She was very white when she did at last go down to the dining-room, and Margery noticed it and said: “Are you sick this morning? You are as pale as ashes, and there are dark circles around your eyes. Oh, Queenie, I am so sorry for you;” and thinking only of Phil as the cause of Queenie’s pale face and hollow eyes, Margery drew her head down upon her arm and smoothed the shining hair caressingly.
Then Queenie came nearer crying that she had since she first heard Phil was dead. Grasping Margery’s hand she sobbed hysterically for a moment, though no tears came to cool her aching eyeballs.
“I must not give way,” she said, “for I have a great deal to do to-day. Where is your mother, Margie? I must see her. Find her, please, and bring her here; or no, we will go into the library. No one will disturb us there, and we must be alone. Call your mother, Margie, I cannot wait.”
What did it mean, and why was Queenie so strange this morning, like one unsettled in her mind? Margie asked herself, as she went in quest of her mother, to whom she gave Queenie’s message.
“What can she want with me, I wonder?” Mrs. La Rue thought, as she went to the library, where she found Reinette curled up in a large easy-chair, which she did no more than half fill.
Her head was leaning against the cushioned back, and her face looked very white and wan, while her eyes wore a peculiar expression as they fixed themselves on Mrs. La Rue. It was the same chair and the same position Queenie had occupied on the occasion of her first interview with Phil, who had stood leaning his elbow upon the mantel while he looked at her curiously. Something brought that day back to Queenie’s mind, and a sob which was more for the dead Phil than for the secret she held escaped her as she bade good-morning to Mrs. La Rue, who said:
“What is it, Petite?”
This was the name Mrs. La Rue had often applied to her during the last few days, and Queenie had liked it heretofore, but now she shuddered and shrank away, and when Mrs. La Rue laid her hand upon her head and asked if it ached, she cried out:
“Don’t touch me, or come near me. I don’t know whether my head aches or not. But my heart is aching with a pang to which physical pain is nothing. Christine, I have lost all faith in you—faith in father—faith in everything. I know the whole now—you are Tina, the shame-faced, who wrote those letters to my father and sent him a lock of your hair!”