Taking up the letter which bore date the furthest back, he began to decipher it slowly and carefully, succeeding better than he had anticipated, and when it was finished he possessed a pretty accurate knowledge of its contents. Then he took the second and the third, and went through with them both, while the conviction deepened in his mind that there was something in the story which would bear investigation. “I must see Queenie at once,” he said, “and Mrs. La Rue also, and hear from her if she has any other proof to offer, than her mere statement and these letters, which she may or may not have written.” Ordering his horse and giving some directions to his clerk in case clients called, he was soon riding rapidly toward Hetherton Place where Grandma Ferguson had been for more than an hour. Pierre had found the good woman seated at her breakfast-table, arrayed in her usual morning costume, a short, wine-colored stuff skirt, and a loose woolen sacque, with no collar on her neck or cap on her head. But her white hair was combed smoothly back and twisted into a little knot, and her face shone with content and satisfaction as she drank her coffee from her saucer or soaked her fried cake in it. With his usual polite bow, Pierre handed the package to her, and then, departed without a word. “Mrs. John Ferguson, Present,” grandma read aloud. “What did Rennet want to put _present_ on for, I wonder, and how finefied she writes. I don’t believe I can make it out at all, the letters are so small and Frenchy,” and tearing off the envelope she tried in vain to decipher the contents of the letter. Queenie had written it under great excitement, and her handwriting, always puzzling to grandma, was more illegible than usual. “Here, Axie, read it for me; ’tain’t likely there’s any secret,” grandma said, and taking the paper in her hands, Axie began to read what Queenie had written. It was as follows: “DEAR GRANDMA: “You must let me call you that just this once, though you are _not_ my grandmother. A dreadful thing has been done, and kept secret until yesterday, when I found it out, and it almost killed me. I am _not_ the baby born at Rome; Margery is that baby; Margery is your grandchild, and I am nobody. I am the daughter of Frederick Hetherton and Mrs. La Rue, who was Christine Bodine, my old nurse. She has told me all the deception, and her hiding Margery from her father, who did not know of her existence. It is terrible—and I was so proud and hot tempered, and so bad to you sometimes, and now I’d give the world if you were really my grandmother. “Come as soon as you can and see Margery and question Mrs. La Rue yourself. “QUEENIE.” “Not her gra’ma! _I_ not her gra’ma! Who then is her gra’ma, I’d like to know?” Grandma Ferguson exclaimed, when Axie read the first lines of the letter.