Ostensibly Mr. Beresford’s relations with her were of a purely business nature; for in managing so large an estate there was much to be talked about, and Queenie would know everything, especially with regard to foreign matters.
There were many letters from France, and these she read to Mr. Beresford, who, with Phil’s help, might have made them out: but he brought them religiously to Queenie, who had insisted upon it with a persistence which surprised him, and insisted, too, upon receiving them from him with the seals unbroken and reading them first herself. She had not forgotten her father’s dying injunction: “If letters come to me from France burn them unread.”
No letters had come to him from any source, proving that he had no friends who cared to know of his welfare: but with a woman’s subtle intuition, heightened by actual knowledge, Queenie knew there was something somewhere which she was to ward off if possible, and, as it might come in some business letter, she made it a condition that all documents should be brought to her first. As yet, however, everything had been open and clear, and Queenie was beginning to think her fears groundless, when Mr. Beresford brought her one day a letter from Messrs. Polignie & Co., who, among other things, wrote that the money invested with them for the benefit of a certain Christine Bodine had been paid by them to her agent, who had been empowered by her to receive the same. The name of the agent was given, and enclosed was his receipt, and then M. Polignie wrote:
“For reasons which may or may not be just, I would not advise the young lady to continue her search for this woman Bodine, whom we shall make no effort to find nor shall we answer Miss Hetherton’s letter with regard to her, unless greatly pressed to do so.”
Reinette was white to her lips as she read this, with Mr. Beresford sitting by and watching her, but she uttered no sound She merely took a pencil from the table, and on a slip of paper wrote the name and address of Christine’s agent, which she put into her pocket; then, still keeping the letter from Mr. Beresford, she scratched out every word concerning Christine so effectually that it would be impossible for any one to decipher it, much less Mr. Beresford, whose knowledge of the language was so imperfect.
“Miss Hetherton! what are you doing? You may be erasing something very important for me to know. Stop, instantly! You have no business thus to mutilate a letter which does not belong to you,” he cried, growing more and more in earnest, and even irritable, as she paid no heed to him, but went coolly on with her erasures.
“It is my business,” she answered, at last, and her voice was low and strange. “It is my business, and no one’s else. It has nothing to do with you. It only concerned me. You can have your letter now; they have paid my nurse’s agent and sent you his receipt.”
She handed him the letter, which, as it was written in an unusually hurried manner, he could not read, and so she read it to him, unconsciously laying a good deal of stress upon the fact that Christine had been paid, and that there was an end of that.
“You see they do not tell you where she is,” she said, trying to speak naturally, though there was a kind of defiant tone in her voice. “And you need not make any further inquiries. I might not like her, and if I brought her here I should feel obliged to keep her.”
She looked straight at Mr. Beresford, who nodded assent to what she said, but was not wholly deceived. That the erasure had something to do with Christine he was certain, and, with his curiosity roused by Reinette’s excited manner, he resolved to ascertain for himself who and what the woman was. He, too, had the address of her authorized agent, and the mail for New York which left Merrivale next day carried two letters, one in English and one in French, directed to M. Jean Albrech, Mentone, France, and in the one written in French was a note for Christine Bodine, in whom Reinette had implicit faith as a true, good woman, notwithstanding what the Messrs. Polignie had insinuated against her. They were vile, suspicious people, Reinette said to herself, who, because her father paid money to a poor woman, thought she must be bad. They did not know, as she did, how kind and faithful Christine had been to her mother, who asked that she should be rewarded and cared for, and this was the way her father had done it. Thus Queenie reasoned and tried to reassure herself, but for days there was a shadow on her bright face and a dull pain in her heart as she wondered what the mystery could be concerning the woman Bodine.