“You shall!” Reinette cried, with great tears in her eyes. “You shall know how it seems. We’ll make believe you are papa’s little girl, and I am Margery,” and before Celine could divine her intention, she was removing her dainty scarlet cloak and hood, and putting them on Margery, who was too much astonished to resist, but stood perfectly still, while Reinette wrapped the ermine, and satin, and merino around her, and put the plaid cloak and hood upon herself. “Oh, how lovely you are,” she said, gazing admiringly at Margery, “and how ugly I am in this plaid. Nobody will know but what you are really Queenie Hetherton, and I am Margery,” and she dragged the child down the stairs, and out into the street, where at a corner the Hetherton carriage was waiting. Reinette gave Margery the seat of honor, and then sat down beside her, looking somewhat like a dowdy bit of humanity in the plain plaid cloak, with the large hood hiding her face. But she enjoyed it immensely, playing that she was Margery, and bade the coachman drive straight to the Champs d’Elysees. It was a lovely winter afternoon, and all the Americans and English, with many of the Parisians, were out, making the Champs d’Elysees and the Bois beyond seem like a brilliant procession of gayly-dressed people and splendid equipages. And among the latter none was handsomer or more noticeable than the fine bays and elegant carriage of Mr. Hetherton, in which Margery sat making believe that she was Queenie, and enjoying it as much as if she had really been the daughter of the millionaire, instead of humble Margery La Rue, whose mother was a hair-dresser, and whose father was a nothing. How happy she was, and how in after years that winter when she rode in the Champs d’Elysees in borrowed plumes, stood out before her as the bright spot in her life from which dated all the sunshine and all the sorrow, too, which ever came to her. Nor was it hard for her to go back to the humble lodgings—to give up the scarlet cloak and be _Margery_ again, for she had so much now to think of; so much to tell her mother, whom she found waiting at the head of the narrow stairs, with a white, scared look on her face, and an eager, wistful expression in her eyes which seemed to look past Margery, down the dark stairway, as if in quest of some one else. “Oh mother,” Margery cried, “you are home early to-night, and I am so happy. Heaven can never be any brighter than this afternoon has been to me, playing that I was Mr. Hetherton’s little girl, and wearing her scarlet cloak.” She was in the room by this time, taking off her own plaid coat, which she had put on in the court below, and talking so fast that she did not see the pallor on her mother’s face, or how tightly her hands clinched on the back of a chair as she stood looking at her. Mrs. La Rue had been dismissed by her employer earlier than usual, and finding Margery gone, had been to Lisette’s room to make inquiries for her.