There were three letters inclosed in one large envelope, on which was written “Papers pertaining to the Avignon business.” Queenie knew her father had once owned some houses in Avignon, and taking first the largest letter in the package, she studied it carefully, noting that the paper was cheap, the handwriting cramped, and Chateau des Fleurs, to which it was directed, spelled wrong. “This is not business—it is a letter which by mistake papa must have put in the wrong place, for it looks _coarse_, it feels _coarse_, and it smells _coarse_,” Queenie said, elevating her little nose as she caught a whiff of something very different from the delicate perfumery pervading the other papers. “Who sent this to papa, and what is it about?” were the questions which passed rapidly through her mind, as she held the worn, soiled missive between her thumb and fingers, and inspected it curiously. Once something prompted her to put it away from her sight, and never seek to know its contents. But woman’s curiosity overcame every scruple, and she at last drew the letter itself from the envelope. It was quite a large sheet, such as Reinette knew ladies seldom used, and the four pages were closely written over, while there seemed to be something inside which added to its bulk. Turning first to the last page, Queenie glanced at the signature, and saw the two words “From Tina,” but saw no more, for the something inside, which, slipping down, dropped upon her hand, around which it coiled like a living thing, with a grasp of recognition. It was a tress of long, blue-black hair, with just a tendency to wave perceptible all through it. Shaking it off as if it had been a snake, Queenie’s cheek paled a moment with a sensation she could not define, and then crimsoned with shame and resentment; resentment for the dead mother, who, she felt, had in some way been wronged, and shame for the dead father to whom some other woman had dared to write, and send a lock of hair. “Who is this _Tina_?” she said, with a hot gleam of anger in her black eyes, “and how dare she send this to my father—the bold, bad creature! I hate her, with her vile black hair” and she ground her little high heel upon the unconscious tress of hair, as if it had been Tina herself upon whom she was trampling. “I’ll burn it,” she said at last, “but I’ll never touch it again.” And reaching for the tongs which stood upon the hearth, she took up the offending hair and held it in the lamp, watching it with a grim feeling of satisfaction, and yet with a sense of pain, as it hissed, and reddened, and charred in the flame, and writhed and twisted as if it had been something human from which the life was going out. Through the open window a breath of the sweet summer air came stealing in, and catching up a bit of the burnt, crisped hair carried it to Queenie’s white morning wrapper, where it clung tenaciously until she shook it off as if it had been pollution.