You might have heard a pin drop in the room, so utter was the silence that followed Captain Ernscliffe's bold declaration.
Sydney remained crouching in her chair, watching the two chief actors in this drama in real life, with wild, fascinated eyes, feeling that her whole future hung trembling in the balance on the answer that must fall from her sister's lips.
Queenie seemed stricken dumb by the words of Captain Ernscliffe. She stared at him speechlessly, her white teeth buried in her crimson lips, her hands clenched tightly together.
"Queenie, you cannot deny it," he went on passionately, seeing that she could not, or would not speak. "Although I thought you dead, although the last time I beheld your sweet face it was under the shadow of the coffin-lid, yet I could swear that the lost bride whom I deemed an angel in Heaven, still walks the earth under the name of Reine De Lisle!"
Still she did not answer, still she stood there pale and statue-like, all the life that was left in her seeming concentrated in the burning gaze she fixed upon his face.
He ventured to come a little nearer, he touched the white, jeweled hands that were locked so tightly together. He altogether forgot Sydney crouching silently in the great arm-chair. He took up a long, curling tress of the golden hair and pressed it to his lips.
"My darling!" he cried, "speak to me! Tell me by what strange mystery you were resurrected and restored to my heart! Why have you remained so long away from me?"
The touch of his hands and lips seemed to galvanize her into life. She pushed him away and sprang to Sydney's side.
"Madam," she cried indignantly, "what ails your husband? Is he mad? Why does he claim me as his wife?"
Sydney's heart gave one wild, passionate throb of joy. Queenie had declared herself. She would renounce her husband! Taking the cue instantly, she sprang up and fixed a pleading gaze on the beautiful white face of the actress.
"Oh! Madame De Lisle, forgive him," she cried. "You are the living image of his first wife, whom he adored, and who died at the altar. Your perfect resemblance to her has driven him mad!"
He looked from one to the other—the dark, radiant brunette, the lily-white blonde, each so perfect in her type—and his heart sank heavily.
Had they conspired to deceive him, or was this wonderful resemblance to his lost bride but a mere coincidence—a will-o'-the-wisp, anignis fatuus, to lead his heart and his reason astray?
"Cease, Sydney!" he said sternly. "She cannot deny it, shewill not utter such a stupendous falsehood. My heart is too true a monitor to lead me astray! It never throbbed as it does now in the presence of any woman on earth but Queenie Lyle!"
How noble and handsome he looked as he stood there, pleading for his love with all his tender, passionate heart shining in his dark eyes.
The actress gave one look at him, then turned away and walked to the further end of the room.
She could not bear the mute, agonizing appeal in his beautiful, troubled, dark eyes. Sydney sprang to his side and clasped her hands about his arm.
"Oh! Lawrence," she cried. "You break my heart! I tremble for your reason. Oh! pray, pray, come away from here! Madame De Lisle is very angry with you for your persistence in your strange mistake. You intrude upon her hours for study and practice. Will you not come away with me?"
He looked down at her suspiciously, without stirring from the spot.
"Sydney, if indeed I am mistaken," he said, "why areyouhere? If this lady is not your sister, what have you to do with her? Why," he lowered his voice slightly, "why did you seek to remove her from your path?"
Sydney dropped her eyes and turned crimson.
"Oh, Lawrence," she said, "she is not my sister, but she is my rival. I know all that passed last night, I know that she has won your heart from me."
"It was never yours, Sydney," he answered firmly. "I married you because you loved me, and were unhappy without me; but you never held my heart. I have never loved but one woman on earth. I told you that before I made you my wife."
The listener's heart gave one great bound of joy. He loved her still—he had never loved but her. Why should she sacrifice herself and him for the doubtful good of Sydney's happiness?
A great wave of pity for herself and for her true, loyal husband swept over her heart.
She made a quick step toward him as if to throw herself upon his breast, then shrank back into herself, deterred by the agonised appeal in the eyes of Sydney, who seemed to divine her purpose.
"Oh! Lawrence," entreated Sydney, "pray go away from here. Madame De Lisle grows impatient."
The actress swept across the room, turned the handle of the door, and held it open.
"Mrs. Ernscliffe is right," she said in a cold, hard tone, "I am both weary and impatient. I can bear no more. This trespass on my time and patience is inexcusable. Will it please you to go now, sir?"
Lawrence Ernscliffe advanced and stood before her in the doorway. She could not bear the passionate pain and reproach in the beautiful eyes he fastened on her face. Her gaze wavered and fell before his.
"Queenie," he said, slowly and sadly, "you have not deceived me! You cannot deny that you are my own! Your soul is toowhite and pure to suffer such a falsehood to stain your lips! Yet you will not let me claim you, you are sacrificing your happiness and mine for a mere chimera! I understand it all. Sydney has asked for the sacrifice and you have made it. It is forher sake!"
He bent down, lifted a spray of white hyacinth that had fallen from the lace on her breast to the floor, pressed it to his lips, and silently withdrew.
Queenie closed the door upon his retreating form and turned back to her sister.
"He was right," she said slowly, "I have sacrificed my happiness and his for your sake, Sydney."
Sydney lifted her heavy eyes and looked at her without speaking. Queenie went on slowly: "This is my revenge, Sydney: you have scorned and insulted me, you have branded me with a cruel name, you have tried to poison me—me, the little sister you loved and petted when we were children at our mother's knee! Yet, for the sake of those old days, and the love we had for each other then, I forgive you—nay, more, I make the sacrifice you were cruel enough to ask of me. I resign the one being whom I have sought for years—the one thing dear to me upon earth. I give you the pulse of my heart, the life of my life, the soul of my soul!"
Cold and white as marble in her sublime self-abnegation, she pointed to the door.
"Go," she said, "I can bear no more!"
Sydney obeyed her without a word.
