And taking the pallid face between both her hands, Queenie kissed it lovingly, thereby paying the tired woman for her two hours’ endurance.
Queenie was much better after that long sleep. The spell which bound her so relentlessly was broken, and she improved steadily both in health and spirits, but would let neither Mrs. La Rue nor Margery leave her.
“I shall sink right back again into that dreadful nervousness if you go away,” she said. “I need you both to keep me up—Margery to cheer me by day, and Christine to soothe me to sleep at night, when the world is the blackest, and Phil’s dead face seems so close to mine that I can almost feel its icy touch, and can hear his bitter cry for me. Only Christine’s song can drown that cry, which, I think, will haunt me forever.”
So the two women stayed, Margery busying herself with the work which her former customers persisted in bringing to her as soon as they heard she was free to do anything of that sort, and Christine devoting herself to Queenie, to whom she talked of the days when she first entered the service of Mrs. Hetherton in Paris. Reinette was never tired of hearing of her mother, and the same story had to be told many times ere she was satisfied.
“It brings her so near to me to hear all this,” she said to Christine, one evening when they sat together by the firelight in Queenie’s room, and Christine had been describing a dress which her mistress wore to a grand ball at which dukes and duchesses were present. “I like to think of her in that lovely dress, and she was happy, too, I am sure, though you have sometimes talked as if she were not. I know my father loved her very much, though he might not have shown it before you. Men are different from women. Did he never pet her in your presence?”
“Oh, yes, sometimes, and called her his little Daisy—that was his pet name for her,” Christine replied, and Reinette rejoined:
“Daisy is such a sweet name. I wish it were mine, though Queenie does very well. I like pet names so much. Did you ever have one? I hardly know what could be made of Christine.”
Mrs. La Rue was gazing steadily into the fire, and did not at once reply, and when at last she did, she said, “I have been called Tina.”
“Tina,” Reinette exclaimed, starting suddenly, while like a flash of lightning there shot through her brain the memory of the long black tress she had burned and the letter whose writer had signed herself Tina. “Who used to call you Tina?” she demanded. “Was it your husband?”
Not a muscle of Christine’s face moved, nor did her voice tremble in the least, as she replied: