“And, Pierre,” she continued, “I shall, of course, tell Mrs. La Rue that I know who she is, but it is not necessary that all the world should know. We need tell no one else.” “No, mademoiselle; but what of Monsieur Beresford? He wrote to M. Albrech, too; he will get an answer; he will know.” “Of course,” Queenie said, impatiently. “But I can trust him. I shall tell him to keep silent; and now leave me, and do not let Mrs. Jerry, or any one, come near me. I am tired, and shall soon retire.” So Pierre left her alone with her thoughts, which kept her awake the most of the night, and the next morning found her suffering with one of her head-aches, and unable to leave her bed. It was a stormy November day, and the wind blew in gusts over the hill, and drove before it clouds of snow, which was drifting down from the gray sky in great white feathery masses, but bad as was the day, it did not prevent Mr. Beresford from riding over to Hetherton Place, where he was met by Pierre with the message that Miss Hetherton had the headache, and could not see him. Mr. Beresford seemed disappointed, and was about turning away from the door, when he said, as if it had just occurred to him: “By the way, do you know if Miss Hetherton received any letters from France yesterday?” “She did receive one,” Pierre said, looking straight at the lawyer, and feeling sure that he, too, had heard from Mentone, and knew the secret of Christine Bodine. And he was right, for the same mail which brought the letter to Reinette had also in it one for Mr. Beresford from Mentone. It was a curious compound of English and French, which took Mr. Beresford nearly two hours to decipher. But he managed it at last with the help of grammar and dictionary, and had a tolerably accurate knowledge of its contents, which surprised and confounded him almost as much as Queenie’s letter had confounded her. But in his letter were a few words, or rather insinuations, which were omitted in Queenie’s and which affected him more than all the rest, and threw a flood of light upon Mrs. La Rue’s reason for keeping her identity with Christine Bodine a secret from Reinette. Did Queenie know what he knew or suspected, Mr. Beresford wondered, and if so, how did she take it? What would she do? A burning, intense desire seized the usually calm, sober lawyer to have these questions answered. He must see Reinette and judge from her face how much she knew, and so he went to Hetherton Place. But Queenie would not see him. She was sick, and she had received a letter from France. So much he learned, and he rode back to his office, where, for the remainder of the day, he seemed in a most abstracted frame of mind, paying but little attention to his clients, who had never seen him so absent-minded and grave before, and wondered of what he was thinking. Not of them and their business, but of Reinette and the change her coming to Merrivale had made in his hitherto quiet life. How she had turned everything upside down.