“If I mistake not, you are the daughter of Frederick Hetherton, whom I knew when I was a little girl. Though several years older than myself, he was very kind to me, and I have spent hours with him under the shadow of these trees and those in the grounds of my own home.”
The mention of her father by one who had seen and known him brought the hot tears at once to Queenie’s eyes, but she dashed them aside, and explaining that Frederick Hetherton was her father, she led Mrs. Strong into the house, and sitting down beside her, answered as well as she could the questions which her visitor put to her concerning her home in Paris and her father’s sad death on shipboard.
“I had heard something of this before,” Mrs. Strong said to her, “for the lawyer who has charge of your father’s affairs at the North wrote to a friend of mine who is supposed to look after the estate, that it now belonged to a young lady, the only direct heir of the Hethertons. It is rather a sorry place for a young girl to come to, but I suppose you do not intend remaining here long.”
“Yes; always; I have no other home,” Queenie replied, and her voice was choked with tears which she fought bravely back.
Mrs. Strong was a kind-hearted, far-seeing woman, and as she studied this girl, scarcely older than her own daughter Nina, whom she somewhat resembled, she felt strangely drawn toward her, and felt, too, that over her young life some terrible storm had swept.
“I will not ask her what it is,” she thought, “but I’ll be a friend to her, as I should wish some woman to befriend my Nina were she here alone with those strange attendants.”
Then she said:
“I think I heard that Mr. Hetherton’s wife died in Rome, years ago. It must have been at your birth.”
For a moment Queenie sat as rigid as if turned into stone, her fists clinched, and her eyes staring at Mrs. Strong, who looked at her wonderingly. Then a tremor ran through her frame, and she shook from head to foot.
“Oh, I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” she cried, at last. “My head will burst if I keep it. I must tell you the truth; you seem so good and kind, and I want a friend so much. Mother did not die in Rome—that was Margery’s mother; mine is still alive, and I had no right to be born.”