Chapter II

Margueritte Hortense Isana l’Erena del Imperatricia du Calincourt Johnson was an orphan.

Her father was dead.

And, also, by the way, her mother.

Her great grand parents were not living. Alas, no. The cold clods rattled on the coffins of those estimable people when Margueritte was young. She was not acquainted with the fact until the good people had been dead some seventy-five years.

Then kind friends, whose hearts were torn and rifted with sympathy, broke the news gently to her.

She sat like one stunned. Over her marble face there passed no trace of the emotion which raged like a high fed cyclone in her soul. She said:

“Did they leave me anything?”

And they told her, “Not a stiver, dear, not a lone nickel; not a street car check; not a solitary red, red cent. Only an old photograph album with the covers torn off and the pictures lost. You are badly left.”

And then the fountains of the deep were broken up and she wailed in the bitterness of her agony.

“Why, oh, why did they die? Why did they die? Why did they die and leave me,--leave me--leave me nothing?”

A deep manly voice, resonant as a vesper bell when it is peeling for the fray, answered from the next room.

“I give it up.”

Let us draw a veil over the dreadful scene.