Nothing had been omitted, and she knew all about the beer and the gingerbread her grandmother sold,—the shoes her mother closed,—the berries she had picked to buy the blue chintz gown—the pride of the Hethertons and the inexcusable silence of her father with regard to her mother’s death and her own existence. There was nothing more to tell, and Reinette could not have heard it, if there had been. Proud and high-spirited as she was, she felt completely crushed and humiliated, and as if she could never face the world again. And yet in what she had heard there was nothing derogatory to her mother’s character, or her father’s either for that matter. Only it was so different from what she had believed. By and by, when she could reason more calmly, she would feel differently and see it from a different standpoint, but now she felt as if she should scream outright if her visitors staid another minute, and she was glad when, reminded by the twelve o’clock whistle of her green peas cooking at home, grandma arose to go. She had had no intentions of wounding Reinette, but she had no sensitiveness herself, no delicacy of feeling, no refinement, and could not understand how crushed, degraded, and heart-broken Reinette felt as she fled up the stairs to her own room, and throwing herself upon the bed sobbed and moaned in a paroxysm of grief and despair. “And _these people_ are mine,” she said; “they belong to me, who was once so proud of my blood. Prizefighters, and brewers, and bakers, and mercy knows what, in place of the dukes and duchesses I had pictured to myself! Why did father bring me here, when he had kept the knowledge of them from me so long, or at least why did he not tell me of them? It is dreadful, and I hope I may never see one of them again.” Just then her ear caught the sound of horse’s feet galloping into the yard, and starting up from her crouching position among the pillows and pushing back her heavy hair from her forehead, Reinette listened intently, feeling intuitively that she knew who the rider was, and experiencing a thrill of joy when, a few moments later, Pierre brought her a card with the name of “Phil Rossiter” engraved upon it. Taking the bit of pasteboard in her hand she examined it critically, and pronouncing it _au fait_ in every respect, announced her intention of going down to meet her cousin. “But, mademoiselle, your dress, your hair; monsieur is a gentleman,” Pierre said; but Reinette cared nothing for her dress then—nothing for her hair, which had again fallen over her shoulders. Gathering it up in masses at the back of her head, and letting a few tresses fall upon her neck, she wrapped her pink sacque a little more closely around her, and went hurriedly down to the library where Phil was waiting for her. CHAPTER XIV. REINETTE AND PHIL.