She was looking at Margery with her heavy, pleading eyes, and her hands were lifted in supplication as she spoke, while her voice told how abased and humiliated she felt. In a moment Margery knelt beside her and was covering the hands with tears and kisses as she said: “Queenie, Queenie, my love, my darling, will I stand by you? Will I love you? As well ask if the sun will rise again as to question my love for you, _my sister_. It is very sweet to call you thus, even though a shadow lies over us now; but that will pass away. There is brightness beyond and happiness, too—and, Queenie, you must not believe all mother said. She is not in her right senses. “She knows it now, and wonders at herself. You may believe I am your sister, but not the rest—the part which touched you the closest—because—because——” “Hush, Margery,” Queenie said, withdrawing her hands from Margery and leaning back wearily in her chair. “You cannot deceive me. _I_ am that child born in Marseilles. Margaret Ferguson was your mother; Christine Bodine is mine.” Here a shudder ran through Queenie’s frame so long and deep that her teeth chattered as if she were seized with a chill, and both her hands and lips were purple with cold. After a pause she continued: “I think the hardest part of all is losing faith in father. I cannot forgive him, though I promised him I would. If he had left me in obscurity, where I belonged, it would have been better; but now the fall has crushed me utterly. And, Margery, what of you? How came you in that position—you, the lawful daughter of the house, while I, was raised to such a giddy height of prosperity that in my foolish pride I held myself better than the most of mankind? Why was it? Do you know?” “Yes,” Margery replied; “but it will be better for mother to tell you.” “Mother! Do you call her that still?” Queenie asked, and her voice expressed all the bitter scorn which she then felt for the woman who had so injured her. “Yes, I call her mother still,” Margery answered, softly. “She is all the mother I have ever known, she was more sinned against than sinning. She did not understand what she was doing. She is not a bad woman. Our father was the most in fault, for she was young and ignorant and foolish enough to believe that she was his wife. She is purer far than many a woman of to-day who stands high in society, and before whom the world bows down because of her position.” Margery was pleading for the woman who had done the greater wrong to her, and Queenie listened wonderingly, while there came back to her some words her father had said to her when dying: “If you find your mother, remember I was more to blame than she.” She _had_ found her, but she could not at once forgive her, but she said at last: “Where is she, Margie? Ask her to come up.” CHAPTER XLII. CHRISTINE’S STORY.