While she had been talking so rapidly, Christine had stood rigid and immovable, with a strange look upon her face and a gleam in her eyes such as mad people sometimes wear when they are becoming dangerous. Queenie’s sudden and unexpected attack had so confounded and bewildered Christine that she felt her brain reeling, and was conscious of a feeling as if she were losing control of herself and should not long be responsible for what she said. When Queenie spoke of M. La Rue as one who possibly was not her husband, she roused in her own defense and answered; but at Queenie’s next question she hesitated, while the blood came surging into her face, which was almost purple in spots, before she replied.
“No, he was not Margery’s father,” and the woman’s voice was hard and pitiless, while the gleam in her eye was wilder and more like a maniac as she went on:
“Queenie Hetherton, if you drive me too far I may say what I shall be sorry for and what you will be sorry to hear. The worm will turn when trodden upon, and a miserable wretch like me will not be pressed too sorely without trying to defend herself. I am wicked and sinful, it is true; but in one sense I was not false to Mrs. Hetherton, and God knows what I have suffered—knows of the years of anguish and remorse when I would have so gladly undone the past if I could; but it was too late. You have found those letters, it seems. Your father was foolish to keep them; he ought to have burned them, as I did his; but—but—the fact that he did not tells me he cared more for me than I supposed—that in his proud heart there was something which bound him to me lowly born as I am,” and over Christine’s face as she said this there came a smile of pleasure and gratification in the thought that Frederick Hetherton had kept her letters, even though they had failed to produce any result.
The look made Queenie angrier than she had been before, for she interpreted it aright, and her pride rose up against it.
“My father never cared for you,” she said. “It was only a fancy, which would never have existed at all if you had not tried to attract him.”
“It is false!” Mrs. La Rue exclaimed, taking a step forward, with flashing eyes, before which even Queenie quailed. “It is false. I did not try to attract him at first, but he noticed and talked to and flattered me until my head he turned and I thought all things possible. The wrong was on his side. I was not bad nor had a thought of badness in my heart, and you, Queenie, of all others, should not speak to me as you have done. Margery did not, and hers is the greater wrong.”
“Then you have told Margery!” Reinette exclaimed, and before Mrs. La Rue could answer, Margery herself came to the door asking:
“Did you call me, Queenie? I thought I heard my name.”
“No, no,” Mrs. La Rue almost screamed, as she turned like a tigress upon Margery. “Go away, I tell you, go away. I am losing my senses, and with you both standing here, and Queenie talking to me as she has talked, I shall tell what I have sworn not to tell. Go away, Margery—go!”
But Margery did not move except to advance a little farther into the room, where she stood, with a blanched cheek and wondering, frightened eyes, gazing first at her mother and then at Queenie, who stretched her arms toward her and, with quivering lips and a voice full of unutterable pathos and love, said: