a certain amount of money, the interest to be paid semi-annually to one Christine Bodine in return for services rendered: the principal was placed in the hands of Messrs. Polignie, with instructions to pay the interest as therein provided to the party named, who, in case of Mr. Hetherton’s death, was to receive the whole unless orders to the contrary should be previously given. This paper Reinette read two or three times, wondering what were the services for which her old nurse received this annuity, and thinking, too, that here was a chance to find her. The money must have been paid, if she were living, and through the Messrs. Polignie she could trace her and bring her to America. “I ought to have some such person living with me, I suppose,” she said, “and I hate a maid always in my room and in my way.” The business papers disposed of and laid away for Mr. Beresford’s inspection, Queenie turned next to the letters, of which there were not very many. Some from Mr. Beresford on business—one from her father’s mother, Mrs. General Hetherton, written to him when he was at Harvard, and showing that the writer was a lady in every thought and feeling, and one from herself, written to her father when he was in Algiers, and she only ten years old. It was a perfect child’s letter, full of details of life at the English school, and of Margery, who was with her there. “Queenie’s first letter to me,” was written on the label, and the worn paper showed that it had been often read by the fond, proud father. Over this Reinette’s tears fell in torrents, for it told how much she had been loved, by the man whose hand she seemed to touch as she sorted the letters he had held so often. Putting aside the envelope which bore her childish superscription, she took up next a packet, which, to her aristocratic instincts, seemed out of place with those other papers, in which there lingered still a faint odor of the costly perfume her father always used.