For a moment Queenie sat with her head dropped and her eyes closed; then, opening them suddenly and fixing them upon Margery, who knelt beside her, she said, “It is very dreadful, Margie, and I feel as if turned into stone. Oh, if I could cry; but I cannot, even though I know that everything is gone from me that I loved the most. Phil is dead—Phil, who would have stood by me even in this disgrace. He would have come to me and said, ‘Dear little Queenie, I love you just the same, and want you for my wife,’ and with him I might in time have been happy; but now there is nothing left to me, neither lover, friends, nor name, and that last hurts the worst and makes me so desolate; no name, no friends, not a single relative in the world except—except that woman, and she is my mother!”
Queenie said the last word with a choking sob, while Margery kissed and rubbed her hands which were cold as ice and lay helplessly upon her lap.
“You forget that you have me—forget that I am your sister—that whatever sorrow comes to you must be shared by me,” Margery said, and Queenie replied, “No, I don’t forget that. It is the only thing which keeps me from dying outright. Oh, Margie, you do not know how foolishly proud I was when I believed myself Queenie Hetherton—proud of my position, proud of my blood. And—I will confess it all to you who stand just where I thought I stood, I was so wicked and so proud that I rebelled against my mother’s family—rebelled against the Fergusons, and though I tried to do my duty and tried to be kind and friendly, especially to grandma, I never came in contact with her, or with any of Uncle Tom’s family, that I did not feel the little shivers run over me, and a shrinking away from them and their manner of speaking and acting. I could not help this feeling, though I hated myself cordially for it, and told myself many times that I was no better than they, and still in my heart I fancied I was infinitely their superior—I, who had no right to be born. Once I knelt in the room I supposed was my mother’s, and prayed God to make me like the woman below stairs, whom I thought so coarse and vulgar—asked Him to humble me in any way, if that was what I needed to subdue my pride, but little did I dream the time would come when that prayer would be so terribly answered—when I would give my life to know the Fergusons were mine as I then believed them to be. Oh, if I could have the old days back again; if I could waken from this and find it a dream, but I never can. I am not Reinette Hetherton, I am nobody. I have neither name, nor friends, nor position, nor home; oh Margie, Margie, I had not thought of that before;” and Queenie bounded to her feet so suddenly that Margery was thrown backward upon the floor, where she sat staring blankly at the girl who it seemed to her had actually lost her mind.
She was walking rapidly across the floor, beating the air with her hands. There were blood-red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes shone with a strange, unnatural light as they flashed first upon one object, and then upon another, and finally rested upon Margery, before whom she stopped and said in a whisper:
“Do not you know it? Do not you see that I am an outcast, a beggar, a trespasser where I have no claim? Frederick Hetherton’s unlawful child has no right to a penny of his money. You are his heiress; you are his daughter, and I only an intruder, who have lived for years on what was not my own, and have, perhaps, sometimes felt that I was very good to give to you what was already yours, for you are Miss Hetherton, and I am Reinette—Bodine!”
Her lips quivered as she repeated the name, and her whole manner showed how hateful was the sound of it to her. But Margery scarcely noticed that, so intent was she on what had gone before. Springing to her feet, and winding her arm around Queenie, she held her fast, while she said:
“What folly is this! What injustice to me! I do not pretend not to understand you, for I do. You are excited now, and insane enough to think that you have no right to Frederick Hetherton’s money because you are the child of Christine Bodine, whom you so despise. She is not a bad woman; the badness was on the other side. That ceremony which she thought true was true to her and in the sight of Heaven, so far as she was concerned, though it might not stand the test of the law. But in either case you are father’s child as much as I am, and it was his wish that you should be his heir. He knew nothing of me, never dreamed of my existence, and, Queenie, the world need not know what we do. I would far rather remain Margaret La Rue forever than meet what we must meet should the truth be known. Stay as you are, here in your home, for it is yours, and, if you like, I will stay with you, and the secret of your birth shall be buried forever.”
“No, Margie,” Queenie said, disengaging herself from her sister’s embrace. “I have no right here, and I cannot stay; not a penny of all my father’s wealth is mine. You say truly that he did not dream of your existence; but if he had—if at the last moment of his life he had known that somewhere in the world there was a daughter lawfully his own, he would have repudiated me, and flown to you.
“I knew him, and you did not, and you cannot understand how proud he was. I knew he was more to blame than Christine if she tells the truth, and I can never forgive him, even if I did promise to do so, and I can never forgive her for hiding you, whom father would have loved so much, while I should never have been born.
“And yet he loved me, I am sure; but, had he known of you, all would have been changed, just as I shall change it now. He would have sent me away—not penniless, it was not his nature to do that; he provided for Christine, and would have made provision for me—but sent me from him just the same and taken his lawful daughter home, and after you are established here as Miss Hetherton, I shall go away—where, I do not know—but somewhere in the world there is a place for Pierre and me, and we shall go together. I cannot stay here with that mark upon me. I feel it now burning into my flesh, and know it is written all over me in letters of fire, which all the waters in the world cannot wash out. Truly, the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, and I am suffering so terribly—oh, Margie, it does ache so hard, so hard!” and with a gasping sob Queenie sank into her chair, where she sat writhing like one in agony.