Early as it was, Mr. Beresford was at his office. He had an important suit pending in the court which involved much thought and research, and he was hunting up certain points bearing upon it when Pierre came in, and with a simple “_Bon jour, monsieur_,” laid the package upon the table and departed in the direction of Grandma Ferguson’s. Mr. Beresford recognized Queenie’s handwriting, and thinking she had probably sent him some business papers of her father’s, which she had overlooked, he laid it aside for a time and went on with his own matters, so that it was an hour or more, and the one-horse sleigh which Grandma Ferguson had hired to carry her to Hetherton Place had driven rapidly past the door before he took the package in his hand and opened it. The three yellow, time-worn letters which Queenie had inclosed first met his eye, and he examined them curiously, noting that they were dated in Marseilles many years ago; but as they were written in French it would take him some time to decipher them, so he put them down and took up Queenie’s letter, which he read through rapidly, feeling when it was finished so benumbed and bewildered that he walked several times across the floor of his office, and then went out into the open air to shake off the nightmare which oppressed his faculties and made his brain so dizzy. Then, returning to the letter, he read it again, weighing carefully every word, and jumping at conclusions, rejecting this statement as improbable, and that as impossible and saying to himself as Pierre had done, “I do not believe it.” He had long ago suspected that Queenie and Margery might be _sisters_, but not in this way. Anon, however, a doubt stole into his mind that it might be true, and this doubt was succeeded by another, and another, until there were great drops of sweat upon the lawyer’s face, and an intense pity in his heart as he thought of Queenie and all she would have to suffer. “Poor little Queenie; so proud and so high-spirited; she cannot bear it, and I shall do all I can to prove the story false,” he said; and then suddenly there swept over him another thought which made him reel in his chair, while the sweat-drops on his forehead and about his lips grew larger and thicker. “If the tale were true, then Margery was the daughter of the house; Margery was Miss Hetherton, of Hetherton Place, and——” He did not allow himself to think any further, but, throwing out his hands, with a fierce gesture, he exclaimed, “Get thee gone, Satan! Is this a time to indulge in low, mean, selfish feelings? Were Margery a thousand times a Hetherton, she would be no sweeter or lovelier than she has seemed to me as Margery La Rue, nor will Queenie be one whit the worse for this stain upon her birth, if stain there be, which I doubt; at all events I will leave no stone unturned to prove the truth or falsity of this Bodine woman’s statement. If I could only read her letters I might find something on which to base a conclusion.”