"Queenie, are you ready for your drive?" called her husband from the foot of the stairway. "The phaeton is at the door."
A bright, bewitching face peeped down at him from above—a face as sweet as a rose—with coral lips, and softly-tinted cheeks, and eyes as brightly-blue as violets.
Directly she came fluttering down the stairs, and paused, with her slender, white-gloved hand upon his arm.
"I am ready," she said. "Come, Lawrence, let us go. It is too lovely a day to remain indoors."
"Darling, how lovely you are," he cried. "Let me kiss you once before we start."
She smiled, and linked her arm fondly in his as they went down the marble steps together.
"Lawrence," she said, half-gravely, half-fondly, "I almost begin to believe in my happiness now. At first it seemed such a precious thing, and I held it by so frail a grasp that I feared I might lose you again and fall back into the terrible gulf of despair. But now months have elapsed and nothing has happened to part us, so that it seems possible for me to breathe freely and look forward to a happy future with you."
"Darling, these trembling fears of yours have always seemed strange and unnecessary to me. What could happen to part us now?" he said, as he handed her into the lovely little phaeton, with its prancing gray ponies, and sprang in beside her.
"I do not know. Nothing, I hope," she answered, with a quick little sigh, as she took the reins into her hands and touched up the spirited ponies. "Where shall we drive, Lawrence—in the park?"
"Yes, if you like," he answered, leaning back luxuriously.
It was a beautiful day in May, the air so balmy and delicious that it was a luxury to breathe it.
As they flashed along the shady drives in the park many eyes followed them admiringly, for Mrs. Ernscliffe was conceded by all to be the fairest woman in the city.
To-day she wore a wonderful dress of mingled blue and cream-color, and a hat of azure satin, with a streaming white feather set coquettishly on her waves of golden hair.
The colors suited her bright blonde beauty exquisitely.
Her dark, handsome, dignified husband thrilled with pleasureand pride as he noted the many admiring glances that followed his beautiful and dearly-beloved wife.
"I have had news from England, Queenie," he said, presently.
"From England?" she said, and her delicate cheeks grew white. "Oh, Lawrence, have they found out who murdered Sydney yet?"
"Not yet, dear, but the detective is very hopeful. He is on the villain's track."
"Who was he? What is his name?" she asked, eagerly.
"I do not know. He writes very meagerly, though hopefully. He merely says that he has found your maid, Elsie Gray, and that she has put him on the track of the murderer."
"It is not possible that Elsie Gray was concerned in the murder of my sister!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, no, she was a witness to the deed only—at least I gather that much from his letter. I think she has been pursuing him ever since. The detective says that we may expect startling developments soon."
"God grant that the cowardly criminal may soon be discovered and punished for his awful sin!" she exclaimed, shuddering.
"Queenie," he said, musingly, "have you ever thought that but for the sin of this unknown man we should never, perhaps, have been reunited in peace and happiness? To-day you might have been in the lonely convent cell, while I, perhaps, should have raved in the chains of a lunatic, for, Queenie, I was going mad with the horror of losing you again."
"I have thought of it often," she said, gravely, "and I have thought again and again that it was almost wrong to accept happiness that was bought at so fearful a price to my poor Sydney. Her death lies heavy on my heart."
"Queenie, we both did what we could to insure her happiness while she lived. I married her because one very near to her hinted to me that the poor girl was dying of a broken heart for my sake. I did not love her, but I sacrificed myself to save her, as you afterward sacrificed us both at her request. And yet those mutual bitter sacrifices of ours availed very little to secure the end she sought. I begin to believe that such terrible self-abnegations are wrong and unjustifiable, and that they never work out good to any."
"It may be true," she answered, thoughtfully, and relapsed into silence, her eyes downcast, her lips set in a half-sorrowful line, while she unconsciously checked the speed of the horses and allowed them to walk slowly along the drive.
Absorbed in thought she did not observe a handsome, fashionably-dressed man coming along the side-path toward them, airily swinging a natty little cane.
"I hope and trust, darling, that you will not allow any weak and morbid fancies regarding Sydney to sadden and depress you," continued Captain Ernscliffe. "I know she would not wish it to be so."
Queenie looked up at him gently with the words of reply just forming on her lips.
But they died unspoken, and she uttered a low cry of fear and terror commingled, while her whole form trembled violently.
She had caught sight of the man in the road who had just come abreast of the phaeton.
At that moment the man, who had been observing her for some moments, looked at her with a sardonic smile, lifted his hat, bowed deeply, and murmuring familiarly:
"Good-evening, Queenie," passed insolently on.
Captain Ernscliffe grew ashen white. Something like an imprecation was smothered between his firmly-cut lips.
"Good Heaven, Queenie!" he exclaimed. "Is it possible that you know that man?"
