Christine had found the young man late the previous afternoon, and recognized him at once, experiencing such a shock as had set every nerve quivering, and made her feel that at last her own strength was giving way. To save him for Queenie was her great desire, and, with a prayer on her lips, and a prayer in her heart, she worked as she had never worked before to allay the burning fever and quiet his disordered mind.
Once, during a lucid interval, he looked into her face, and knew her.
“Christine,” he said, faintly, “where is Queenie? I came to find her. Don’t let me die till I have seen her.”
“Queenie is here. I will send for her at once. Do not be afraid; I will not let you die. Your case is not very bad,” Christine replied, speaking thus emphatically and against her own convictions, because she saw how frightened he was himself, and knew that this would only augment the disease and lessen his chances for recovery.
“Keep very quiet, and I’ll soon have you well,” she said, and Phil did whatever she bade him do, though his mind began to wander again, and he talked constantly of Queenie, whom he had come to find.
At last, however, he fell away to sleep, and then it was that Christine sent for Queenie, and establishing her in the room, went out into the adjoining chamber and waited, knowing that sooner or later she would be needed. All through the weary hours which preceded Queenie’s cry for help she sat alone in the darkness, alternately shaking with cold and burning with fever, while in her heart was a feeling amounting to certainty that her work was done, that the deadly faintness stealing over her at intervals, and making her so sick and weak, was a precursor of the end. But she must live long enough to save Philip Rossiter, and give him back to Queenie, who might think more kindly of her when she was gone. So she fought back her symptoms bravely, and rubbed her cold, damp face when it was the coldest, and then leaned far out of the open window into the falling rain when it was the hottest.
And thus the time passed on until her quick ear caught the sound of voices and footsteps in the sick-room, and she heard Queenie’s wild cry for her as if in that hour of peril she was the one person in all the world of whom there was need. Queenie had turned to her at last as the child turns to its mother in peril, and with swift feet Christine went to the rescue, and almost before Pierre knew she was there, she had the unconscious girl in her arms and was bearing her into the room, where for hours she had waited so patiently. Fixing her in a safe and upright position upon a cushion, she ran back to Phil, who, she knew, must be her first and principal care.
When Queenie’s shriek echoed through the room so near to him, he had roused from his sleep, and was moaning and talking to himself, without, apparently, any real consciousness as to where he was. But Christine’s soothing hands, and the medicine she administered quieted him, and leaving him in Pierre’s care, she went back to Queenie, who was recovering from her swoon.
“Tell me,” she gasped, when she was able to speak, “Was it a dream, or was it Phil? Tell me, Christine, is it Phil, and will he die?”
“It is Phil,” Christine replied, “saved from the sea, I know not how, only that he is here, that he came seeking for you, and I found him with the fever, late yesterday afternoon, and did for him what I could. Then I sent for you, and the rest you know. Only be quiet now. I do not think he will die.”