“Oh, if you could have seen her face when we were presented to her as her ‘_cousins_, and her _uncles_, and her _aunts_!’ I tell you it was rich. I never saw such eyes in a human being’s head as those which flashed first upon one and then upon another of her new relations.” “Do you really mean she had never heard of us at all?” both Ethel and Grace asked in the same breath, and Phil replied by telling them everything which had transpired since Reinette’s arrival up to the time he had left her at her own door, dwelling at length upon her sparkling beauty, which he said might not perhaps be called beauty in the strict sense of the word. Some might think her too small and too dark, while others would object to her forehead as too low, and her nose as a little too _retrousse_, but to Phil, who had seen the rich warm color come and go on her clear olive cheeks, who had seen her dark eyes flash, and sparkle, and dance until her whole person seemed to shine and glow like some rare diamond, she was supremely beautiful, and he dwelt upon her loveliness and piquancy, and freshness, while his mother and sisters listened breathlessly, but not so breathlessly as the girl in the adjoining room, who sat making some changes in a dress Miss Ethel was to wear that night to a hop in the hotel. The door between the two rooms was only slightly ajar, and Margery La Rue had not heard a word of the conversation between the brother and sisters until her ear caught the name of Reinette, followed soon by Hetherton and Paris. Then the work dropped from her hands, and a sudden pallor crept into her cheeks, which ordinarily were like the sweet roses of June. “Reinette; Reinette Hetherton,” she whispered. “Is there another name like that in all the world? Is it my Reinette, my Queenie, the dearest, best friend I ever had? Impossible, for what can she be doing here in America, in Merrivale, where I have thought to go!” There was a death-like faintness in the heart of this girl, whose whispered words were in French, and were scarcely words so softly were they spoken.