“And what is the very best of all,” Margery continued, “she goes to an English school, and when I told her how much I wanted to learn English, she said she’d tease her father for the money to pay for me, too; and she knew she’d get it, for he gives her every thing she wants. Oh, I do hope he will. I mean to ask God to-night to make him. Lisette says I must ask for what I want, and Jesus will hear and answer. Do you think he will? Does He answer you?”
“Oh, Margery, Margery, I never pray. I am too wicked, too bad. God would not hear me, but he will you: so pray, child, pray,” Mrs. La Rue replied, and seizing the little girl she hugged her passionately, and raining kisses upon her forehead and lips, released her as suddenly, and turned quickly away to hide her anguish from her.
CHAPTER XVII.
QUEENIE AND MARGERY.
That evening Mr. Hetherton sat in his handsome salon at the Hotel Meurice, smoking his after-dinner cigar, and occasionally reading a page or two in the book on the table beside him. He was a very handsome man in his middle age—handsomer even than he had been in his youth, for there was about him now a style and elegance of manner which attracted attention from every one. And yet he was not popular, and had no intimate friends. He was too reserved and uncommunicative for that, and people called him proud, and haughty, and misanthropical. That he was not happy was evident from the shadow always on his face—the shadow it would seem of remorse, as if some haunting memory were ever present with him, marring every joy. Even Reinette, whom he idolized, had no power to chase away that brooding shadow; on the contrary, a close observer would have said that it was darkest when she caressed him most, and when her manner was most bewitching. Sometimes when she climbed into his lap, and, winding her arms around his neck, laid her soft, warm cheek against his, and told him he was the best and dearest father in the world, and asked him of her mother who died, he would spring up suddenly, and pushing her from him, exclaim, as he walked rapidly up and down the room:
“Child, you don’t know what you are saying. I am not good. I am very far from being good, but she was—my Margaret. Oh, Queenie, be like her if you can!”
On these occasions Queenie would go away into a corner, and with her bright, curious eyes watch him till the mood was over, and then stealing up to him again would nestle closer to him and half-timidly stroke his forehead and hair with her little hand and tell him no matter how bad he was she loved him just the same and should forever and ever. Queenie was his idol, the sun of his existence, and he lavished upon her all the love of which a strong nature is capable. She could do anything with him, and take any liberty, and as he sat alone in his room he was not greatly surprised when the door opened softly and a pair of roguish black eyes looked in upon him for an instant—then a little white-robed figure in its night toilet crossed the floor swiftly, and springing into his lap began to pat his face, and kiss his lips, and write words upon his forehead for him to guess. This was one of the child’s favorite pastimes since she had learned to write, and she had great fun with her father making him guess the words she traced upon his brow. But he could not do it now until she helped him to the first three letters, when he made out the name of Margery, and felt himself grow suddenly faint and cold, for that was the pet name he had sometimes given his wife in the early days of their acquaintance and married life. But how did Queenie know it? How came she by that name which burned into his forehead like letters of fire and carried him back to the meadows, and hills, and shadowy woods of Merrivale, where a blue-eyed, golden-haired girl had walked with him hand in hand, and whom he had called Margery?
“Guess now what is her name and who she is?” Queenie said, holding his face between her hands, and looking straight into his eyes.
“Margery is the name,” he said, and his voice trembled a little. “But who is she?”
And then the story came out of the little girl who lived all day with the cat on the top floor of a tenement house, in Rue St. Honore, and who wanted so badly to go to school, but could not because her mother was poor and had no money to send her.