She did not speak, she could not. She only stared at him speechlessly, her lips parted in terror, her breath coming and going in quick gasps like one dying.
"Do you know who and what that man is?" he reiterated, hoarsely. "Queenie, it is Leon Vinton, the most notorious gambler androuein the city! And he dared to speak toyou! What did he mean by it? You surely do not know him. Tell me?"
Still she did not speak. It seemed to her that her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
She had thought that her enemy was dead—had she not seen him lying cold and still, with his heart's blood staining the snowy earth? Yet there he walked, smiling, evil, triumphant. The horror of the sight struck her dumb.
"You will not answer me," passionately cried her husband. "Very well. I will wring the truth from that insolent villain! I will know why he dared bow and speak tomywife. Drive on home, madam; I will follow the villain and make him retract the insult!"
He sprang from the moving phaeton at the imminent risk of his neck, and followed Leon Vinton with a quick stride down the road.
Like one in a fearful dream, Queenie gathered the reins in her trembling hands and drove recklessly homeward through the beautiful sunshine.
The angry husband followed Leon Vinton's leisurely steps, and quickly overtook him.
Placing one hand on the villain's shoulder with a grasp like steel, Captain Ernscliffe whirled him round face to face.
A malevolent sneer curved the lips of the handsome scoundrel as he recognized his assailant. He tried to shake himself free from that painfully tight grasp, but it was useless. He seemed to be held in a vise.
"Unhand me, sir," he said, in a voice of angry expostulation.
"Villain!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, in a low, deep voice of concentrated passion. "How dared you speak to my wife? Apologize immediately for the insult."
Leon Vinton's face assumed a blank stare of astonishment.
"Doessheconsider it an insult to be recognized by an old friend?" he inquired, in a voice of mocking courtesy.
Captain Ernscliffe's brow grew as dark as night. He shook thesneering scoundrel by the shoulder as though he would have shaken the life out of him.
"How dare you claim her as an old friend?" he thundered. "You whose acquaintance is a disgrace to any woman. You, the most notorious and unprincipled villain in the city. Retract those words before I kill you."
"Come, come," answered Vinton, coolly and maliciously, "I am but speaking the truth. As for killing, let me remind you that two can play at that game. I have a pistol in my pocket, and I believe I am a better shot than you are. But your wife, as you call her, is not worthy the shedding of an honest man's blood! I will keep my weapon in its place, and all I ask you is to confront me with the lady whose honor you are so zealously defending. I think she will not dare to deny that once she claimed me as herdearestfriend!"
Captain Ernscliffe drew back his hand to strike him in the face, but something in his enemy's words and looks seemed to stagger him. He hoarsely exclaimed:
"I will not pollute the pure air she breathes with your foul presence. As for you,liar, beware how you assert things that you cannot prove."
"Hard words break no bones," laughed Leon Vinton, seeming to take downright pleasure in tormenting the other. "I'm determined not to be angry with you, for I do not think the lady we are discussing is worth the trouble. I can prove all that I assert, and more besides."
"How? How?" exclaimed Ernscliffe, in sheer amaze at his unparalleled effrontery.
"Icouldprove it by the lady herself, but since you refuse to admit me to her presence, come with me to my home, a few miles from the city, and my housekeeper shall show you the elegant rooms Mrs. Ernscliffe occupied when she was my dear friend and guest for a year."
The cool, insolent assertion fell on Captain Ernscliffe's ears like a thunderbolt. He staggered back and stared at the calm, smiling villain in wonder mingled with indefinable dread.
"My God!" he muttered, half to himself, "you would not make such an assertion unless you could prove it."
"I can prove every assertion I have made," was the confident reply. "Queenie Lyle ran away with me the day her mother and sisters went to Europe. She lived with me nearly a year. I can prove this, remember."
"You married her!" gasped his adversary, his eyes starting, his face as white as death.
Leon Vinton looked at that pale, anguish-stricken face, and laughed aloud, the mocking laugh of a fiend.
"Married her?" he asked, sneeringly. "Oh, no, I am not one of the marrying kind. She knew that, but she loved me, and was content to live with me on my own terms."
There was a blank silence. Captain Ernscliffe dimly felt that the agony he was enduring was commensurate with the pains of hell.
Leon Vinton enjoyed his misery to the utmost.
"We lived together a year," he went on, after a moment. "At first we were very loving and very happy, but well—you know how such cases always terminate—we wearied of each other. She was a spit-fire and a termagant. She pushed me into the river and tried to drown me. She thought she had succeeded, and ran away home. Her family kept her fatal secret, and married her off to you."
"This is horrible if true!" ejaculated the listener.
"Come," said Leon Vinton, "go home with me. My carriage is outside the gate. I merely chose to saunter in the park. You shall see her letters to me, you shall hear what my housekeeper knows about the matter."
