As they had no suspicion of what had happened, it was a mere accident which sent the Rossiters to Hetherton Place that morning, and Mr. Beresford found them in the library with Grandma Ferguson, who had told them what she knew, and thrown them into a wild state of surprise and excitement.
“Oh, Mr. Beresford,” Ethel said, going up to him as he entered the room, “is it true that Reinette is not our cousin?”
“I do not know,” he replied; “I am going to question Mrs. La Rue. Shall I have her in here and let you hear what she has to say?”
“Yes, let her come,” Mrs. Rossiter said; and in a few minutes Mrs. La Rue entered the room, calmer and more collected than she had been in months.
She had told the truth to Queenie. The worst was over. She could meet anything now; and at Mr. Beresford’s request she began her story, which she repeated in a straightforward manner, never once crossing herself or hesitating in the least, except when some strong emotion overcame her as she spoke of Margery and the day Queenie came to her in the Rue St. Honore. No one could doubt that she was telling the truth, and Mr. Beresford did not doubt her, but he said to her when she had finished:
“Have you no other proof than your mere assertion of facts?”
“Yes,” she replied; “I can give you the name of the pension in Rome where Mrs. Hetherton died, and of the physician who attended her, and the clergyman who buried her. These gentlemen, if living, will testify to the fact that she left an infant daughter, whom I took away with me. Then, old Florine is still alive in Paris, and will show that I brought Margery to her and took her away at such a date, while Jacques Berdotte and his wife Jeanne, in Marseilles, can tell you that they served me when Queenie was born; and I doubt not they will remember the American gentleman who came to see me, and to whom I went when I left their house. I think they are both alive. You can write and see. I have also Mr. Hetherton’s last letter, written me from Paris when I was in the south of France, and he had heard that the girl Margery, in whom Queenie was so much interested, was my daughter. That will prove that Queenie is my child; and after that you surely will believe me without the letter which my mistress wrote to her husband not long before she died, and in which she speaks of her blue-eyed, golden-haired baby, whom she hopes he will love because it is so much like her. I did not destroy that letter, though tempted to do so many times.”
She talked rapidly, and every word carried fresh conviction to Mrs. Rossiter, who was eager to see Margery and claim her as her sister’s child. Of the meeting between Margery and her newly-found friends it is not my purpose to speak, except to say that at its close there was not in the minds of either a shadow of doubt as to the tie between them.
But amid their joy there was a keen pang of regret and pain for the little, desolate girl up stairs, who, when at last they went to her, received them at first with a calm, stony face and dry eyes, which seemed to flash defiance at any pity they might feel for her, but who finally broke down in a storm of sobs and tears, and, laying her head on Mrs. Rossiter’s lap, begged her not to despise her for what she could not help.
“If I could die, I would,” she said, “but I cannot. I am young, and life seems so lonely to me now, when once the days were too short for all I had to enjoy. Oh, why has God so dealt with me?”