“M. Albrech.”
This letter Margery had taken from the office, and wondered in a vague kind of way what it contained, and why M. Albrech had written to her mother again, when she had supposed her business relations with him finished. Since the time when Margery first learned to write, it had been a distinctly understood thing that both she and her mother were to respect each other’s correspondence, and Margery would as soon have broken the seal of a letter directed to a stranger as to her mother, consequently she had never known just what was in the letters which had passed between Mrs. La Rue and M. Albrech, of Mentone. She had always known since her father’s death that her mother had at stated times received a certain amount of money from some source unknown to her; and she knew, too, that latterly the annuity had ceased, because, as her mother said, the person who paid it was dead. That the sum was very small she had been made to believe, and her mother had told her once, when she asked what became of it, that it was safely invested in stocks and bonds in Paris, and was to be kept for her as a dowry when she was married, or to be used before if absolutely necessary.
“But who gives it to you?” Margery had once inquired, and her mother had replied:
“A gentleman in Paris, whose wife was very fond of me. I was her maid first, and after she died took care of her child.”
And Margery, wholly unsuspicious, accepted this explanation as all there was to tell, and received the impression somehow that the gentleman’s name was Polignie, and never dreamed of the guilt, and sin, and terrible remorse which haunted her mother so continually, and had made her grow old so fast. Margery could remember her when she was bright and pretty, with a sparkle in her dark eyes and a bloom upon her cheeks, which now were sunken and pale, while her long, black hair was streaked with gray, and within the last few months had been rapidly growing white. She had brought the Mentone letter, and given it to her mother without so much as looking at her, and thus she failed to see how white she was as she took the letter and went to her room to read it alone.
“Probably it has something to do with my money,” she thought, seeking to reassure herself as she broke the seal and opened the envelope from which Queenie’s note dropped into her lap.
Picking it up she read the address: “Christine Bodine, care of M. Albrech,” and recognizing the handwriting, which she had often seen on notes sent to her daughter by Reinette, she gave a low, gasping cry, while for a moment everything around her grew black, and she could neither see nor hear for the great fear overmastering her.
“Tracked at last,” she whispered, as she tried to read what M. Albrech had written, and could not for the blur before her eyes.
For months Mrs. La Rue’s remedy for nervousness had been morphine, which she took in constantly increasing doses, and she had resort to it now, and, swallowing half a grain, grew calm at last, and read her agent’s letter; and then picking up the dainty note with Reinette’s monogram upon the seal, kissed it passionately, and cried over it as if it had been some living creature instead of a bit of perfumed paper, on which these lines were written:
“Hetherton Place,