"I will go with you," said Captain Ernscliffe, rousing himself as from a painful dream. "But if I find that you have lied to me, Vinton, I will kill you!"
"My poor Queenie, my poor child, you erred greatly in the deception you practiced in the beginning. It was wrong to desert your home and family as you did, but I cannot upbraid you now. Your punishment has been bitter enough. May God help you, my little one!" said Robert Lyle, smoothing the golden head that lay upon his knee with a gentle, fatherly caress.
Queenie had come back from that ride which had begun so happily and found her Uncle Robert waiting for her in the drawing-room. He had declined her invitation to make his home with her, and taken quarters at a hotel, but there were very few days when he failed to visit her. To-day when she came staggering in, looking so fearfully white and death-stricken, he saw at once that some fearful thing had happened to her, and started up in alarm.
"Queenie, my dear, what is it? Are you ill?" he exclaimed, going to her, and taking her cold, nerveless hand in his.
She looked up at him, and Robert Lyle never forgot the tearless despair, the utter agony of her white face and wild, blue eyes. They haunted his dreams for many nights after. Yet she tried to smile, and the smile was sadder than tears.
"I—I—yes, I believe I am ill," she said, dropping down into a great arm-chair. "I will sit here and rest, Uncle Rob! I shall be better presently."
"Let me get you some wine," he said. "It will revive you."
"No, no, I will not have anything!" she said. "Nothing could help me."
The tone made his heart ache, it was so hopeless.
He bent over her and removed her hat and gloves as deftly and tenderly as a woman could have done.
His anxious looks, his tender solicitude made her think of her father.
The tender recollection broke down the barriers of stony calm she was trying to maintain. Bowing her face on her hands she wept and sobbed aloud.
Mr. Lyle was greatly shocked and distressed at her vehementexhibition of grief. He brought a chair, and sitting down beside her, put his kindly old arm about her heaving shoulders.
"Tell your old uncle what grieves you, pet," he said. "Perhaps I can help to set it right."
And after a little more passionate weeping she answered, without looking up:
"It is one of those troubles that nothing can set right, Uncle Rob, but I will tell you the truth, for perhaps you may hear it from other lips than mine soon."
She stole one hand into his and nestled her bright head against his shoulder.
"Promise not to hate me, Uncle Rob," she whispered through her tears. "I have only you now. Father, mother, sisters, husband—I have lost them all. In all the wide world I have but you to love me!"
"My dear, you talk wildly," he said, in wonder. "It is true that your mother and sister have shown hearts harder than the nether mill-stone to you, but you have the noblest and most loving husband in the world!"
"He will not love me any longer when he has heard all that I am going to tell you, Uncle Rob," she murmured through her choking sobs.
And then she told him the shameful story of that missing year of her life as she had told it to Sydney a few months before; but it was not so hard to tell now, for instead of her sister's scornful looks and cruel words, she had a listener as tender and pitying as her own father had been—a listener whose tears fell more than once on the golden head bowed meekly on his shoulder.
And when it all had been told and the weary head had slipped down to his knee, he had no reproaches for the suffering young heart that had already been so cruelly punished. He could only repeat:
"My poor little one, my poor little one, may God help you!"
"And you'll not desert me, Uncle Rob—not even if—ifhedoes?" she murmured.
"No, never," he answered, fondly. "I'll stand by you, Queenie, if all the world forsakes you. You never meant to do wrong, I know that, and I will not scorn you because a devil in human shape has made desolate the fair young life that opened with such sweet promise. If Lawrence deserts you, we will go away together—you and I, pet—and wander around the world, restless and lonely, and yet not altogether desolate, for we shall still have each other for comfort and support."
"But, oh, Uncle Rob, I love him so, I love him so. How can I give him up now, when I have been so happy with him? It is more than I could bear. He had as well plunge a knife into my heart and lay me dead before him as to leave me now," cried the wretched young wife, giving way to a very abandonment of grief.
Uncle Rob could only say:
"My poor Queenie, my poor darling, let us hope for the best!"
He did not know how to comfort her, for he could not tell what course Captain Ernscliffe would pursue after hearing Leon Vinton'sgarbled version of Queenie's early error. He hoped for the best; but he feared the worst.
He could not bear to leave her in her sorrow, so he remained with her until the luncheon hour, hoping that Captain Ernscliffe might return while he—her uncle—was present, that he might defend her from his possible reproaches. But the hours passed slowly by, and dinner was announced, yet he failed to come.
They made no pretence at eating—these two sorrowing ones. They remained in the drawing-room alone, talking but little, and both on the alert for Captain Ernscliffe's coming. But the lovely, starry night had fallen, and the lamps were lighted before a strange step ran up the marble steps, and a letter was handed to Queenie.
"It is from Lawrence," she said, tearing it open with a sinking heart.
