“No, papa was all I had. There’s only Pierre now, and Mr. Beresford, papa’s agent. I am to trust him with everything.”
Later, when something was said to her of telegraphing to Mr. Beresford to come for her, she answered, promptly:
“No, that would make unnecessary trouble, and father said I was not to do that. Pierre and I can go alone. I have traveled a great deal, and when papa was sick in Germany and Pierre could not understand, I talked to the guards and the porters. I know what to do.”
And on the pale face there was a resolute, self-reliant look, which was in part born of this terrible shock and partly the habit of Reinette’s life.
“To-morrow morning I will telegraph,” she added. “You see us to the right train, and I can do the rest, I can find the way. I have been studying it up.”
And she showed him Appleton’s Railway Guide, to which she had fled as to a friend.
Since leaving the ship she had not shed a tear in the presence of any one, but the anguish in her dry bright eyes, and the drawn, set look about her mouth told how hard it was for her to force back the wild cry which was constantly forcing itself to her lips. Her father, to whom in life her slightest wish had been a law had said to her, “Don’t trouble people, nor cry if you can help it. Be a woman;” and now his wish was a law to her, which she would obey if she broke her heart in doing it. She did not seem at all like the airy, merry-hearted, laughing girl she had been on shipboard, but like a woman with a woman’s will and a woman’s capacity to act. That she could go to Merrivale alone she was perfectly sure, and she convinced the captain of it, and then with a voice which shook a little, she said:
“Mr. Beresford will meet me, of course, at the station, and some others, perhaps. I don’t quite know the ways of this country. Will they bury him at once do you think, or take him somewhere first?”
The captain understood her meaning and replied by asking if she had friends—relatives—in Merrivale.
“None,” she said. “Nobody but Mr. Beresford, father’s friend and lawyer.”