did. Ah! now I have it: Queenie, remember how much I love you, and if

you ever meet your mother, remember it was my fault, and do not blame her too much.”

“Oh, poor father! his mind is wandering,” Reinette thought; but she said to him, soothingly: “Mother is dead; she died in Rome when I was born.”

Again the eyes regarded her wistfully as the dying man replied:

“Yes, I know; but she’s here, or she was over there in the corner just now, laughing at my pain. Oh, Queenie! do the torments of the lost begin before they die? I’m sorry—oh, I am so sorry! It’s too late now—too late. I can’t think how it was, or tell you if I could.”

He was quiet a moment, and seemed to be himself again, as his hands caressed the shining hair of the head bowed down so near to him.

“Too late, Queenie. I ought to have told you before, but it’s my nature to put off; and now when they claim you in Merrivale, accept it; try to like everybody and be pleased with everything. America is very different from France. Trust Mr. Beresford; he is my friend. He comes of a good race. Tell him everything. Go to him for everything necessary, but don’t trouble any one when you can help yourself. Don’t cry before people; it bothers and distresses them. Be a woman; learn to care for yourself. Govern your temper; nobody will bear with it as I have. Be patient with Pierre—and—and—Queenie, child, where are you? It’s getting so dark. I can’t see you anywhere, nor feel you either. Have you left me, too? and Margaret is gone now.”

“No, no; I’m here!” Reinette cried, in an agony of fear; and her father continued:

“Remember, when it comes to you, as it may, that you promised to forgive.”

“Yes, father. I don’t know what you mean, but if I ever do, I’ll forgive everything—everything, and love you just the same, forever and ever,” Reinette said to him; and the cold, clammy hands upon her head pressed harder in token that he had heard. But that was the only response for a moment, when he said again, and this time in a whisper, with heavy, labored breath:

“One thing more comes to my mind. There will be letters for me—some on business, and possibly some others, and you must let no one see them if there is any thing in them the world ought not to know. Promise Queenie.”

“I promise,” Reinette said, frightened at the strange look in his face and his evident eagerness for her reply.

“God bless you, darling! Keep your promise and never try to find—”

He did not say what or whom, but lay perfectly quiet while overhead on deck the trampling of feet was more hurried and noisy, and the ship gave a little lurch as if hitting against something which resisted its force and set it to rocking again. The motion threw Reinette backward and when she gathered herself up and turned toward the white face upon the pillow, she uttered a wild cry in French:

“Oh Pierre, Pierre, come quickly, father is dead!” and tottering toward the door she fell heavily against the tall custom-house officer just entering the state-room.

He had come on board to do his duty; had seen the bustling little Frenchman speak hurriedly to the young girl on deck; had seen her dart away, and fancied she cast a frightened look at him. When others came to declare the contents of their trunks she had not been with them.

“Secreting her goods and chattels, no doubt,” he thought, and made his way to the state-room, where he stood appalled in the awful presence of death.

Reinette might have had the wealth of all Paris in her trunks and carried it safely off, for her boxes were not molested, and both passengers, ship’s crew, and officers vied with each other in their care for and attention to this young girl, whose father lay dead in his berth, and who was all alone in a foreign country. Understanding but little of the language, and terrified half out of his wits at the sight of death, Pierre was almost worse than useless, and could do nothing but crouch at his mistress’ feet, and holding her hands in his, gaze into her face in dumb despair, as if asking what they were to do next.

“Children, both of them. We must take it in hand ourselves,” the captain said to his mate, and he did take it in hand, and saw that Reinette was made comfortable at the Astor, and that the body was made ready for burial.

When asked if she had friends or relatives expecting her, Reinette replied:

“No, papa was all I had. There’s only Pierre now, and Mr. Beresford, papa’s agent. I am to trust him with everything.”

Later, when something was said to her of telegraphing to Mr. Beresford to come for her, she answered, promptly:

“No, that would make unnecessary trouble, and father said I was not to do that. Pierre and I can go alone. I have traveled a great deal, and when papa was sick in Germany and Pierre could not understand, I talked to the guards and the porters. I know what to do.”

And on the pale face there was a resolute, self-reliant look, which was in part born of this terrible shock and partly the habit of Reinette’s life.

“To-morrow morning I will telegraph,” she added. “You see us to the right train, and I can do the rest, I can find the way. I have been studying it up.”

And she showed him Appleton’s Railway Guide, to which she had fled as to a friend.

Since leaving the ship she had not shed a tear in the presence of any one, but the anguish in her dry bright eyes, and the drawn, set look about her mouth told how hard it was for her to force back the wild cry which was constantly forcing itself to her lips. Her father, to whom in life her slightest wish had been a law had said to her, “Don’t trouble people, nor cry if you can help it. Be a woman;” and now his wish was a law to her, which she would obey if she broke her heart in doing it. She did not seem at all like the airy, merry-hearted, laughing girl she had been on shipboard, but like a woman with a woman’s will and a woman’s capacity to act. That she could go to Merrivale alone she was perfectly sure, and she convinced the captain of it, and then with a voice which shook a little, she said:

“Mr. Beresford will meet me, of course, at the station, and some others, perhaps. I don’t quite know the ways of this country. Will they bury him at once do you think, or take him somewhere first?”

The captain understood her meaning and replied by asking if she had friends—relatives—in Merrivale.

“None,” she said. “Nobody but Mr. Beresford, father’s friend and lawyer.”

“But you have a house—a home—to which you are going?”

“Yes, the home where father lived when a boy, and which he was so anxious to see once more,” Reinette said, and the captain replied:

“Naturally, then, they will take your father there for a day or two, and then give him a grand funeral, with——”

“They won’t; they sha’n’t,” interrupted Reinette, her eyes blazing with determination. “I won’t have a grand funeral, with all the peasantry and their carts joining in it. Neither will I have him carried to the old home. I could not bear to see him there dead. I should hate the place always, and see him everywhere. He is my own darling father to do with as I like. Pierre says I’m my own mistress, and I shall telegraph Mr. Beresford to-morrow that father must be buried from the station, and I shall make him do it.”

She was very decided and imperious, and the captain let her have her way, and sent off for her next morning the long telegram which she had written, regardless of expense, and which so startled the people in Merrivale and changed their plans so summarily.