"Madam," her husband wrote, "I have heard the whole disgraceful story of the year you were supposed to have been absent in Europe from the lips of Leon Vinton and his housekeeper. I need not ask you if he told the truth. Your looks when you met him to-day were sufficient corroboration of his story. No wonder you looked so ghastly at the reappearance of the man you thought you had murdered. Oh, God! to think of it. You whom I have loved so madly, whom I thought so true and pure—you, a sinner, with a soul as black and unrepentant as a fiend in Hades!
"To-morrow I shall institute proceedings for a divorce. I can no longer lend the shelter of my name to one who has so basely deceived and betrayed me!"
The letter dropped from Queenie's shaking hand, and she fell heavily into a seat, her slender form trembling with great, tearless emotion.
"Oh, God!" she moaned, "it is indeed a bitter cup that is pressed to my lips! A disowned daughter and sister, and a divorced wife!"
"What does he say, Queenie?" inquired her uncle, pausing in his weary march up and down the room.
She silently pointed to the letter that lay upon the carpet, where it had fallen from her hands.
He picked it up and read it, then turned his kindly blue eyes upon her with an expression of pity and distress.
"The scoundrel Vinton must indeed have traduced and maligned you to have elicited such a scathing letter from your devoted husband. Let me go and bring Lawrence to you, Queenie, that you may vindicate yourself."
But she shook her head sorrowfully yet firmly.
"No Uncle Rob; he asks for no defense from me; he tacitly accepts all that Vinton has told him as the truth. He will hear nothing from you or me. There is nothing left me but to hide myself somewhere in the great cruel world and die," she said, with inexpressible bitterness.
"Queenie, let me entreat you not to throw away your happinessthus. Let me explain everything to Lawrence as you have told it to me. He could not be hard upon you then. He would see how cruelly you had been wronged, and how much you had suffered for it. If he loves you as much as he has seemed to do he could not but forgive you."
She took the letter from his hand and glanced over its brief contents again.
"No, no, his love must have been dead indeed before he could write to me so cruelly as this. Let him think what he will, Uncle Rob. The best is bad enough; so why should I try to vindicate myself? He shall have his freedom since he wants it so much."
"But, my dear, surely you will not permit the divorce without contesting it? Think what a terrible thing it would be to remain silent in such a case. A divorced woman is always a disgraced woman in the eyes of the world, no matter how unjustly the verdict was given against her. It must not be permitted. We must engage a lawyer to defend your case. I do not believe that your husband could obtain a divorce from any court in the land if the truth of the matter were rightly known."
"Do you think that I would belong to him and bear his name against his will?" she exclaimed, with all the passion and fire of tone and gesture that had won her fame and fortune on the tragic stage. "No, never,never! I will not raise my hand to stay the divorce. I will be silent, whatever they lay to my charge. His quick unkindness, his readiness to believe evil against me, has been the bitterest of all to bear, but I will not speak one word to let him know it. My heart shall break in silence!"
He gave up the point, seeing that it was utterly useless to urge it upon her.
"Since you are determined to sacrifice yourself thus on the altar of Vinton's fiendish revenge," he said, "tell me what I can do for you, my poor child. You will not wish to remain at Ernscliffe's house, of course?"
"Of course not," she answered.
Then after a moment's thought, she said, abruptly:
"Why, Uncle Rob, I shall have to go upon the stage again. I had forgotten until this moment that I am poor, that I have nothing at all to live upon. When I gave up my theatrical career and returned to my husband, I deeded away, with his consent, all my earnings on the stage to build a free church for the poor of London."
"You shall never go upon the stage again with my consent," he answered. "I have enough for us both to live in luxury all our lives. It is true I have lost a few thousands recently by the failure of a bank, but that is a mere nothing. I am a very wealthy man yet. You shall be my dear and honored daughter so long as I live, Queenie, and my heiress when I die."
She thanked him with a silent, eloquent glance.
"And now," he continued, "it will not do for you to remain in Ernscliffe's house any longer than to-morrow. Let your maid pack your trunks for you to-night, and to-morrow I will take youaway to some health resort—the mountains or the seashore—anywhere you like, so that I get you out of this city."
"And I shall never see my husband again," she said, clasping her hands with a gesture of despair. "Oh, how fleeting and evanescent was my dream of happiness! How can I live without him now, when I have been so happy with him?"
Uncle Robert took her tenderly in his arms, and kissed her white forehead.
"It is hard, dear," he said, "but we learn after awhile to do without the things that have been dearest to us on earth. I lost the darling of my heart many years ago. It was very hard to bear at first, but after awhile I learned patience and resignation."
"You have loved and lost?" she said, looking at him in great surprise.
"Yes, pet. Did you think I was a crusty, forlorn old bachelor from choice? No, no; I was betrothed to a sweet and lovely girl in my early youth, but she went away to live with the angels, and I have been true to her memory ever since."
