“Yes, let him come at once. I wish to have it over,” Queenie said, when told that Mr. Beresford was in the house and had asked for her.
She heard him coming, and rising to her feet and brushing her tears away she stood erect, with the old, proud look flashing in her eyes, for she would not allow this man, who had once asked her to be his wife, to see how utterly crushed and humiliated she was. But when she caught sight of his face, so full of pity, and sympathy, and concern for her, she broke down utterly and cried harder even than she had done when grandma had called her Rennet. It was a perfect storm of sobs and tears, and Mr. Beresford, who had never witnessed anything like it, felt the moisture gathering in his own eyes as he looked at the little figure writhing in such pain.
“You must excuse me, for I cannot help it,” she said, when she could speak. “It is not this alone which affects me so. It is everything. The death scene on the ship, when father’s strange words foreshadowed this which has come upon me, and the loss of Phil, who would have stood by me in the face of everything.”
“And do you not think I will do that, Queenie?” Mr. Beresford said, sitting down beside her and taking her hot hands in his as naturally as if he had been her brother or her lover.
And as he looked upon her, so broken, and crushed, and helpless, and yet so sweet and lovely withal, there swept over him again something of the same feeling which had prompted him to ask her to be his wife that night upon the rocks. True it was that recently he had learned to think of another face very different from the white, tear-stained one before him. But there was a great pity in his heart for the girl who had so dazzled, and bewildered, and bewitched him—a desire to comfort and reassure her, and he felt tempted to take her in his arms and soothe her as he would have soothed a little child. Grandma Ferguson had left the room as he came in, and the two were alone altogether, and Queenie’s eyes, in which great tears were shining, were fixed upon him, and Queenie’s lips he had once so longed to kiss were quivering in a grieved kind of way, and Queenie’s hands were in his, and so it is not so very strange that for a moment he forgot the face he had thought fairer than the one which he finally took between his two hands and held, while he said:
“Queenie, you do wrong to talk as if anything for which you are not responsible can make a difference with your friends—with me, who once hoped to be more than your friend. Queenie, I asked you once to be my wife, when you stood upon a dizzy height of prosperity and now I ask you again when misfortune seems to be overtaking you. Will you be mine, Queenie, and let me shield you from the storm and prove to you that I have loved you for yourself rather than for your surroundings?”
Queenie’s face was a study, as she drew it away from his encircling hands, and from sheer weakness and exhaustion lay wearily down upon the pillows of the lounge while she looked at him long and earnestly. Never before had Mr. Beresford seen so sweet, so soft and so womanly an expression in the dark eyes as he saw there now, and never had she seemed more desirable than she did when she answered him at last:
“I thank you so much, Mr. Beresford, for what you have said. It has done me a great deal of good, for if you can like me for myself alone there may be others who will do the same, and my life will not be quite so dreary. I will do you the justice to say that I believe you are in earnest now and mean what you say, but you are mistaken in the feeling which prompts you. It is pity for me, not love. But I thank you just the same, though I cannot accept your offer. When Phil went down beneath the waves my heart went with him, never to return. And you, Mr. Beresford, are destined for another. I know it; I have seen it, and am so glad. She is worthy of you, and was worthy before accident revealed that in everything she was your equal. And you will be so happy together sometime when it is all settled, as it must be at once. Send for Mrs. La Rue and hear her story; or rather, go to her. I could not listen to it again. She will convince you of the truth of what she says, and you must fix whatever there is to fix, so that Margery will have justice done her as Mr. Hetherton’s daughter. Don’t let a thought of me interfere with her rights. And now go to Mrs. La Rue.”
She waved him from her with her old air of authority and he had no alternative but to obey, and wishing her good-morning he went below stairs to seek an interview with Mrs. La Rue.