“Margery? That was, then her pet name, the name I like the best in all the world, because of my Margery,” Queenie cried, as her tears fell fast upon the letter, which seemed to her like a voice from the dead. “Poor mother, you were not so very happy, were you? Why did you die? If I only had you now, how I would love and pet you,” she said, as she passionately kissed the place which her mother’s lips had touched, and her father’s, too, she hoped, for how could he resist that touching appeal? He must have loved the writer of that letter, and yet there was a cloud between the husband and wife which cast its shadow over their child and made her weep bitterly as she wondered what it was which had crept in between her father and his tired, sick Margery. “Was it the blue-black haired Tina;” she said, as she clenched her fists together, and then beat the air with them, as she would have beaten the blue-black-haired Tina had she been there with her. “Poor mother,” she said again, “so tired and sick, with no one to care for her but Christine, who was so good to her. I know now why father settled that money on her; it was because she was so kind and faithful to mother, who knows now, perhaps, that father did love her more than she thought; for he did, I am sure he did; and he loved me, too, and I believed him so noble and true. Oh, father, father, forgive me, but I have lost something. I cannot put it in words—I don’t know what I mean,” and stooping over the package which held her mother’s letters, Reinette cried out loud, with a bitter sense of something lost from her father’s memory which had been very sweet to her. “Oh, how much has happened since I came to America, and how long it seems, and how old I feel, and there is no one to tell it to—no one to talk with about it.” Just then there was a second knock at the door, and Pierre announced Mr. Beresford waiting in the library. He was a prompt, business man, and had come for the papers, Reinette knew, and, bathing her flushed cheeks, and crumpling her wavy hair more than it was already crumpled, she went down to meet him, taking the papers with her, and trying to seem natural and gay, as if no tress of blue-black hair had been burned in her room, no letters from Tina were hidden away in her closet, and no sting when she thought of her father was hurting her cruelly. Queenie was a perfect little actress, and her face was bright with smiles as she entered the room and greeted Mr. Beresford, who, being a close observer, saw that something had been agitating her, and guessed that it was the examining of her father’s papers, which naturally would bring back her sorrow so freshly. There was a great pity in his heart for this lonely girl, and his manner was very sympathetic and gentle as he took the box from her and said: “I am afraid this has been too much for you.”