"Poor uncle! I did not know you had so sad a secret in your life," she said, with the dew of sympathy shining in her beautiful blue eyes.
"Every heart knoweth its own bitterness," answered the kind, old man, sadly.
The next day he took her away to the seashore, hoping that the change of air and scene might divert her mind from its sorrows.
It was a vain hope. Her terrible trouble was too deeply graven on her mind. She became ill the day they took possession of their cottage, and for several weeks lay tossing with fever, closely attended by a skillful physician and two careful old nurses, while Mr. Lyle veered to and fro, his gentle heart nearly broken by this unexpected stroke of fate.
But at length, when they had almost begun to despair of her recovery, her illness took a sudden turn for the better.
She began to convalesce slowly but surely, and one day she turned the nurses out of the room and sent for her Uncle Robert.
"I want to ask you something," she said, putting her feverish, wasted little hand into his strong, tender clasp.
"I am listening, dear," he answered, kindly.
"Has—has that divorce been granted yet?" she inquired, flushing slightly.
"Oh, no, my dear. Your husband has applied for it, but they have been waiting since your illness to know what steps you will take in the matter—whether or not you would engage a lawyer and contest the divorce. I would not give them any satisfaction while you were sick, for I thought you might change your mind."
"Ihavechanged my mind, Uncle Rob," she said. "I mean to contest the divorce. There is a reason now" (she blushed and drooped her eyes from his perplexed gaze) "why I should try to save my fair fame as much as I can. Not that I wish to live with Lawrence again, whether there is a divorce or not, but I wish to defend my own honor and leave behind me as pure a name as I can. You will secure an able lawyer for me, will you not, Uncle Robbie?"
"Yes, darling, you shall have the best counsel that money can procure," he answered, deeply moved at her earnest words.
Captain Ernscliffe sat alone in the spacious library of his elegant mansion.
The windows were raised, and the rich curtains of silk and lace were drawn back, admitting the bracing October air.
The playful breeze lifted the dark, clustering locks from his high, white brow, and wafted to his senses the delicate perfume of roses and lilies that filled the vases on the marble mantel.
The evening sunshine lay in great, golden bars on the emerald-velvet carpet.
But none of these beautiful things attracted the attention of the master of this luxurious mansion.
He sat at his desk with an open book before him, and a half-smoked cigar between his white, aristocratic fingers; but the fire had died out on the tip of his prime Havana, and the idle breeze turned the leaves of his book at its wanton will.
He sat there, perfectly still and silent, in his great arm-chair, staring drearily before him, a stern, sad look on his handsome face, the fire of a jealous, all-consuming passion smouldering gloomily in the beautiful dark eyes, half veiled by their sweeping lashes.
He had been trying to read, but the strange unrest that possessed him was too great to admit of fixing his attention on the author, yet now he slowly repeated some lines that caught his eye as the light breeze fluttered the book leaves:
"Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung."
"Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung."
"Ah! she is all that, and more," he exclaimed, bitterly, showing by those quick words where his thoughts were.
A slight cough interrupted him. He looked up quickly and saw Robert Lyle standing within the half-open door. The old man moved forward deprecatingly.
"Pardon my abrupt entrance, Captain Ernscliffe," he said; "I knocked several times without eliciting a reply, so I ventured to enter through the half-open door."
Captain Ernscliffe arose and shook his visitor's hand with a cordiality tempered by an indefinable restraint.
"Pray make no apologies, sir," he said. "They are quite unnecessary."
He placed a chair for the visitor, then resumed his own seat, gazing rather curiously at the pleasant-looking, kindly old gentleman, who reminded him so much of his wife's father.
What had brought him there, he wondered, with some slight nervousness at the thought.
Mr. Lyle looked a little nervous, too. He wiped the dew from his fine old forehead, and remarked that it was a warm day.
"I suppose so," assented the host in a tone that seemed to say he had not thought about it before.
"I have come on a thankless mission, Lawrence," Mr. Lylesaid, with some slight embarrassment. "At least on an unsolicited one. I wish to speak to you of—of Queenie."
Captain Ernscliffe flushed crimson to the roots of his hair, and then grew deathly pale.
"I must refer you to my counsel, then," he answered, after a pause. "I have nothing to say about her myself."
"Lawrence!"
The gently rebuking tone in which the one word was uttered made the hearer start. He looked up quickly.
"Well, sir?"
"Do you know that you are treating my niece very unfairly in this matter. It is cruel to condemn her with her defense unheard."
"She condemned herself, Mr. Lyle, without a word from anyone else. Her guilt and shame were written all too legibly on her face the moment she looked upon Leon Vinton."
"Let us grant that she had reason to be ashamed of his acquaintance, Lawrence. Still may there not be some extenuation for her fault?"
