It would not be too much to say that that sick room became Queenie's world; she knew literally nothing of what passed outside it. Cathy wrote long letters to her, but she seldom answered them. One day she enclosed a note from Langley. "My dear Miss Marriott," it began, "Cathy's glowing description of her friend makes us long to know you; and my brother and I trust, that you and your dear little sister will be able to pay us a visit in the early summer. We know all your troubles, and wish that it were in our power to lighten them--" but here a restless movement from Emmie disturbed her, and she laid the letter aside. Emmie's wanderings were rarely painful to the listener. A merciful oblivion had stamped out the memory of that terrible night; generally her talk was of the country. She imagined herself wandering in beautiful places with her mother and Queenie; gathering flowers, or else picking up shells and sea-weed on the shore. Now and then there would be a troubled break--the waves were threatening to engulph her--or a serpent, or strange-headed beast lurked among the flowers; at such times she would grow restless, and it required all Queenie's efforts to tranquillize her, while the constant cry of "Mamma, mamma," was pitiful to hear from the lips of the motherless child. "Mamma is here," Queenie would answer with loving falsehood, laying the burning face on her breast; and something of the intense mother-love, seemed really to pass into the girl's heart. She was growing haggard and hollow-eyed under the strain of the long nursing. The doctor shook his head and remonstrated in vain, and Caleb's entreaties were equally unavailing. "You will be ill, Miss Queenie; every one says so. You are up every night unless Molly is here, and barely snatch an hour's sleep in the twenty-four; you are over-taxing your strength, and a breakdown will be the consequence." "I shall not break down as long as Emmie wants me," returned the girl bravely, but her lip trembled as though with weakness; she was becoming conscious that all this was becoming a terrible effort, that her strength would not hold out for ever. A sudden noise jarred upon her now; and once or twice, when her kind old friend was speaking to her, she had great trouble to refrain from bursting into tears. Sometimes of an evening, when Caleb was there, she would wrap herself in a shawl, and walk up and down the stone hall and corridors to allay her restlessness; sometimes the door would open, and a red gleam shine out from Miss Titheridge's snug parlor, where she sat in cosy fireside circle with her friends. She looked up oddly and half-scared as Queenie's white face glimmered out of the darkness, but she never invited her to enter; the girl had repulsed her too surely for that.