It was a lovely winter afternoon, and all the Americans and English, with many of the Parisians, were out, making the Champs d’Elysees and the Bois beyond seem like a brilliant procession of gayly-dressed people and splendid equipages. And among the latter none was handsomer or more noticeable than the fine bays and elegant carriage of Mr. Hetherton, in which Margery sat making believe that she was Queenie, and enjoying it as much as if she had really been the daughter of the millionaire, instead of humble Margery La Rue, whose mother was a hair-dresser, and whose father was a nothing.
How happy she was, and how in after years that winter when she rode in the Champs d’Elysees in borrowed plumes, stood out before her as the bright spot in her life from which dated all the sunshine and all the sorrow, too, which ever came to her. Nor was it hard for her to go back to the humble lodgings—to give up the scarlet cloak and be Margery again, for she had so much now to think of; so much to tell her mother, whom she found waiting at the head of the narrow stairs, with a white, scared look on her face, and an eager, wistful expression in her eyes which seemed to look past Margery, down the dark stairway, as if in quest of some one else.
“Oh mother,” Margery cried, “you are home early to-night, and I am so happy. Heaven can never be any brighter than this afternoon has been to me, playing that I was Mr. Hetherton’s little girl, and wearing her scarlet cloak.”
She was in the room by this time, taking off her own plaid coat, which she had put on in the court below, and talking so fast that she did not see the pallor on her mother’s face, or how tightly her hands clinched on the back of a chair as she stood looking at her.
Mrs. La Rue had been dismissed by her employer earlier than usual, and finding Margery gone, had been to Lisette’s room to make inquiries for her.
“Are you sick?” Lisette asked, as Mrs. La Rue dropped suddenly into a chair when she heard where Margery had gone and with whom. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”
Making an excuse that she was tired, and not feeling quite as well as usual, Mrs. La Rue soon went back to her own apartment, and kneeling down by the wooden chair before the fire, cried bitterly, as people only cry when some great wrong done in the past, or some terrible memory which they had thought dead and buried forever, rises suddenly from the grave and confronts them with all the olden horror.
“Reinette and Margery together, side by side!” she said. “Oh, if I could see it—see her; but no, I have promised, and I must keep my vow. I dare not break it.”
For a long time she lay with her head upon the chair, and then remembering that Margery would soon be coming home and must not find her thus, she arose, and wiping the tear stains from her face, busied herself with preparations for the evening meal until she heard upon the stairs the bounding step which always sent a thrill of joy to her heart, and in a moment Margery came in with her blue eyes shining like stars and her cheeks glowing with excitement, as she talked of the wonderful things she had seen, and of Queenie, “who,” she said, “acted as if I was just as good as she, and her father so rich, too, with such a lovely chateau, and she was like a picture, as she sat talking to me on this hard old chair,” and she indicated the one by which her mother had knelt, and on which the tears were scarcely yet dried.
“This one? Did she sit on this one?” Mrs. La Rue asked, eagerly, laying her hand caressingly on the chair where Queenie Hetherton had sat and talked to Margery.