Then the beautiful queen of tragedy, the lovely woman who counted her admirers by the hundreds, knelt down upon the floor, and lifted her white, despairing face to Heaven.
"Oh! God," she moaned, "If indeed I am a sinner, as she said, surely this great and bitter sacrifice for another's sake must win for me the pity and pardon of Heaven!"
The three weeks of La Reine Blanche's London engagement were drawing to a close.
She had achieved a brilliant success. Her beauty and her genius were the themes of every tongue.
Her admirers were legion. She had a score of wealthy and titled lovers. It was even said that a noble and well-known duke had proposed to marry her, and met with a cold and haughty refusal.
The managers of the theater where she was playing tried to secure her for another month. It would be worth a fortune to them, they said, and they allowed her to make her own terms.
To their consternation she utterly declined a longer engagement and announced her intention to retire from the stage.
The managers were astounded. What! retire from the stage in the zenith of her fame, with all her gifts of youth, beauty and genius. It was too dreadful. Yet in spite of their remonstrances she persevered. She canceled at a tremendous cost an engagement she had made with a Parisian manager. A whisper was circulatedand began to gain credence that the beautifultragediennewas about to enter a convent and take the veil for life.
She did not deny it when people questioned her, but she would not tell the reason why she was about to take such a strange step.
She only smiled sadly when they remonstrated with her, but she would never tell why she was about to immure herself, with all her gifts of beauty, youth and genius, in a living tomb.
But there was one thing that was palpable to all who saw her off the stage and divested of the trickery of paint and cosmetics. La Reine Blanche was fading like the frailest summer flower. The lily bloomed on her cheek instead of the rose.
Under her large, blue eyes lay purple shadows, darker and deeper than those cast by the drooping lashes. A look of patient suffering crept about the corners of her lips and hid in her eyes. Her smiles were sadder and more pathetic than sighs, her form grew slighter and more ethereal in its perfect grace, her step lost its lightness and elasticity. Some said that the beautiful actress was dying of a broken heart, others said that she was falling into a consumption.
She heard these things and made no outward sign, but inwardly she said to herself:
"They are both right and wrong. I am dying because I have nothing left to live for. I have toiled and hoped for years. I have studied and practiced to get money to carry me over the wide world in search of the one true heart that was mine only, and now that I have found it I have had to give it away. I cannot endure it; I am not strong enough. There is nothing left me but to die!"
She thought of some sorrowful lines she had somewhere read and mournfully repeated them:
"Much must be borne which is hard to bear,Much given away which it were sweet to keep.God helps us all! who need indeed His care;And yet I know the Shepherd loves His sheep."
"Much must be borne which is hard to bear,Much given away which it were sweet to keep.God helps us all! who need indeed His care;And yet I know the Shepherd loves His sheep."
Those flying rumors and reports only served to make Madame De Lisle more popular. She was the rage. She played to densely packed houses every night.
Flowers rained upon her. The costliest gifts of jewels and rarebric-a-bracwere sent to her from such unknown sources that she could neither refuse nor send them back as she would otherwise have done. There was always a great throng of people waiting to see her step into the carriage every night.
But in all that throng La Reine Blanche never saw but one face. There was one man who always held the same position beside her carriage door. He never spoke to her, he never touched her, but stood there patiently every night, thrilled to the depths of his soul if the hem of her perfumed robe but brushed him in passing.
Some weird fascination utterly beyond her power of resistance always impelled her to meet his glance, and the fire in his beautiful, dark eyes; the passionate love, the terrible pain, the bitter reproach were killing her slowly but surely.
And Lawrence Ernscliffe was going mad. He had no life, no thought, no hope outside the beautiful woman whom he had claimed for his wife, and who had so coldly denied him.
He haunted her like her own shadow. Go where she would she saw him, look where she would she met only the eyes of the man she loved and to whom she belonged by the dearest tie on earth.
He forgot Sydney utterly, or if he ever remembered her it was only with scorn. Her terrible sin had placed her beyond the pale of his tenderness forever. No reasoning, no sophistry could have convinced him that the beautiful actress was not his own wife whom he had lost in the very moment that made her his bride.
He could not have explained himself. He did not understand at all the mysterious chance which had brought it about, yet he knew in his own heart that the woman whom he had seen in her coffin once had been restored to life again, and that the only bar to their happiness now was Sydney, whom he had married through a simple impulse of pity.
It was the last night of Madame De Lisle's engagement. She would make her final appearance before the world in the beautiful tragedy of "King Lear." To-morrow she would retire to the conventional cloister forever.
The theater was so densely packed that there was scarcely standing-room on this her farewell night.
Lord Valentine and his wife and mother-in-law were in his box from which they had scarcely missed a night of the three weeks.
Besides Mrs. Lyle's passionate love of the drama there was a subtle fascination in Madame De Lisle's strange resemblance to her youngest daughter that impelled her thither every night to gaze upon her with eyes that never wearied in looking on her loveliness. She could not have told why it was, but she was vaguely conscious of a troubled tenderness about her heart whenever she looked at the fair young creature and heard the talk of her going into a convent.
"She makes me think of poor Queenie," she whispered to Georgina that night. "I cannot help feeling sorry for her, she is so like what she was."
"The resemblance is startling, indeed," Lady Valentine whispered back, "but don't let Sydney hear you, mamma. She does not like to hear about it."
Sydney made no sign, but she knew very well what they were talking of.
She came to the theater every night, though she hated to be there. Jealousy drove her to look on her rival's face every night that she might also watch her husband.
Poor Sydney! She sat there pale and haggard, and wretched in her white satin and diamonds, looking with jealous, suspiciouseyes at the beautiful and gentle "Cordelia," hating her for the fairness that Lawrence Ernscliffe loved.
Queenie's sacrifice, made at so costly a price to herself, had utterly failed to purchase her sister's happiness.
