“Sit down, Pierre,” Queenie said. “You need not stand before me now. I have something to tell you, and the sooner I tell it, the better. A dreadful thing has come to light—a dreadful wrong been done to Margery. She is not Miss La Rue. She is that baby born at Rome. She is Margaret Ferguson’s daughter, and I am—am—nobody! My father was Frederick Hetherton, and my mother is Christine Bodine, and they were never legally married. Do you understand me, Pierre?” He did understand her, and the shock made him reel forward and grasp the back of a chair, to which he held, while he stood staring at his mistress as if to assure himself of her sanity. “_It is true_,” she continued, as she met his questioning look of wonder, and then, very rapidly, she told him how it had come to her knowledge, and what she meant to do. “I will never believe it,” was Pierre’s emphatic reply, when he could speak at all. “It is a lie she told, the bad woman.” And yet in Pierre’s heart there was a growing fear that what he had heard might be true, but even if it were, it should make no difference with him. He would stand by Queenie against the whole world. Where she went he would go, where she died, he would die, her faithful slave to the last. It did not matter to him whether she were a Hetherton or a Bodine, she was his sovereign, his queen, and he told her so, with many gestures and ejaculations, some of which were far from being complimentary to “_La femme Bodine_,” as he called her. “I knew I was sure of you,” Queenie said to him, “and after a little we will go away from here and find a home somewhere, and I shall learn to work and take care of myself, and you, too, if necessary.” Pierre shrugged his shoulders significantly at the idea of being taken care of by this little girl who had been reared so tenderly. Queenie noticed the gesture, though she did not seem to, and went on: “I have written to Mr. Beresford, who will know just what to do, and early to-morrow morning you must take it to him. Say nothing to Miss Margery or any one, but come to my door, quietly, as soon as you are up. I shall be waiting for you. And now go: it is getting late, and I am very tired.” Pierre obeyed and left her in a most bewildered state of mind, scarcely knowing what he had heard, and not at all able to realize its import. True to his promise, he was at Queenie’s door the next morning before either Margery or her mother were astir, and received the package for Mr. Beresford, and a second and smaller one for Grandma Ferguson. This last Queenie had written after Peirre left her the previous night, and she bade him deliver it. “There will be no answer to either; at least none for you,” she said, and with a nod that he understood, Pierre hastened away to throw the bomb-shell at the feet of Mr. Beresford and Grandma Ferguson. CHAPTER XLIV. THE EXPLOSION.