CHAPTER VIII. REINETTE ARRIVES. Mr. Beresford, to whom the telegram was addressed, read it first, feeling as if the ground was moving from under his feet, and leaving a chasm he did not know how to span. “What is it?” Phil asked, as he saw how white Mr. Beresford grew, and how the hand which held the telegram shook. “Read for yourself,” Mr. Beresford said, passing the paper to Phil, to whose eyes the hot tears sprang quickly, and whose heart went out to the desolate young girl, alone in a strange land, with her dead father beside her. “If I had known it last night I would have gone to her,” he said, “but it’s too late now for that. All we can do is to make it as easy for her as possible. Beresford, you see to the grave in the Hetherton lot, and that the hearse is at the station to meet the body, and I’ll notify them at the house not to go on with the big dinner they are getting up, and I’ll tell grandmother that her flounced muslin and pink ribbons will not be needed to-day.” Shocked and horrified as he was, Phil could not refrain from a little pleasantry at the expense of the dress and cap which grandma Ferguson was intending to wear “to the doin’s,” as she termed it. That she should accompany her son-in-law and granddaughter home to dinner she did not for a moment doubt, and her dress and cap and “lammy” shawl were ready when Phil came with the news, which so shocked her that for a moment she did not speak, and when at last she found her voice her first remark was wholly characteristic and like her. “Fred Hetherton dead! Sarves him right, the stuck-up critter! But I am sorry for the girl, and we’ll give him a big funeral jest on her account.” But Phil explained that Mr. Hetherton was to be buried from the station, as Reinette would not have the body taken to Hetherton Place. “’Fraid of sperrits, most likely,” said Mrs. Ferguson, thinking to herself that _now_ she should spend a great deal of time with her granddaughter who would be lonely in her great house.