Captain Ernscliffe had a seat in another part of the house where Sydney could watch his every movement. Her heart swelled with bitter pain and passionate anger as she looked at him. He did not even seem to know that she was there. His dark, melancholy eyes never once moved from the graceful form of the unhappy "Cordelia" as she acted her part on the stage. When the curtain fell he dropped his eyes and never looked up again until his beautiful idol reappeared.
La Reine Blanche had never acted better. She gave her whole attention to her part. She did not seem to see that one pair of eyes had watched her with such wild entreaty and passionate love in their beautiful depths.
There was one box at which she never looked but once, and it was when, in obedience to her husband's command, "Bid farewell to your sisters," she slowly repeated:
"'Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyesCordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;And, like a sister, am most loth to callYour faults as they are named. Love well our father:To your professed bosoms I commit him;But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,I would prefer him to a better place.So farewell to you both.'"
"'Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyesCordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;And, like a sister, am most loth to callYour faults as they are named. Love well our father:To your professed bosoms I commit him;But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,I would prefer him to a better place.So farewell to you both.'"
Everyone in the house saw her brilliant eyes fixed on Lord Valentine's box as she repeated those words, but perhaps no one but the actress herself saw that Sydney's eyes drooped in shame and confusion, while a scarlet blush stained her cheek.
Ah, she, and no other, comprehended the bitter meaning of Queenie's words as she fixed her blue eyes mournfully on the sister who had wronged her so deeply.
"This is her last night," Sydney murmured to herself, "but is it true that she will go into a convent? I must see her, I must know the truth for certain. I will go round to her dressing-room and ask her."
When the act was over she complained of sickness and asked Lord Valentine to take her down to the carriage.
Lord Valentine complied and left her sitting in the carriage, the coachman mounting to his box.
But in a moment, before the two prancing horses had started, Sydney slipped out of the carriage so noiselessly that the man drove on never dreaming but that she was shut up within.
Then she ran round breathlessly to the private entrance of the theater. She told the man who kept the door that she had an engagement with Madame De Lisle and desired him to show her to that lady's dressing-room.
Two minutes later she found herself alone in the small apartment where the actress changed her costumes for the different acts and scenes.
Queenie had not yet come in. The manager had detained her afew minutes and Sydney had time to draw breath and look about her while she waited for her sister.
There was not much to see. The room was dingy and sparely furnished, as the dressing-room of a theater is apt to be.
Costumes were laid over the backs of chairs, and the maid who should have been guarding them was "off duty," gossiping, no doubt, with some humbleattacheof the place. There was little to interest one, and Sydney grew impatient.
Suddenly she saw a letter lying carelessly on the toilet table. She took it up and looked at it.
It was addressed to Madame De Lisle, and had never been unsealed.
"It has been left here during the first act, and Queenie has never seen it," she said to herself. "It looks like my husband's writing. I will see what he has to say to her."
Recklessly, desperately, she tore it open, and drew out the sheet of note paper.
"My Darling," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. Imustsee you a moment."
"My Darling," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. Imustsee you a moment."
No name was signed to the mysterious note, but Sydney felt sure that it was her husband's writing.
"Queenie has deceived me," she said to herself, angrily. "She is in collusion with Lawrence. I might have known she would play me false!"
She looked about her hurriedly. A long, black silk circular, lined with fur, hung over a chair. She put it on over her white dress, caught up a thick veil, winding it about her head and face, and hurried out to the retired western door.
Outside in the darkness stood a tall, muffled form.
"Queenie, is it you?" he said in unfamiliar tones.
In a moment she realized her mistake. It was not her husband, but in the hope of unearthing some fatal mystery, she said softly:
"Yes, it is Queenie."
These words sealed her doom. The man sprang forward and caught her by the arm.
Something bright and slender gleamed an instant in his upraised hand and then was sheathed in her heart.
As her terrible scream of agony divided the shuddering air, he turned and fled from the scene of his crime.
But poor Sydney, the victim of her own misguided passion lay there dying, with the deadly steel of the assassin sheathed in her jealous breast.
That wild and piercing cry penetrated to many ears. The manager and the actress heard it where they stood conversing together, and though Queenie did not know that it was Sydney's voice, still she grew pale as death, and an indefinable fear crept coldly around her heart. The manager put her into a chair, for he saw that she could not stand.
"Stay here until I return," he said, "I will go and see what has happened."
He hurried round to the western door from which the sound had seemed to proceed.
A little knot of theaterattacheshad preceded him. They were gathered round the prostrate form, and one had unwound the shrouding veil from her pale face and exposed it to the air and light. Her dark eyes were staring upward with a look of pain and horror in their starry depths, her face was ashen white, her lips quivered with faint, anguished moans, and her white, jeweled hands worked convulsively at the hilt of the dagger whose deadly blade was buried in her breast.
She looked up at the manager as he bent over her. A gleam of recognition came into her eyes.
"I am dying," she said, in a faint, gasping voice. "Let someone go into the theater and bring Captain Ernscliffe! Don't let anyone else know I am here! Queenie—I mean—Madame De Lisle—must not know! Let the play go on."
At that moment they brought a physician, summoned in haste from his seat in the theater. He knelt down and tried to draw the dagger from her breast, but desisted in a moment and shook his head ominously.
"Tell me the truth," she moaned. "How many minutes have I to live?"
The physician looked down at her with a grave pity in his kindly eyes.
"Only as long as the dagger remains in the wound," he answered, gently. "When that is removed you will bleed to death in a minute."
She clasped both hands around the murderous steel as if to drive it deeper into her heart.
"Let it remain there, then," she gasped, "I have something to say before—I go hence!"
"Great Heaven! who has done this?" exclaimed a shocked voice.
They all looked around. It was Captain Ernscliffe who spoke. He knelt down by his wife and looked at the murderous dagger whose hilt she grasped, with eyes full of horror. The pain in her face softened. She put out one hand to him, and he clasped it in his own.
