“Did he write you anything more than he did me? I have a right to know if there is any reason why she should have kept herself from me in this manner. Show me the letter, Mr. Beresford.”
Mr. Beresford knew she would persist in her demand until something was done to quiet her, and, going into the adjoining room where a fire was burning in the grate, he took Louis Arnaud’s letter from his pocket and threw it into the fire; then, making a feint of hunting through pigeon-holes and on the table where piles of paper lay, he asked his clerk, so loud that Reinette could distinctly hear him, if he had seen a certain letter which he described. The clerk had not, but was finally driven to admitting that he might have torn it up that morning with other letters of no importance. He was reprimanded for his carelessness, and then Mr. Beresford returned to Reinette, feeling like a hypocrite, but thinking the end justified the means. But Queenie was not deceived, and with a smile which had much bitterness in it, she said to him before he could speak:
“Do not trouble yourself with more deception. Your clerk never destroyed that letter, for you are not the man to leave it lying round. It is safe somewhere, as you know, and you do not wish to show it to me. There was something in it which you will not tell me. But no matter; I am going to Christine, and she cannot keep from me why she has made no sign that she was my old nurse, when she knew how much I wished to find her.”
“Possibly she feared you might not think as much of Margery, if you knew she was your nurse’s daughter,” Mr. Beresford said, and Reinette replied:
“I have thought of that, but she should have known me better than to think anything could change my love for Margery. Perhaps she displeased papa after mother died, and he dismissed her for it, but paid her money all the same, because mother wished it. That would explain why father never was willing to talk to me about her, and always said he did not know where she was.”
“You used to question him of her, then?” Mr. Beresford said, and Reinette answered:
“Yes; and he would tell me nothing. Evidently he did not like her, but I knew how strong his prejudices were if once he took a dislike to one, and so I attached no importance to them.”
“How long did she live with you as your nurse after your mother’s death?” Mr. Beresford asked, and Reinette replied:
“I do not know; a year or so, I think, though all my knowledge of that part of my life seems to be a blank; and where was Margery then?”
She put this question more to herself than to Mr. Beresford, who, nevertheless, replied: