“If it depended upon you and me, it might be done,” he replied. “But I am afraid we could not manage Queenie. She seems determined to do you justice. Where is she, and can I see her?” * * * * * “Yes, let him come at once. I wish to have it over,” Queenie said, when told that Mr. Beresford was in the house and had asked for her. She heard him coming, and rising to her feet and brushing her tears away she stood erect, with the old, proud look flashing in her eyes, for she would not allow this man, who had once asked her to be his wife, to see how utterly crushed and humiliated she was. But when she caught sight of his face, so full of pity, and sympathy, and concern for her, she broke down utterly and cried harder even than she had done when grandma had called her Rennet. It was a perfect storm of sobs and tears, and Mr. Beresford, who had never witnessed anything like it, felt the moisture gathering in his own eyes as he looked at the little figure writhing in such pain. “You must excuse me, for I cannot help it,” she said, when she could speak. “It is not this alone which affects me so. It is everything. The death scene on the ship, when father’s strange words foreshadowed this which has come upon me, and the loss of Phil, who would have stood by me in the face of everything.” “And do you not think I will do that, Queenie?” Mr. Beresford said, sitting down beside her and taking her hot hands in his as naturally as if he had been her brother or her lover. And as he looked upon her, so broken, and crushed, and helpless, and yet so sweet and lovely withal, there swept over him again something of the same feeling which had prompted him to ask her to be his wife that night upon the rocks. True it was that recently he had learned to think of another face very different from the white, tear-stained one before him. But there was a great pity in his heart for the girl who had so dazzled, and bewildered, and bewitched him—a desire to comfort and reassure her, and he felt tempted to take her in his arms and soothe her as he would have soothed a little child. Grandma Ferguson had left the room as he came in, and the two were alone altogether, and Queenie’s eyes, in which great tears were shining, were fixed upon him, and Queenie’s lips he had once so longed to kiss were quivering in a grieved kind of way, and Queenie’s hands were in his, and so it is not so very strange that for a moment he forgot the face he had thought fairer than the one which he finally took between his two hands and held, while he said: