So absorbed had Queenie been with Phil that she had failed to notice anything which was passing around her, or to think of anything except her great happiness. She knew that some time during the morning Pierre had brought her coffee and rolls, which he had managed to find somewhere near, he said, and which he made her eat. He had also given her some orders with regard to Phil’s medicines, saying that Madame La Rue bade him do so, and to say that Miss Hetherton must be very particular not to forget. And Queenie had not forgotten that, though all else was a blank to her until Phil went to sleep, and she sat watching him and wondering by what strange chance the sea had given up its dead and restored him to her. Then, as she heard a city clock strike eleven, she began to think how fast the hours had sped, and to wonder a little at Christine’s prolonged absence from the room. And still that did not surprise her much, for she naturally supposed she had gone to some other sick bed, where she was needed more than there with Phil. “There is a great deal of good in her, and I must always be kind to her because of what she has done for Phil,” she thought, and she felt glad that all the old bitterness and resentment were gone, and that although she could not think of Christine as her mother, she could think of her quietly and calmly as of one who, if she had greatly sinned, had also greatly suffered for the sin and was trying to atone. “Phil and I will take care of her, though she cannot, of course, live with us. She will not expect that;” she thought, and her mind was busy with castles of the future, when Pierre looked in again just for an instant, and seeing Phil asleep, shut the door at once and went out again before she could ask him a question. But in the glimpse she got of him, it seemed to her that there was an unusual look of concern upon his face, while through the open door she caught a faint sound of voices in the distance, and footsteps hurrying here and there. What was it? she asked herself, and felt tempted to go out and see, but Phil’s hand was clasping hers and she would not free herself from it lest she should awaken him. So she still sat on till the clock struck twelve and the hum of voices was occasionally borne to her ears by the opening of some door further up the hall. There was somebody in the other part of the house besides Pierre—somebody sick, too; judging from the sounds, and she grew so nervous at last and curious upon the subject, that she gradually withdrew her hand from Phil’s, and rising softly was about to leave the room, when Pierre looked in again, and this time she could not be mistaken with regard to the expression on his face, which was very pale and troubled as it looked wistfully at her.