“Dear Frederick,” she wrote from Rome, “please come to me; I am so lonely without you, and the days are so long, with only Christine for company, for I seldom go out except to drive on the Pincian or Campagna, and so see scarcely see any one. Christine is a great comfort to me, and anticipates my wishes almost before I know that I have them myself. She is as faithful and tender as if she were my mother, instead of maid, and if I should die you must always be kind to her for what she has been to me. But oh, I do so long for you, and I think I could make you very happy. You used to love me in dear old Merrivale. How often I dream of home and the shadowy woods by the pond where we used to walk together, and the moonlight sails on the river when we rowed in among the white lilies, and you said I was lovelier and sweeter than they. You loved me then; do you love me now as well? I have sometimes feared you did not; feared something had come between us which was weaning you from me. Don’t let it, Frederick; put it away from you, whatever it may be, and let me be your Queen, your Daisy, your Margery again; for I do love you, my husband, more than you can guess, and I want your love now when I am so sick, and tired, and lonely. Christine is waiting to post this for me, and so I must close with a kiss right there where I make the star (*.) Put your lips there, Frederick, where mine have been and then we shall have kissed each other. Truly, lovingly, and longingly, your tired, sick Margery.”
“Margery? That was, then her pet name, the name I like the best in all the world, because of my Margery,” Queenie cried, as her tears fell fast upon the letter, which seemed to her like a voice from the dead. “Poor mother, you were not so very happy, were you? Why did you die? If I only had you now, how I would love and pet you,” she said, as she passionately kissed the place which her mother’s lips had touched, and her father’s, too, she hoped, for how could he resist that touching appeal? He must have loved the writer of that letter, and yet there was a cloud between the husband and wife which cast its shadow over their child and made her weep bitterly as she wondered what it was which had crept in between her father and his tired, sick Margery.
“Was it the blue-black haired Tina;” she said, as she clenched her fists together, and then beat the air with them, as she would have beaten the blue-black-haired Tina had she been there with her. “Poor mother,” she said again, “so tired and sick, with no one to care for her but Christine, who was so good to her. I know now why father settled that money on her; it was because she was so kind and faithful to mother, who knows now, perhaps, that father did love her more than she thought; for he did, I am sure he did; and he loved me, too, and I believed him so noble and true. Oh, father, father, forgive me, but I have lost something. I cannot put it in words—I don’t know what I mean,” and stooping over the package which held her mother’s letters, Reinette cried out loud, with a bitter sense of something lost from her father’s memory which had been very sweet to her. “Oh, how much has happened since I came to America, and how long it seems, and how old I feel, and there is no one to tell it to—no one to talk with about it.”
Just then there was a second knock at the door, and Pierre announced Mr. Beresford waiting in the library. He was a prompt, business man, and had come for the papers, Reinette knew, and, bathing her flushed cheeks, and crumpling her wavy hair more than it was already crumpled, she went down to meet him, taking the papers with her, and trying to seem natural and gay, as if no tress of blue-black hair had been burned in her room, no letters from Tina were hidden away in her closet, and no sting when she thought of her father was hurting her cruelly.
Queenie was a perfect little actress, and her face was bright with smiles as she entered the room and greeted Mr. Beresford, who, being a close observer, saw that something had been agitating her, and guessed that it was the examining of her father’s papers, which naturally would bring back her sorrow so freshly. There was a great pity in his heart for this lonely girl, and his manner was very sympathetic and gentle as he took the box from her and said:
“I am afraid this has been too much for you.”
Instantly the great tears gathered in her eyes, but did not fall, and only made her all the sweeter and prettier, as she sat down beside him and said:
“I must read some of them over for you, for I don’t believe you understand French very well, do you?”
“Not at all,” he replied, glad to be thought ignorant of even the monosyllable oui, if by this means he could sit close to her and watch her dimpled hands sorting out the papers, and hear her silvery, bird-like voice, with its soft accent, translating what was written in them into English.
Especial pains did she take to make him understand about the money paid to Christine Bodine, and why it was paid.