Nothing could be colder or more unsatisfactory than were these brief lines to the sorrowing parents, to whom it would have been some comfort to know how their daughter died, and who was with her at the last, and if she had a thought or word for the friends across the water, who would never see her again. But this solace was denied them, for though Mrs. Rossiter wrote twice to the old address of Mr. Hetherton in Paris, she never received a reply, and the years passed on, and the history of poor Margaret’s short married life and death was still shrouded in mystery and gloom, when General Hetherton died without a will; and, as a matter-of-course, his property went to his only child, who, so far as the people knew, had never sent him a line since he went abroad. Upon the elder Mr. Beresford, who had been the general’s legal adviser, devolved the duty of hunting up the heir, who was found living in Paris and who wrote to Mr. Beresford, asking him to take charge of the estate and remit to him semi-annually whatever income there might be accruing from it. The house itself was to be shut up, as Frederick wrote that he cared little if the old rookery rotted to the ground. He never should go back to live in it: never return to America at all, but he would neither have it sold or rented, he said. And so it stood empty year after year, and the damp and mold gathered upon the roof, and the boys made the windows a target for stones and brick-bats, and the swallows built their nests in the wide-mouthed chimneys, and, with the bats and owls flew unmolested through the rooms, where once the aristocratic Mrs. Hetherton trailed her velvet gowns; and the superstitious ones of Merrivale said the place was haunted and avoided it after nightfall, and over the whole place there brooded an air of desolation and decay. Then the elder Beresford died, and Arthur, who was many years younger, succeeded him in business and took charge of the Hetherton estate, and twice each year wrote formal letters to Mr. Hetherton, who sent back letters just as formal and brief, and never vouchsafed a word of information concerning himself or anything pertaining to his life in France, notwithstanding that Mrs. Rossiter once sent a note in Mr. Beresford’s letter, asking about her sister’s death, but to this there was no reply, except the message that she died in Rome as he had informed her family at the time. Thus it is not strange that the letter to Mr. Beresford announcing his return to America, and speaking of his daughter, was both a surprise and revelation, for no one had ever dreamed there was a child born to poor Margaret before her death. In fact, the Fergusons themselves had almost forgotten the existence of Mr. Hetherton, and had ceased to speak of him, though John, who had now been dead four years or more had talked much in his last sickness of Margaret, and had said to his wife: