Then she started up, with a low cry, caused partly by surprise and partly by the sharp pain which seemed to pass from her heart to her head and to force to the surface the tears which had been so long pent up, and which now fell like rain. She had never before heard her grandmother call her “Rennet” without a feeling of irritation, or, as she had expressed it to Phil, without a “jerking of her elbows,” but now, as the familiar sound fell on her ears, there swept over her such a feeling of anguish, and regret, and intense longing for what she had lost, that the fountain of tears was broken up, and for some minutes she lay in the motherly arms held out to her, and cried so hard and piteously that Mrs. Ferguson became alarmed at last, and tried to soothe and quiet her. But Reinette could not be quieted. “Let me cry,” she said; “it does me good. You know I have not shed a tear before since poor Phil died, and I guess I am crying more for him than for my lost birthright—my——” “Hush, Rennet;” grandma interrupted. “I don’t know what you mean—don’t want to know—and if there is anything, my advice is, keep it to yourself. I took you to my heart as my own that fust day I saw you at the train, a little scart thing among so many strangers. I loved you then; I’ve loved you ever sence, and allus will, no matter who you be.” “Don’t you hurt me so!” Queenie cried with a keen pang of remorse, as she remembered how she had once rebelled against this woman, and refused to acknowledge her claim to relationship until it was proved beyond her power to gainsay it. And now she would have given the world to have called her “grandmother,” and known that it was true. “I don’t deserve your love,” she said. “I have been so wicked, and have vexed you so many times, but, after Margery, you are dearer to me now than any living creature, though I am not your grandchild—Margery is that; Margery is the baby born at Rome and hidden away from her father. Mrs. La Rue has told us all about it. _She_ is my mother.” Queenie spoke very low, and a flush stained her cheeks, where the tears were still falling though not so fast as at first. She was growing a little calmer and more composed, and was beginning to tell Mrs. Ferguson what she had heard, when Mr. Beresford was announced. To Margery, he had said, “Queenie has written me a strange story. Do you know anything about it?” “Yes,” Margery answered, with a quivering lip, “I heard mother tell her.” “And was that the first you knew of it?” he asked, scrutinizing her closely. “No,” she said, hesitatingly, as if the confession were a pain. “I knew it a few weeks ago——” “When you were sick, and you kept it to yourself for her sake,” Mr. Beresford interrupted her. “You are a brave girl, Margery. Few would have done what you have.” “If they loved Queenie as I do they would,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Beresford, if it should be true, can we not keep it to ourselves? Need the world know it?”