"Lawrence—I have been—cruelly murdered!" she moaned. "Let someone take my dying deposition."
The manager hurriedly produced pencil and paper.
"I went into Madame De Lisle's dressing-room," she began. "She had not come in, and I waited a little while, wishing to speak to her. Have you put that down?"
The manager replied in the affirmative.
"I saw a sealed letter lying on the table," she went on slowly and painfully; "I was jealous of Madame De Lisle, to whom it was addressed. I thought my husband had written it. I opened it—I—read it."
The physician stopped her a minute to pour a few drops of something between her panting lips. Then she went on:
"It was only a line imploring her to meet him for a moment at the western door. No name was signed, but I was foolish enough to believe it was—my husband."
Her dark eyes lifted to his a moment with a mute appeal for forgiveness in their dusky depths. He pressed her hand and murmured:
"My poor Sydney!"
She lay still a moment while great drops of dew beaded her white brow, forced out by her terrible suffering.
"Can we do nothing to help her?" Captain Ernscliffe inquired anxiously, as he pillowed the dark head gently on his arm.
The physician shook his head gravely.
"No—nothing," Sydney answered him herself. "Only stay by me—till the last. Let me finish my story."
Captain Ernscliffe wiped the cold dews of death from her brow and she continued:
"I took Madame De Lisle's cloak and put it over my dress, I tied her veil about my head and face, and—and—went to the western door—myself! Oh! God, this dagger, how it hurts my side!"
A few moans of terrible agony, then she went on, gaspingly:
"There was a tall, dark man outside the door—he said: 'Is it you, Queenie?' Then I saw my mistake—it was not my husband! But I—thought—I might learn—some fatal secret of hers—so I answered yes."
She shuddered from head to foot and a groan of mortal agony broke from her white lips.
"That falsehood sealed my doom! He sprang forward without a word, buried this dagger in my breast, and fled. It was Madame De Lisle's enemy. I know now. I received in my heart the stroke that was meant for hers."
She paused, then repressing a groan of pain, said feebly:
"Have you written it all down?"
"Yes, madam," the manager answered.
"Very well. I want you all to go away now—I want to be alone—with my husband. Don't let anyone else know I am here. The play must not be stopped. Let him be all mine a little longer!"
They turned away in wonder at her strange words, and left her lying there supported on her husband's arm—the beautiful woman with the diamonds in her dark hair, and the dagger's hilt above her heart, her white hand grasping it convulsively while she panted forth to him her strange story in the briefest words she could find, for her strength was ebbing fast, and her pain was becoming almost unendurable.
The manager went back to the actress and told her some plausible tale to allay her fears, and, as Sydney had wished, "the play went on." The foolish, fond old "Lear" ranted and raved his little hour, the cruel sisters of "Cordelia"—even poor "Cordelia" herself—all died their mimic deaths upon the stage—little dreaming that a tragedy in real life had been enacted so close and so near, and that poor, erring Sydney lay dead beneath the same roof wherethe vast throng of people wept and applauded at the superb rendition of Shakespeare's grand creation, "King Lear."
Yet so it was, for when Sydney had faltered out her mournful story, she looked up at Captain Ernscliffe and said with a quivering sigh:
"I have done now, Lawrence, and the pain is so great I cannot bear it any longer! Will you draw the dagger from my wound and let me die?"
But he shrank back aghast at her words.
"Oh, Sydney, don't ask me! Will you not see them all first, and say good-bye—your mother, your sisters?'
"No, no, I want—none—but you," she moaned, "and, oh, my God, how terrible the pain is! Yet, Lawrence—I will stay yet a little longer—I will try to bear it still, if you will kneel down there and pray for me! I am such a sinner, I am almostafraid to die!"
"Do you repent, Sydney?" he asked, gently.
"Do I?" she wailed; "oh, my God,yes! I am sorry for it all, now! Tell her I tried to make atonement at the last. She will forgive me. Little Queenie was always very tender-hearted. Pray for me now—ask God to forgive me, too."
He bowed his head and prayed fervently for the welfare of the soul about to be launched upon the shoreless waters of eternity.
When the low "amen" vibrated on the night air, she looked up and said moaningly:
"Have you forgiven me, too, Lawrence?"
He bent and kissed the poor, pale, quivering lips.
"All is forgiven, Sydney," he answered, gently.
"Then call the physician," she moaned. "Let him draw this cruel steel from—my breast! I cannot—bear it—any longer!"
But the physician recoiled as Captain Ernscliffe had done when she told him what she wished him to do.
"I should feel like a murderer," he gasped. "You could not live a minute after the blade was drawn out of your breast."
She turned away from him and put out her hand to the man she loved so madly.
"Farewell, Lawrence," she said. "Think of me sometimes as of one who—loved you—'not wisely, but too well!'"
Then, before they even guessed what she was about to do, she clasped both hands about the dagger's hilt, and with a terrible effort wrenched it from her breast and threw it far from her. Her heart's blood spurted out in a great, warm, crimson tide over the bodice of her white satin dress, she quivered from head to foot, and died with her dim eyes fixed in a long, last look of love on Lawrence Ernscliffe's handsome face.
When the play was over, and the beautiful actress was leaving the theater for the last time, someone touched her arm and detained her. She looked up into the pale face of Captain Ernscliffe.
"Nay, Queenie," he said gently, "you need not shrink from me now. Sydney has confessed all."
She looked up at him in wonder as he drew her hand lovingly within his arm.
"She has given you up to me, and you knowall?" she repeated, like one dazed.
"Yes, Queenie, I know all, and I am yours alone now, for—prepare yourself for a great shock, my darling—your sister, Sydney, is dead!"
"Dead!" exclaimed Queenie, with a start of horror; "oh, no, that cannot be! It is but a little while since I saw her living and beautiful under this roof!"