"None, none! The more I think of it the blacker her dreadful sins appear. Oh, my God, to think of her with her face as lovely as an angel's, and her heart all black with sin! To think how I trusted and loved her, and how basely she repaid my confidence! How cruelly she deceived and betrayed me!" exclaimed the outraged husband, rising from his seat and pacing the floor excitedly.
"I cannot effect any compromise, then?" said Mr. Lyle, irresolutely. "You are bent on a divorce, I suppose. A separation would not content you?"
"Didshesend you to ask this?" angrily exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, pausing in his restless tramp to glare furiously at the would-be peacemaker.
"No, Lawrence, I told you I came on an unsolicited mission. Queenie knows nothing of my coming, and would not thank me for having asked that useless question. She asks no favors from you, but she means to defend her honor, and fight the divorce which would brand her with shame."
"My counsel and hers will settle that affair. In the meantime, why this useless dallying for long months on the pretence of illness? Why does she shirk appearing at court in answer to the summons? If not guilty, why does she not hasten to protest her innocence?"
"Queenie is ill, Captain Ernscliffe—has been ill for months. But we hope now that she may soon be able to appear at court and confront her accusers."
"Why does she not instruct her lawyer to manage the case without her if she is unable to be present herself? This suspense is unendurable. If this delay is continued much longer, I shall endeavor to push the matter without her. I am tired of this dilly-dallying!"
They looked at each other a moment in silence. Then the elder man said, with a repressed sigh:
"That is one thing I came to ask you, Lawrence. Grant usthis much grace, my poor, unfortunate Queenie, and her fond, old uncle. Do not push the matter for a little while. Wait until she can come into court and tell her own story before her fiendish accusers."
"But, Mr. Lyle, I am growing too impatient to wait longer. I chafe at the bonds that bind me to that beautiful deceiver."
"They will not bind you much longer," Mr. Lyle answered, sadly. "Either death or the law will soon sever your hated fetters."
Captain Ernscliffe started and looked at the speaker wildly.
"Death," he said, with an uncontrollable shudder. "Why do you talk of death? What is this mysterious illness that has held her in its chains so long? She used to be strong and well. She never talked of weakness."
"I cannot tell what ails her, Lawrence," said Mr. Lyle, rising as if the conference were ended, "but I have the word of her physician to tell you that within a month she will either be able to appear in court, and do what is necessary to defend her rights, or she will be in her grave. In either case you will be free."
The words fell coldly on Lawrence Ernscliffe's hearing, chilling the hot and passionate tide of resentment that hurried through his heart.
He thought with an uncontrollable pang of all that bright, fair beauty he had loved so long and so fondly lying cold in the grave—those lips that had kissed him so tenderly sealed in death, the white lids shut forever over the heaven of love in those soft blue eyes.
"Will that content you, Lawrence?" asked the old man, wistfully, pausing with his hat in his hand. "A month is not so very long."
"That depends on the mood one is in," was the unsatisfactory reply.
"But you will wait?" Mr. Lyle said, almost pleadingly.
There was a minute's pause, and then the answer came, coldly:
"I will wait."
"Thanks—and farewell," said Mr. Lyle, passing silently out of the room.
The outraged husband was alone once more, the red glow of the sunset shining into the room and touching with its tender warmth his pallid, marble-like features.
He could not rest. Mr. Lyle's words re-echoed in his ears, turning his warm blood to an icy current that flowed sluggishly through his benumbed veins.
"In a month she may be in her grave—oh! the horror of that thought," he said, aloud.
Yes, it was horror. He thought he hated her—she had deceived him so bitterly—he thought he was anxious to sever the tie that bound them together; he thought he never wished to look upon her beautiful, false face again.
And yet, and yet those words of Mr. Lyle's staggered him. He reeled beneath the suddenness of the blow. He asked himself again as he had asked Mr. Lyle:
"What is this mysterious illness that holds her in its chains?"
He did not know, he did not dream of the truth. If he had known it, he must surely have forgiven her and taken her back. He could not have hated her longer, even though she had sinned and deceived him. For he had loved her very dearly, and she was his wife.
But he said to himself:
"Why should I care if she dies? She deceived me shamefully. She can never be anything to me again. In either case, as that old man said, I shall be free. What will it matter to me, then, if she be dead or alive; I shall never see her again!"
And then when he began to understand that she might die before her testimony was given before the court in her own defense, he became conscious of a vague feeling of disappointment. He knew now that he had been very anxious all along to hear what his wife would say when she stood face to face with her accuser. Perhaps, after all, she could vindicate herself. If not, why was she so anxious to make the attempt?
"Have I wronged her?" he asked himself, suddenly. "Should I have condemned her without hearing her version of that villain's story? Ah! he would not have dared deceive me!"
Suddenly a serving-man entered with a card in his hand.
"A gentleman to see you, sir," he said.
