“I heard from you that she was very beautiful and good, and died at Rome when you were born, and I think you told me she was English. Surely you would know about your own mother;” and Pierre looked curiously at his young mistress, who colored painfully and beat the matting with her boot.
Reinette was hesitating as to how much she would tell Pierre, for it hurt her to confess to any one how little she really knew of her mother’s antecedents, so wholly silent and non-committal had her father been on the subject. At last, deciding that she must be frank with Pierre if she wished him to be so with her, she said:
“Pierre, you are all I have left of the life in France, and I must tell you everything. There was always a mystery about mamma which I could not solve, and all I know of her was her name, Margaret Ferguson, and that papa loved her so much that he could not bear to talk of her, and all I know besides the name I guessed, and now I am afraid I did not guess right. I have never met anybody who had seen her but papa, except the nurse Christine Bodine, who was with her when she died, and who brought me to Paris. She, too, left me when I was a year or so old, and I have not seen her since, and it made father very angry if I ever spoke of her. She was not a nice woman, he said, and he did not wish me to mention her name. Do you know anything of her?”
“What was the name, please?” Pierre asked, and Reinette replied:
“Christine Bodine, and if living now she must be forty or more. Mother would be forty-three.”
“I don’t know where she is, and I never saw her,” said Pierre, “but the name brings something to my mind. Years ago, a dozen or more, when we were staying at Chateau des Fleurs, I went with monsieur to Paris—to the office of Monsieur Polignie, a kind of broker or money agent in town, and your father gave him a note or check of 1250 francs to be sent to Mademoiselle Christine Bodine. I remember the name perfectly, Christine Bodine, because it rhymed, and I said it to myself two or three times, but who she was or where she lived I didn’t know; only master’s face was very dark, and he was silent and gloomy all day, and I thought maybe Mademoiselle Bodine was some woman to whom he had to pay money, whether he liked it or not. You know many fine gentlemen in Paris do that.”
He saw that she did not understand him, and though he might have told her that her father had not always been the spotless man which she believed him to be, he would not do it, preferring that she should be happy in her ignorance.
“I remember that day so well,” he continued, “your father bought you a big wax doll in the Palais Royal, and although you were in bed when we returned to the chateau, he had you up to give it to you, and fondled and caressed you more than usual, as if making up for something.”
Reinette’s eyes were full of tears at these reminiscences of Pierre’s, but she forced them back, and said:
“You have no idea where Christine is now?”