"Her body is here still, Queenie, but her soul has fled to the God who gave it," he answered solemnly.
She trembled like a leaf in a storm at that grave assurance.
"Queenie, let me take you back to your dressing-room," he said. "Stay there a little while until I come for you."
Utterly unnerved by the shock of his revelation, she suffered him to lead her back. He left her at the door of her room and went out to seek Lord Valentine.
He had just put his wife and mother-in-law into the carriage, and stood talking with the driver on the pavement.
"Yes sir," the man was saying, "you know you brought her out and put her into the carriage yourself, and I jumped up on the box and drove right off. But when I got to Valentine House, my lord, the carriage was empty. Yet I could swear to you, my lord, that the carriage was never stopped an instant between here and home."
"Come with me, my lord," said Captain Ernscliffe, in a whisper, as he touched his arm, "I will explain the mystery."
"Very well. Let the carriage wait until I return," he said to the man as he walked away with his brother-in-law.
Captain Ernscliffe led him back into the theater where Sydney lay still and cold in death, watched by the manager and several of the theater employes. They had lifted the body and laid it on a pile of silken cushions, to remain until it had been viewed by the coroner, who had been immediately notified of the terrible event.
At a whispered request the manager gave the paper containing the dying deposition of Sydney into Ernscliffe's hands, and he in turn passed it over to Lord Valentine.
"Great Heaven! this is terrible," he exclaimed, looking down at the rigid form of his sister-in-law. "What is to be done? Who will break the news to her mother and sister?"
They walked apart, and Captain Ernscliffe briefly told him the truth—that Madame Reine De Lisle was his lost wife, Queenie, and that Sydney's knowledge of that fact had maddened her with suspicion and jealousy, and driven her into the fatal error that had cost her her life.
"It is too wonderful to be true," said Lord Valentine. "I cannot believe that the woman I saw lying dead in her coffin has been so strangely resurrected. Surely, Ernscliffe, this beautifulactress has but traded on her wonderful resemblance to your lost bride, and deceived you and Sydney both. Have nothing to do with this beautiful siren."
Captain Ernscliffe looked at him half angrily.
"My Lord Valentine," he answered haughtily, "you charge her with that of which she is not guilty. She has not deceived us. She did not seek us; we sought her, and as long as Sydney lived she evaded the truth and would not acknowledge her identity to me, because my second wife had begged her to sacrifice herself for her sake. But come with me. Since you doubt her identity let us see if she will recognize you. If you appear as a stranger to her we may then afford to doubt her."
They went to Queenie's dressing-room and knocked on the door. She opened it and bade them enter in a faltering voice, with her cheeks bathed in tears, her blue eyes downcast and troubled.
"Queenie, look up," said Captain Ernscliffe. "Do you recognize this gentleman?"
The actress lifted her lovely eyes, dimmed with bitter weeping and looked at him. A gleam of recognition shone in her face.
"Yes," she answered, in her sweet, low voice. "It is Lord Valentine, who was married to my sister Georgina the night you married me."
Captain Ernscliffe flashed a triumphant look upon his brother-in-law.
"You see she knows all about us," he said. "Now you cannot but admit her identity. You must believe that she is my wife!"
Lord Valentine grew white and red by turns as he gazed upon the beautiful, queenly woman.
"I admit madam's wonderful beauty, her grace and her talent," he said, slowly, "and I will not deny her astonishing resemblance to your lost bride; but, Ernscliffe, I will not believe this trumped-up story of poor Queenie's resurrection. You are the victim of a monstrous fraud!"
Captain Ernscliffe's eyes blazed with anger.
"You deny that this is my wife?" he exclaimed, passionately.
Lord Valentine was silent a moment. After that brief pause for thought he answered, firmly:
"Yes, I utterly deny it. I will not believe in so stupendous a fraud as this one which is being perpetrated upon you. Madame De Lisle is a beautiful woman, and a great actress; but she is not the wife you buried years ago in Rose Hill Cemetery."
Queenie lifted her head and looked at him proudly, but she did not speak one word in her own defense. She did not need to do so. She had an eloquent defender by her side.
"Since you think thus," said Captain Ernscliffe, repressing his anger and excitement by a powerful effort of his will, "pray go to your wife and break the news of Sydney's tragic death to her and her mother. You may tell them also all that I have told you, and we will see if they will decide as you have done."
Lord Valentine bowed coldly and went away.
Captain Ernscliffe turned to the beautiful woman, who had fallen into a seat and buried her face in her jeweled hands.
"Queenie," he murmured.
She looked up at his inquiringly.
"Can you bear to hear the circumstances of your poor sister's death?" he asked, gently.
She bowed without speaking.
For answer he put into her hand Sydney's dying deposition, which Lord Valentine had returned to him.
She read it silently through. It dropped from her nerveless clasp, and she looked at him with a bitter pain in her white face.
"Oh, God, my poor, unhappy sister!" she moaned. "I have been the cause of her death."
"Say rather her own reckless passion was her doom," he answered, solemnly. "Do not accuse yourself, Queenie.Shedid not blame you. She was very sorrowful and repentant at the last. She wanted your forgiveness."
"Oh, my poor Sydney! She went mad for love," said Queenie, weeping.
"As I had almost done," he answered. "For, Queenie, I have been nearly beside myself these last few weeks. I knew you in spite of all your denials, and the bitterness of it all nearly broke my heart. But now I shall have my own again. Sydney wished it, dearest," he added, seeing a look of hesitancy on her face.
She did not answer, and her blue eyes drooped away from his fond glance.
He moved nearer and took her unresisting hand in his.
"Darling, forgive me for pressing it now in your grief and trouble, but tell me, shall it be as Sydney wished? Will you come back to my heart?"
