“Cover me up, Margery,” she said, as a shiver like an ague chill ran through her veins. “I’m so cold. There, that will do; and now sit down beside me, and let me hold your hand while you tell me of your friend and her father, and how he died, and who told you. It will interest me, may be, and make me forget my bad feelings.”
So Margery sat down beside her, and took the hot hand which held hers with a grasp which was sometimes actually painful as the narrative proceeded, and Margery told all she had heard from the Rossiters.
“And to think, her mother was an American, and that the Rossiters are her cousins, and her father’s old home is Merrivale, where I thought of going! Oh, if I could only go there now!” Margery said; but her mother did not express surprise at anything.
On the contrary, a more suspicious person than Margery would have said that the story was not new to her, for she occasionally asked some question which showed some knowledge of Queenie’s antecedents. But this Margery did not observe. She only thought her mother a little strange and sick, and was glad when her closed eyes and perfectly motionless figure indicated that she was sleeping.
Covering her a little more closely and dropping the shade so that the light should not disturb her, she stole softly out, leaving the wretched woman alone with herself. She was not asleep, and clenching her hands together so that the nails left their impress in her flesh, she whispered:
“Dead! Frederick Hetherton dead! and does that release me from my vow? Do I wish to be released? No, oh, no, a thousand times no! And yet when she was talking to me I felt as if I must scream it out. Oh, Margery; oh, my daughter, my daughter! Dead! And will his face haunt me as hers has—the sweet face of her who trusted me so? There surely is a hell, and I have been in it this many a year! Margery! Margery!”
“Did you call me, mother? I thought I heard my name,” Margery said, opening the door and looking into the room.
“No, no; go away. You waken me when I want to sleep,” Mrs. La Rue said almost angrily, for the sight of that beautiful young face, and the sound of that voice nearly made her mad; so Margery went away again, and left her mother alone to fight the demon of remorse, which the news of Frederick Hetherton’s death had aroused within her.
CHAPTER XVIII.
OLD LETTERS.