Captain Ernscliffe took the bit of pasteboard in his hand and looked at it.
He started with surprise as he did so.
"C. M. Kidder," was the name he read.
It was the famous London detective whom he had employed to hunt down Sydney's dastardly murderer.
"What is he doing here in America—in this city?" thought Captain Ernscliffe, in surprise.
"Show the gentleman into this room," he said to the man.
Mr. Kidder came briskly in a moment after.
He was a shrewd-looking little man, well-dressed and gentlemanly.
"You are surprised to see me here," he said, after they had exchanged the usual greetings.
"Yes," admitted the host. "Do you bring news?"
The little man's black eyes sparkled.
"The best of news," he answered, blithely. "I have run the game down."
"That is indeed the best of news," said his employer, his face lighting up. "But I don't quite understand why you are here, in the United States."
"You don't?" said Mr. Kidder, with a good-natured laugh. "Well, I am here because my man is here. I have followed him across the seas."
"Is it possible?" exclaimed the listener, with a start.
"Yes, it is true. I have had a weary hunt for him, but I have unearthed him at last, thanks to Elsie Gray."
"Elsie Gray! Ah, yes, I remember, she was my wife's maidwho disappeared so strangely the night of the murder. You say she helped you. Where is she now?"
"She crossed the ocean with me. She is here in this city, and will be the chief witness in the prosecution. She witnessed the murder, and recognized the criminal at that moment as a former lover of your present wife. She pursued him, and was on his track when I found her."
"It has been almost a year since that dreadful night," said Captain Ernscliffe. "He must have been very clever to evade justice so long."
"He was a cunning, accomplished villain," said Mr. Kidder. "I followed him for weary months, but he managed to elude me every time when I began to think I had run him to earth. I lost him altogether for awhile, and then I discovered that he had left the country and sailed for the United States. I at once secured my witness, Elsie Gray, and followed him."
"But he may elude you here as he did in Europe," said Captain Ernscliffe, looking disappointed.
"It is not at all likely," said Mr. Kidder, laughing, "for I have already had him arrested and lodged in prison. No, do not thank me," he added, as his employer poured out a torrent of praises and thanks. "Rather thank Elsie Gray. But for her indefatigable exertions, and the valuable information she gave me, I might never have succeeded in my undertaking."
"She shall have my thanks, and something more substantial beside. The reward shall be doubled, and she shall share it equally."
"She has already promised to go shares with me," said the detective, so significantly and demurely that Captain Ernscliffe could not fail to understand his meaning.
"So she will marry you?" he said, smiling, and then, gazing curiously at the happy, little man, who was not more than thirty years old, he added: "Pardon me, but you are quite young, and Mrs. Ernscliffe's maid was quite middle-aged, was she not?"
"Oh, no, she was quite young and pretty," said the detective, laughing his happy, good-humored laugh.
"But surely——" began the listener.
"Mrs. Ernscliffe's maid was in disguise, both as to name and appearance," said Mr. Kidder, interrupting him. "Perhaps a bit of her history might interest you, sir, seeing that she has served you a good turn."
"I should like to hear it," said Captain Ernscliffe. "But wait a moment, Kidder, until I ring for lights. It is growing dark."
When the gas was lighted, and the curtains dropped over the windows, he turned back to his visitor and said:
"Go on, Kidder, let me hear Elsie Gray's history."
"Well, sir, Elsie Gray's true name is Jennie Thorn, and she is not more than twenty years old.
"She was a poor farmer's daughter when this man whom she has tracked to his doom deceived and ruined her under a pretense of marriage.
"The poor girl went home to her parents, but her honest fatherdrove her away with curses when he discovered her condition and learned her sad story.
"Her mother secretly befriended her, and found her a place to stay in hiding until her child was born.
"Fortunately for the poor girl it was born dead, and then she set out upon a mission which she had sworn to accomplish—her revenge upon the man who had betrayed her.
"In the meanwhile her enraged father had shot the deceiver, and thinking him dead had fled the country.
"But the wicked deceiver was proof against his enemy's bullet. He was born to be hung, you see, sir, and he was proof against anything else.
"So he got well, and was clear out of the country before poor Jennie was on her feet again. She was sorely disappointed, but she bided her time."
Captain Ernscliffe began to look as if he took an interest in the history of the farmer's pretty daughter.
"She sought for him everywhere as far as her money would carry her," went on the detective, "but she never saw or heard of her enemy.
"At length her mother came to the city with her, and together they continued their unrelenting quest, for they both had sworn to take a terrible revenge upon the destroyer of innocence."
He paused a moment, and Captain Ernscliffe, half forgetful of his own troubles in this sorrowful story, exclaimed:
"Go on, Kidder. I am very much interested in Jennie Thorn's sad story."