"Perhaps you will not want me when I have told you all I have to tell," she answered, her sweet face crimson with painful blushes.
"There is nothing left for you to tell, my darling. Sydney has told me all," he answered, quickly.
"And you do not blame me? You are not angry with me?" she said, lifting her fair, troubled face with a look of wonder, mingled with relief.
"No, my sweet one. How could I blame you? It was like your sweet, impulsive self," he answered. "But tell me now, Queenie if you will——"
But at that moment the shrill scream of a woman broke the silence of the night, and Queenie sprang to her feet with a sob of grief and terror.
"It is your mother, dearest. She is there with Sydney. Can you bear to go to her, Queenie? Perhaps it may comfort her to have one daughter restored to her in the hour that she has lost another."
"Yes, yes, I will go," she moaned, turning toward the door. He drew her hand into his and led her around to the fatal western door.
Mrs. Lyle was there, down on her knees by her dead daughter,weeping and mourning, and Georgina stood apart, sobbing in her husband's arms.
Queenie rushed forward and threw herself down by the side of the kneeling woman.
"Mamma, mamma," she sobbed, "let me comfort you a little. Sydney is dead, but Queenie has come back to you to try to fill her place."
Mrs. Lyle shook off the white arm that had been thrown around her neck and sprang to her feet.
"How dare you touch me?" she cried, "you whose siren wiles have wrought my daughter's death? Go away from me, vile imposter that you are! My daughter Queenie is dead."
"No, no, mamma, she lives; she was saved from death! Oh, let me tell you all! I am your daughter Queenie!" cried the actress, in a voice of passionate pleading, lifting her streaming eyes to her mother's face.
"Begone! You are no child of mine!" was the angry reply, as Mrs. Lyle drew away from her, disdainful of her very touch. "Oh, go! go! You have stolen Sydney's husband; you have caused her death; you cannot deceive me also. Will not someone take her away?"
Queenie stood still, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, listening to her mother's cruel words. Then she crossed over to Lady Valentine, who stood within the clasp of her husband's arms weeping bitterly.
"Georgie," she said, in a tremulous voice, "won'tyouspeak to me? Don'tyouknow me? Sydney recognized me and owned me for her sister, even though I stood in her way. Surely you will not disown me!"
Georgie lifted her head and looked at the beautiful pleader a moment in silence.
She was not a bad woman, this Lady Valentine, and for a moment an impulse of pity stirred her heart and prompted her to believe this strange story at which her husband had sneered, and which her mother affected to disbelieve.
If she had been left to herself the better impulse in her heart would have triumphed, perhaps. Even as it was a momentary tender remembrance came into her heart as she recalled the night of her father's and sister's death! She recalled his words:
"Georgie, forgive her; she was more sinned against than sinning. She went mad and avenged the wrong. Remember that when she comes back."
"How did he know she would come back?" thought Lady Valentine to herself, in wonder. "We all thought she was dead then. But perhaps dying eyes can see more clearly than others. Poor papa, must I go against his dying charge to me?"
Then she remembered what her husband had said to her a little while ago:
"Georgie, do not forget that you have married into a proud old family. Think of the disgrace to us all if you should own this impostor for your sister! True, she is beautiful and gifted, but what then? She is anactress! The men and women of our race do not descend to such. They amuse us on the stage—theseclever people. We pay for our amusement, and that ends all. We have nothing in common. Do not allow this clever, deceitful woman to impose on you as she did on your brother-in-law."
Lady Valentine knew quite well what those words meant.
She was not to recognize the actress as her sister, no matter what she thought.
So she strangled the thrill of pity at her heart, and answered in a cold, hard voice, quite unlike her own:
"Go away, Madame De Lisle. You are no sister of mine!"
Queenie turned from her with a heart-wrung sigh and went back to her mother.
"Mamma, let me kiss you once," she said, "only once, dear mamma, before I go away! I have loved you so, I have hungered for you so these long years while I have been away from you! Let me even kiss your hand, mamma, and I will try to be content. Oh! surely you will show me a little kindness if only for papa's sake, who loved me so dearly!"
But the mother's heart was turned to stone. She thrust away the clinging hands, she spurned the tender, beseeching lips.
"Go away," she harshly reiterated, "you are no child of mine. My daughter Queenie is dead and buried!"
The discarded daughter knelt down by Sydney's beautiful, lifeless clay and took the cold hand in hers, then kissed the white, breathless lips.
"Good-bye, Sydney," she whispered against the icy cheek. "You were kinder to me than they. You sought to kill my body, but they have broken my heart!"
She rose, after one long look of grief and pain, and went back to Captain Ernscliffe.
"I have only you left, Lawrence," she said, mournfully.
"I will be father, mother, sister, husband—everything to you, my darling," he answered, fondly, as he drew her hand in his arm.
"Put me in the carriage now," she said. "I am very weary. I must go home."
"You will have to be present at the inquest to-morrow. Did you know that?" he said.
"Yes, I will be there. Good-night, Lawrence," she said, putting her hand out from the carriage window.
He clasped and kissed it, then after watching the carriage out of sight, went back to where the mourners kept their weary vigil by the side of the beautiful woman who had loved him so fondly and fatally.
All London rang with the romantic facts that were elicited at the inquest over the body of poor, murdered Sydney, but though the examination was conducted with the utmost strictness, and every available witness was interrogated, no light was thrown upon the matter that could lead to a conviction of the murderer.
Everyone who heard the tragic story of how Sydney came to her death, thought that Madame Reine De Lisle's evidence wouldcertainly furnish some satisfactory clew to the enemy who had sought her life. To their surprise and consternation, she declared herself utterly ignorant in the matter.
The note which Sydney had read was found on the dressing-room floor but Queenie did not recognize the writing and could not guess the writer.
