“REINETTE.” Oh, how the wretched woman writhed as she read this letter, with thuds of pain beating in her heart, and her eyes dim with burning tears. It was so kind, so affectionate in its tone, and so familiar too; so unlike what Reinette’s manner toward her had been. “Queenie, my darling, would you write to me thus if you knew?” she moaned, as she rocked to and fro in her anguish, while at her work below Margery sat singing a little song she had learned in the Tabernacle at Oak Bluffs: “There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you.” “Rest for the weary,” Mrs. La Rue repeated, as the clear, sweet tones floated up to her. “And I am weary, oh! so weary; but there is no rest for me, except in death, which some say is a long dreamless rest, and that I can have so soon, for my friend is always near me,” and she glanced toward the shelf where stood a vial of laudanum to which she had resort when morphine did not avail to quiet her and bring forgetfulness. “But I must see Margery once more,” she thought. “I must kiss her again, and hear her call me mother.” It was nearly time now for the evening meal, and summoning all her strength and calmness, Mrs. La Rue went down stairs, and under cover of the fast-increasing darkness, managed so well that Margery suspected nothing, and attributed her mother’s pallor and weakness to the neuralgia from which she was suffering. “I am going to bed early to-night,” Mrs. La Rue said, when supper was over, and the table cleared away. “I am feeling quite ill.” Then Margery looked at her closely, and asked if it was anything more than neuralgia which ailed her. Was there bad news in the letter? “No—yes; but nothing I can now explain,” Mrs. La Rue replied; then going up to her daughter, she kissed her twice, and said: “Good-night, my darling. Do not speak to me when you come up to bed; I may be asleep.” Margery kissed her back, with no thought of what was in the mind of the miserable woman as she slowly climbed the stairs, and, going to her room, shut the door, and taking down her _friend_, poured out what was to give her forgetfulness and rest. Drop by drop the dark liquid fell into the glass, until there were forty drops in all, and she held it to the light, and looked at it, and smiled as she thought of the morrow, when she would be deaf to Margery’s call, and deaf to Queenie’s reproaches, if she should come, as she might do now at any time.