“Yes, yes,” she gasped, and a look of unutterable love and satisfaction shone in the eyes which looked up at Queenie. “I know you are Queenie—the baby born at Marseilles—my own—and you kiss me and call me mother. God bless you, my child, and make you very happy. I am glad for your sake that I am going away. Good-by, my darling, good-by!”
She never spoke again, though it was an hour or more before Queenie loosed her hold of the hand which clung so tightly to hers, and closing the eyes which looked at her to the last, smoothed the bed-clothes decently, and then going out to Pierre, who was waiting in the hall, told him that all was over.
Sister Christine was dead, and there was mourning for her in the city where she was so well known, and where her kindness and gentleness and courage had won her so many friends, some of whom followed her remains to their last resting-place, and wept for her as one long known and well beloved. Every respect which it was possible under the circumstances to pay her was paid to her. Many gathered about the grave where they buried her, just after the sun setting on the same day of her death. It was Queenie who prepared her for the coffin, suffering no other hands to touch her but her own.
“She nursed me when I was a baby, and I must care for her now,” she said to Sister Agatha, when she remonstrated with her and offered to take the task from her hands.
And to Queenie it was a mournful pleasure thus to care for the woman who had been her mother, and who, she felt, was truly good and repentant at the last.
“I am glad I feel so kindly toward her—glad I called her mother,” she thought, and was conscious of a keen pain in her heart as she looked upon the white dead face on which suffering and remorse had left their marks.
Notwithstanding the hour and her own fatigue, Queenie was among the number who stood by the open grave where all that was mortal of Christine was buried, and she would not leave until the grave was filled and all the work was done. Then, taking Pierre’s arm, she went back to the hotel, and going to Phil’s room laid her tired head upon the hands he stretched toward her and cried bitterly, while Phil soothed and caressed her until she grew quiet and could tell him all the particulars of Christine’s death.
“There was much that was noble and good in her,” she said, “and had she lived I would have tried to do right, and with you to help and encourage me I might have succeeded.”
“Yes,” Phil answered her, “I am sure you would; but it is better for her to be at rest.”