"If I had found the note myself I should have thought precisely as she did, that it was written by Captain Ernscliffe," she admitted, frankly. "But I should not have gone to meet him, for I had promised my sister to avoid him, and deny my identity to him. I have not an enemy upon earth that I am aware of, neither a jealous lover who might seek my life. I had an enemy once, who was cruel and vindictive enough for any deed of darkness, but he is dead long ago."
They cross-examined her, they tried to trip her in every way, but she never varied in her evidence, and never faltered in her reiterated declarations, so at last they let her go, feeling convinced that nothing but the truth had passed her lips.
So the mystery only deepened, and taken together with the romance and pathos that clung about the story of the resurrected wife and her brilliant career while seeking her husband, it created a perfectfurorof excitement.
The interested parties had tried to keep it a secret, but the facts had leaked out in spite of them.
Everybody had heard that the great actress was Captain Ernscliffe's first wife, who had died and been resurrected from the grave and restored to life, kept a prisoner for months, then escaped, and been cared for in her friendlessness and desolation by an old actor and actress, who had found her dying in the wintery night when she had escaped from her cruel jailers.
They had taught her their profession, and she had gone upon the stage to earn money to seek her husband.
All this the world knew, and it knew also that the proud Lady Valentine and her mother refused to recognize the actress, and branded her as a lying impostor.
All these facts only added to the interest and admiration that had followed La Reine Blanche wherever she moved.
And poor Sydney was laid away in her grave, while her cowardly murderer roved at large, "unwhipped of justice."
One single clew to the criminal had been found. Captain Ernscliffe had employed the most noted detective of the day to ferret out the mystery.
This man had been thoroughly over the ground of the murder, and had found one trifling clew.
Yet he confidently told his employer that it was an important link in the chain and might possibly convict the murderer.
It seemed a very trifling thing to Captain Ernscliffe, who had not learned by grave experience what simple things might lead to great results.
It was only a woman's handkerchief of plain white linen that he had found outside the western door, wet and soiled where it had lain on the damp earth all night.
Only a woman's handkerchief, but it was marked in one corner with a name—the simple name of "Elsie Gray."
Queenie started when she heard what the detective had said about the handkerchief. She sent for him immediately.
"Do you believe that there was a woman in complicity with the man who murdered my unfortunate sister?" she inquired.
"Madam, I cannot tell you," he answered. "She may have been in complicity with him or she may have been a chance witness. Anyhow I am bound to find Elsie Gray."
"I can give you this much information about her," was the startling reply. "Elsie Gray was my maid, and she has been missing ever since the hour of the murder."
"Elsie Gray your maid!" exclaimed the detective. "That throws new light on the matter. Can you account for her disappearance?"
"Not at all. She was in the habit of going to the theater every night with me to help me to change my costumes for the different scenes. She went with me that night, but when I went to my room after the first act she was not there. I have never seen her since."
"Had she any grudge against you?"
"None that I am aware of. She was a good-natured, middle-aged woman, and appeared to be attached to me."
The detective took out pencil and paper.
"Will you describe her appearance to me, Mrs. Ernscliffe?" he said, courteously.
Queenie started and blushed at being addressed by her husband's name. She had not yet decided whether she would return to him again or not, but she complied with the detective's request and minutely described her maid's appearance.
He carefully noted it down, bowed and withdrew. He reported what he had learned to Captain Ernscliffe, who bade him go ahead and spare neither pains nor expense until he had discovered the murderer.
In the meantime the wide-spread notoriety of the whole affair was very distressing to Mrs. Lyle and the Valentines, and to Queenie and Lawrence Ernscliffe as well. They could not bear to remain in London.
Lord Valentine took his wife and mother-in-law to Italy for an indefinite sojourn.
Lawrence Ernscliffe begged his wife to let him take her back to America to the beautiful home he had prepared for her reception three years before.
"It does not seem right to return to you and be happy after—after that terrible tragedy," she objected.
"Queenie, it was not your fault nor mine. Surely you will not doom me to wretchedness for such a scruple as that. You made every sacrifice she asked of you while living, and she would not wish you to immolate our mutual happiness upon her tomb, now that she is dead."
Her own heart seconded his pleading so fully that she could not say him nay.
"I had meant to fulfill my resolve to retire into a convent for life," she said, "but I cannot keep down my heart's rebellious throbs. I will go with you, my husband."
So it chanced that two weeks later the strangely-reunited husband and wife stood on the deck of a steamer just leaving her moorings for America, and as Queenie turned away from her last look at old England's fading shore, she saw a gentleman hastening toward her—a gentleman so like her poor, dead father, that her heart leaped into her throat.
"Uncle Rob!" she cried, springing forward with her hands extended.
"My little niece, Queenie!" he exclaimed, taking the two little hands warmly into his own.
"This is my Uncle Robert Lyle," she said, presenting him to her husband. "You see, Lawrence,hedoes not disown me!"
The old gentleman looked down fondly into her sweet face.
"Oh! how could they disown you?" he exclaimed. "You have changed but little since I saw you last, and that change has only made you more lovely. I should have known you anywhere, though it is five years since I saw you last. I have heard your sad story, my dear, and I do not doubt its truth for an instant. I would have hastened to you at once, but I was ill and unable to travel."
She flashed a look of silent gratitude upon him from her dusky eyes.
"And by the way," he said, "I owe you a scolding, little Queenie, for your failure to come abroad with your mother and sisters four years ago. It was a great disappointment to me when they came without you. I did not enjoy the year we traveled together half so well as I should if my little pet had been with us."
Queenie stood silent, growing white and red by turn. Captain Ernscliffe stared from one to the other in blank astonishment.
"Surely, Mr. Lyle, I have misunderstood your meaning," he said, "Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters!"
For a moment there was a blank silence. Robert Lyle stared silently at his niece's husband as though he doubted his sanity, and after a pause Captain Ernscliffe gravely repeated his words:
"Surely I have misunderstood your meaning sir. Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters."
