An expression of pity comes into the emaciated face regarding her. "I hope you will see Vane after a while," she replies, evasively. "Do you feel better, my dear?" "Better?" the girl echoes, startled. "Have I been ill?" "Yes, with fever. But you are convalescing now. Do you remember nothing of your illness?" "Nothing," Reine answers, dreamily. "And--and your face is strange to me. Have I ever seen you before?" "Not to your knowledge, I think," Mrs. Odell replies, with a slight smile. A puzzled look comes into the pale, thin face lying on the pillow, with its great, hollow, black eyes. Reine is slowly gathering up the links of memory. "Are--are we not on the Atlantic Ocean?" she inquires, after a dreamy pause. Mrs. Odell, drawing her handkerchief across her lips after a slight spell of coughing, answers: "Yes." Another dreamy pause. The dark eyes that have half-closed, open slowly again. "Is this steamer the--the _Hesperus_?" she queries, half-doubtfully. Mrs. Odell draws back with a slight expression of alarm on her face. "I--I fear you are talking too much for an invalid," she says. "I will call the doctor." Retiring into the saloon, and touching a silver call-bell, the fat stewardess appears. "Send Doctor Franks in," Mrs. Odell commands. "His patient begins to recover consciousness." Doctor Franks comes, eager, and on the alert, smiling a little as Reine's curious eyes seek his face. "Another stranger," she complains, with almost childish petulance. "Well, and what would you have?" he answers, cheerfully, as he touches her pulse. "Though strangers, we are all friends." "I want Vane," the girl answers, with a hungry yearning in her weak voice. "After awhile--after awhile," he answers, evasively, as the lady had done. "Are you feeling better to-day?" "Yes, if I have been ill--have I?" Reine inquires, with some of her old sharpness of tone, for in her weak state she is easily irritated. "Have you? Well, I should say so," he responds, smilingly. "At present you are nothing but a pair of big black eyes and a lot of hair that I should have cut off only that you were so pretty with it that I hadn't the heart." "Do not believe him," Mrs. Odell puts in, good-naturedly. "If I had not scolded and begged, and almost gone down on my knees to him, he would have shaved your pretty head bare." "I should not have liked that," Reine says, putting her small fingers to the thick, glossy plaits. "Vane liked my hair. He thought it pretty; he said so that very night when----" But, with the effort of recalling the long-past time, a great wave of memory suddenly breaks over Reine's heart. Her wan face grows paler, her eyes dilate wildly and fill with swift, passionate tears. "I remember," she gasps, in a voice of pain, "oh, Heaven! I remember."