CHAPTER XXIII.

"You are bound for Mentone, Italy!" Reine repeats, with a quiver of disappointment in her low voice. "Then I am going farther away from home every hour!"

"Yes," replies Doctor Franks. "Lucky thing for you, too, in your weak and debilitated condition. Mentone is a charming climate for invalids. Will set you up in less than no time. Then, when your roses are blooming again, we'll send you home to America."

"How long since you picked me up out of the water?" she asks.

"Three weeks," he replies.

Three weeks!--she shuts her eyes ever so tightly, but the traitor tears creep through beneath the black fringe of her lashes.

Three weeks since she parted from Vane amid the horrors of that awful night. Three weeks he has believed her dead. Has he mourned her much? she wonders. Perhaps time has already dulled the sharp edge of grief.

Then graver thoughts chase these self-regrets from her mind.

A terrible doubt chills the life-blood around her heart.

After all, was Vane really saved?

She remembers that crowded little life-boat, already so full that it seemed rash and perilous to take in even one more passenger.

Has the little bark survived the dangers of the sea, or gone down with its precious freight of souls to swell the treasures of the "vasty deep?"

Truly has the poet written that: "Love is sorrow with half-grown wings."

Reine lies silent, with quivering lips and closed eyelids, thinking with grief unutterable of the beloved one's unknown fate. From first to last this passionate love of hers has brought her nothing but bitter pain and sharp humiliation.

Doctor Frank's genial voice rouses her from her bitter absorption.

"Come, come, mademoiselle, this will never do. No fretting and grieving if you please. It will only retard your recovery and return to America. Hold up your head now, and swallow this bit of refreshment our good stewardess has brought you. Then you must go to sleep."

"Do, that's a dearie," admonishes Mrs. McQueen, rather vaguely, proceeding to feed the patient with a spoon from the bowl of gruel that she has brought in, but after a sip or two Reine declares that she cannot swallow, and begs to be let alone.

To this the physician blandly consents after administering an infinitesimal dose of a dark liquid. As a result Reine goes away on a journey to the land of Nod in precisely fifteen minutes. Talking and emotion have thoroughly wearied her exhausted frame.

She sleeps soundly and dreamlessly till the light of another day shines broadly over the world.

Waking silently, and in her senses this time, the girl lies still with wide dark eyes gazing around her. The door into the tiny saloon is open as before.

She sees Mrs. Odell lying on a satin couch, wrapped in a crimson dressing-gown, and covered with a costly India shawl. Her eyes are closed, her face is ghastly in its deep pallor and emaciation.

Suddenly she starts broad awake, seized by a terrible fit of coughing that convulses her slight frame. When she withdraws the snowy handkerchief she has been holding to her lips, Reine sees that it is streaked with blood.

"Oh, dear!" she exclaims, terrified, and Mrs. Odell looks around.

"So you are awake--what a sleep you have had. What made you cry out so?" she inquires in a weak, exhausted voice.

"It was the sight of the blood," Reine stammers. "I was frightened. You are very ill, are you not?"

Mrs. Odell, who has sunk wearily into a chair by her bedside, looks down at her with a ghastly smile on her blood-stained lips.

"Oh, no," she answers, with the hopeful confidence peculiar to that flattering disease, consumption, "my lungs are a little weak, that is all my trouble. The sea air and the Italian climate will quite restore my health, I think. The American climate is too harsh for me. I shall be better at Mentone."

"You will make your home there?" Reine asks, and Mrs. Odell answers readily:

"Yes, until my health is restored. Then I shall return to my native land. There is no place like America to me. Besides, all my property is there."

"Your friends and relatives, too?" Reine asks, and Mrs. Odell answers, sighing:

"Relatives I have none. My husband and children have all gone before to the better land. My friends are few. A woman as rich as I am does not know how to trust in friendship. Only think, child, my husband has left me two millions of dollars, and I have neither kith nor kin of my own to leave it to. I am utterly alone in the world."

"As I was until I met--Vane," Reine murmurs silently to herself, while a look of sympathy flashes from her beautiful eyes upon the lonely rich woman.

"The friend I cared most for on earth," Mrs. Odell continues, sadly, "was my maid, who died just a few days before you were rescued. She was a girl of culture and refinement, rather above her position, and a friend, rather than a servant. I have missed her sadly, as much for her company as her services."

"Did she die suddenly?" Reine asks, with a sigh for the poor girl who had found a watery grave far from her native land.

"Yes, very suddenly, from an unsuspected heart disease."

After a minute's silence Mrs. Odell resumes, pensively:

"Do you know what I have been wishing, Miss Langton?"

"I cannot even guess," Reine replies, wonderingly.

"I have been wishing that you could take that poor girl's place with me. Not as my maid, of course, but as my friend and companion. I have grown to like you so much since you have been lying here ill and suffering. I have taken care of you as far as my own feeble state would allow. Do you think you could be my friend, child?"

"I am sure I could; that is, if you would not suspect me of designs on your property. I am an heiress, myself," Reine returns, with such naive, innocent pride that Mrs. Odell's pain-drawn lips part in an amused smile:

"You simple child. No one could suspect you of anything. There is no guile in that charming face," she answers kindly.

"Thank you. I shall be very glad of your friendship, and hope I may be of some account to you," Reine murmurs.

"It is settled then," Mrs. Odell says, with evident satisfaction. "You are to be my friend and my guest, the same as a daughter to me, until you leave me to return to America, which time, I hope, may be far off yet, for I shall not like to lose my little friend."

"Do not say that," Reine cries out quickly. "I should hate to grieve you, but I have two dear ones who would grieve to think that I was dead. I must let them know the truth as soon as I can."