"If she did I was certainly not aware of the fact," Mr. Lyle answered dryly, for he felt just a little nettled at the other's persistent contradiction.
Captain Ernscliffe looked around at his wife. He started and uttered a cry of alarm as he did so.
She had fallen back against the deck-rail, grasping it with both hands as if unable to stand alone; her cheeks and lips had blanched to an ashen hue, her eyes were wild and frightened.
"Queenie," he said, with an unconscious accent of sternness, "do I speak the truth or not?"
"Lawrence," she gasped, in a frightened voice, "I thought you knew—did not Sydney tell you? you said she had told youall!"
"I meant she had told me all that had transpired between you two in the last six weeks," he answered; "she did not refer to the past only to say that you had been resurrected from the grave by a disappointed suitor who hated you and kept you for weary months a prisoner. What more is there to tell, Queenie?" he inquired, in a voice rendered sharp by suddenly awakened suspicion that as yet took no tangible form.
Through the wild chaos of conflicting feelings that rushed over her she was conscious of a new feeling of tenderness and respect for poor, erring Sydney.
"She kept my terrible secret after all," she thought. "I believed she had told him everything, but in her desire to atone for her cruelty to me she kept back all that dreadful story, and died in the fond belief that my happiness was secure. She was nobler than I thought. But, oh! what an awful position I am placed in. I thought he knew all and had forgiven me. I meant to tell him everything before I came back to him, and would have done it but for that dreadful mistake. But now, oh, how can I?"
"Uncle Rob is right, Lawrence," she said, speaking with the calmness of despair. "I did not go to Europe with mamma. I meant to go, but at the very last my heart failed me and I begged to remain at home with papa. She gave me my will, though very reluctantly, and I staid behind. Afterward I went out of town on a visit."
"And yet," he said, with a heavy frown, "it was supposed—you allowed everyone to believe that you had been in Europe. Why was that?"
Great crimson waves of color swept into her cheeks at his half-angry words.
"Mamma permitted it," she stammered. "She was so angry and ashamed because I remained behind, and I was, too, after I saw how silly I had been. So when people spoke of it we simply never contradicted it. But you may have noticed that I would never speak of that continental tour—that I always turned the subject when anyone named it."
"Yes, I do remember that," he said. "But you should, at least, have told me, Queenie. It is very strange that you made a secret of such a trifle."
"I am very sorry," she answered, sadly; "I intended to tell you about it before—before I came back to you, but you said when I spoke of it that—that Sydney had told youall. I am very, very sorry."
Her eyes fell and rested on the blue waves of the ocean. Her head felt dizzy with the motion of the ship and the waves. It seemed to her as if she could scarcely stand. She seemed to be whirling round and round. Mr. Lyle came forward and took her hand.
"My dear little Queenie," he said. "I am very sorry that mycareless words have exposed your foolish, girlish little secret. But forgive me, my pet, and do not look so sad. Captain Ernscliffe, you must not be angry with my little girl. She was very willful and thoughtless in those days, but she has told you she was sorry and meant to tell you all about it."
One gentle, appealing look from her blue eyes did more to melt the heart of the angry husband than all her uncle's words.
His moody brow unbent; he came back to her side, and, as no one was looking, bent down and kissed away the pearly tears that trembled on her delicate cheek.
"There, I forgive you," he said; "but you must have no more secrets from me, little one."
She shivered slightly, but made no answer, and for this one time the threatened cloud in the sky of their happiness blew safely over, and all was peace between them. Yet the heart of the wife lay like lead in her breast.
Day and night she thought of the terrible secret she was jealously guarding from the eyes of her husband. But after a calm and lovely voyage, in which she had been most tenderly cared for by her uncle and her husband, she found herself once more in the beautiful city where she had been wooed and wedded.
"Uncle Robert, you will go home with us?" she said, as they were getting into the carriage on the wharf.
"Not now," he answered. "You know I told you that it was bad news regarding some of my property here that brought me over to America. I must go to my lawyer's at once and see what can be done. I will come to you in a day or two and see how you like housekeeping," he added, with a laugh.
"We shall certainly expect you," answered Captain Ernscliffe, heartily, as the carriage drove away to the beautiful mansion he had prepared for his bride years ago.
A cablegram from England to his housekeeper had instructed her to prepare the house for the reception of himself and wife.
Now, as they drew up before the grand marble steps, the front door opened as if by magic, and the cruel woman who had turned Queenie away homeless and friendless years before, appeared in the hall, richly clothed in fine black silk, and smirking and smiling upon her master and his beautiful bride as they came up the steps.
Queenie had told him of that cruel deed, and he looked sternly and coldly upon the woman as she came up to them.
"Mrs. Purdy," he said, haughtily, "this is my wife. Look well at her, and tell me if you have ever met her before?"
The housekeeper looked searchingly at the beautiful face, whose blue eyes flashed lightning scorn upon her. In a moment it all rushed over her mind.
That face was too lovely to be lightly forgotten. She grew pale, and commenced to stammer forth incoherent apologies.
"Ah! I see that you remember me," said Mrs. Ernscliffe, curling a scornful lip.
"Madam, I—pardon me," stammered the crestfallen woman, "you were not then his wife. I thought you a stranger, a——"
"Silence!" thundered Captain Ernscliffe. "She was my wifethen as she is now. There is no excuse for your infamous conduct. She might have died but for the kindness of strangers—she, my unfortunate wife, turned from her own house without shelter for her friendless head. Go, now, and never let me see you again. Even as you drove her out I will drive you!"
"No—no," exclaimed Queenie, for she saw how utterly the proud, overbearing woman was abashed. "No—no; I was very angry, but I forgive her now, for I see how she is humbled at remembrance of her fault. Let her stay, and this incident may teach her in future to be guided by the golden rule."