"One night they went to the theater," continued the detective, "and there they saw upon the stage the beautiful lady that is now your wife."
"Ah!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, with a start.
"Yes, sir; you begin to get an inkling of things now," said Kidder. "Well, to go on, Jennie Thorn recognized the lady. She had seen her before, and knew that the man who had wronged her was an enemy of Madame De Lisle. She knew that they hated each other, and that he had sworn to take a terrible revenge upon her. Well, sir, in that minute Jennie Thorn began to see what would be her own best chance to find her betrayer again."
Captain Ernscliffe was growing too excited to keep his seat. He rose and paced up and down the room, his arms folded over his broad breast, his burning gaze fixed on the detective's shrewd, intelligent face.
"She knew that the man would follow Madame De Lisle like her evil genius, and she determined to keep near the beautiful actress. The next day she disguised herself as an elderly woman, changed her name, and went into your wife's service as her maid."
Captain Ernscliffe gazed at him silently. He began to comprehend now.
"There's little more to tell, sir. Jennie left her mother in the United States and followed Madame De Lisle across the ocean.
"At first the actress had an old couple of actors with her—thesame that adopted her and taught her their profession—but they both died.
"The old man sickened first and died, and his wife soon followed him to the grave.
"Then the actress grew attached to Jennie, and would not have parted with her for anything.
"Her middle-aged appearance was a protection to the young lady who was so beautiful and so lonely, and she never suspected that her elderly maid was other than what she seemed.
"Jennie was contented to remain with her; but though she followed her like a shadow she never saw her base betrayer until the night of the murder.
"That night a small boy came to the dressing-room with that fatal letter.
"It was so unusual an occurrence that Jennie stealthily followed him out and saw where he had gone.
"Hidden behind the curtains of a window, she watched the man outside the western door.
"Almost at the moment that she recognized him she saw him spring to the door.
"She parted the curtains and saw the steel flashing in his hand, to be buried the next moment in the heart of the woman coming up to him."
He paused a moment at Captain Ernscliffe's hollow groan; then continued:
"Jennie told me that the wild scream of anguish that rose the next moment nearly broke her heart.
"She thought it was her dear, kind mistress whom he had killed, and she was filled with the fury of the tigress.
"She sprang over the fallen body, and followed the murderer, who was hurrying away.
"She caught him by the arm, and fastened her teeth in his arm.
"He shook her off and ran away. She sprang after him.
"She followed him to a house, but he escaped from it, or eluded her somehow, and she took quarters in the vicinity, and was watching the place when I found her.
"With the information she gave me I succeeded in tracing him further, and finally we tracked him down.
"He is at this moment in prison, and if he gets his dues he will swing from the gallows right speedily. A blacker-hearted villain never walked upon the earth."
There was silence for a time, and then the detective added:
"When I landed herein this city, with Jennie in my charge, we found that her mother was dead.
"The poor girl has not a friend on earth, and she has promised to marry me to-day, and after the trial is over she will return to England with me.
"She is a good, sweet, true girl, and I don't bear any grudge against her because she has suffered from the arts of a villain through her too confiding innocence."
"You have my congratulations, my fine fellow," said Captain Ernscliffe, heartily. "But do you know that you have forgottento tell me the name of the man who murdered my poor Sydney?"
"Why, really, have I neglected to mention his name? You must excuse me, Captain Ernscliffe, for it is one of the traits of my profession to be chary of mentioning names. The man belongs right here in this city, and is a notorious gambler and rogue. He is as handsome as a prince, as wicked as the devil, and his name is Leon Vinton."
"If there be any whom you have not yet forgiven; if there be any wrong you yet may right, let not the sun go down upon your wrath, my son, for verily, you must forgive as you would be forgiven. Upon no less terms than these can you win the pardon and absolution of Heaven."
It was the voice of the solemn, black-robed priest, and he stood in the gloomy cell of a convicted murderer, who, before the sunset of another day was to expiate his terrible sin by a felon's death.
Even now from the gloomy prison-yard outside could be heard the awful sound of the hammers driving the nails into his scaffold.
Upon the low, cot bed reclined the handsome demon whom we have known in our story as Leon Vinton.
Wasted and worn in his coarse prison garb and clanking fetters, there was still much of that princely beauty left that had lured youth and innocence to their deadly ruin.
But the reckless, Satanic smile was gone from his pallid, marble-like features now, and a glance of anguished terror and dread shone forth from his hollow, black eyes.
Like many another wretched sinner in his dying hour, Leon Vinton was afraid of the vengeance of that God whom he had despised and defied all his wicked life.
All day the priests had been with him, praying, chanting, exhorting, and now the chilly, gloomy December day was fading to its close, and the long, dreary night hurried on—his last night upon the beautiful earth, through which he had walked as a destroying demon, scattering the fire-brand of ruin and remorse along his evil pathway.