Queenie looked at Sydney's tearful eyes and flushed cheeks, and her tender little heart melted at once. She crossed over and put her round, white arms about Sydney's stately neck.

"Sister, do forgive me," she said, sweetly. "I did not mean a word of it. Your manners are simply perfection, and I only wish that mine were half as polished!"

"You should cultivate yourself," answered Sydney, coldly, as she put the clinging arms away from her neck, "I am ashamed of your hoydenish manners."

"I _will_ try to cultivate myself, Sydney, indeed I will," answered Queenie, innocently. "I am so young yet, you know; I have time to learn a great many things!"

Sydney bit her lip and made no reply. There was nothing she envied so much as Queenie's tender youth, and to have it thrust upon her notice like that, however innocently, was unendurable. The silence that fell was becoming awkward, when a servant entered the room with a small parcel which she laid in Queenie's hand.

"A small boy left it at the door for you," she said, as she withdrew.

Queenie stared at the parcel in bewilderment. It had a familiar look.

"Open it, my dear," said Mrs. Lyle, curiously.

Queenie tore off the paper and a box was revealed. She took off the lid with a trembling hand. Within the box lay the painted fan she had sold an hour ago to the dealer on ---- Street.

"What is this?" said Georgina, stooping down.

She picked up a card that had fallen from the box. Upon it was written in a clear, bold, manly hand:

"From an unknown admirer of Miss Queenie Lyle."

"Someone has sent your painted fan back to you," exclaimed Mrs. Lyle.

"How kind! But who could it have been?"

"Queenie has caught a beau!" said Georgina, laughing.

Involuntarily Queenie's thoughts reverted to the dark-eyed stranger who had looked at her in the store, but she said nothing.

CHAPTER III.

"Who is the young _debutante_, Miss Lyle?"

Sydney Lyle, coming down the long ball-room on the arm of the most distinguished man in the room, looked up with ill-concealed annoyance at his words.

She followed his glance, and saw little Queenie standing in the center of a group of admirers, fluttering her satin fan with the grace of an embryo coquette. The girl looked lovely as a dream in her thin, white dress, with its mult.i.tudinous puffings and frillings.

It was looped here and there with natural rosebuds, and she wore her set of pearls clasped round her white throat and wrists, while her golden hair rippled to her waist in a shower of natural ringlets. Anything more sweetly fair and happy could scarcely be imagined than Queenie, as she stood there, warm and flushed from the dance, and enjoying, with all the keenness of youth and novelty, the honied flatteries of the little court around her. An irrepressible pang of jealousy gave a touch of sharpness to Sydney's voice, as she answered:

"That is my sister Queenie, Captain Ernscliffe--a willful child who ought to be in the school-room this moment, but who has persuaded mamma to let her come here instead."

"Ah! your sister," said Captain Ernscliffe. "I might have known it by her beauty. She has lived near the _rose_," and he pointed the compliment by a meaning glance that made Sydney blush. "You will introduce me, Miss Lyle?"

"Certainly." Sydney answered, and pausing beside Queenie, she said, carelessly:

"Captain Ernscliffe, this is my sister, Queenie. If she should shock you by her _outre_ manners, please remember that she is but a child and quite unaccustomed to appear in society."

Captain Ernscliffe bowed low over the white-gloved hand of the enchanting little beauty, and Queenie looked up at him and said, with a flash of wrath against Sydney:

"You need not believe Sydney, when she tells you I am nothing but a child, Captain Ernscliffe. I am _seventeen_ years old, and I know how to behave myself just as well as any young lady of my age, in spite of Sydney's warning."

The gentleman saw that the young heart was sorely wounded, despite her quick a.s.sumption of dignity, and hastened to say, consolingly:

"I can well believe you, Miss Queenie, for I see there is but one unanimous opinion among the gentlemen. You are the belle of the ball."

Sydney pa.s.sed on with the words rankling in her heart, though she knew that they were true. Among all the beautiful women present, in their cosily dresses and splendid jewels, little Queenie, with her sunny smile and her cheap, white tarleton dress, was the most admired and sought after.

The women who envied her fresh, young loveliness sneered at the simple dress, but the men--bless their ignorant hearts--did not know whether the snowy mist that floated about her cost a hundred dollars or five.

They only saw that her face was the fairest, her eyes the brightest, her voice the sweetest of any in the room. Mrs. Lyle saw the sensation she created, and straightway began to lay matrimonial plans for her.

"Sydney and Georgina are both handsome and stylish, yet they are very slow in marrying off well," she said to herself, with a sigh. "Perhaps I shall have better luck with my willful Queenie. There is that rich Ernscliffe with her now. He is a splendid catch, but then, Sydney has had her heart set on him this long while. She would be very angry if Queenie were to rival her."

In the meantime little Queenie was clapping her tiny hands and saying, in a voice full of girlish pleasure:

"The belle of the ball, Captain Ernscliffe? Oh, how nice that is! I love for people to like me, yet Syd and George said that no one would look at me in this cheap dress, that I bought for five dollars and made with my own hands."

"It is the prettiest dress in the rooms. I had no idea but that it cost at least a hundred dollars," said Captain Ernscliffe, regarding the fairy-like puffs attentively. "And your bouquet, as the ladies say, is too sweet for anything. Was it a tribute from some admirer?"

She blushed and smiled, and lifted the fragrant triumph of the floral art to her sweet face.

"You have guessed right," she said. "It was handed in at our door this evening, with the compliments of an unknown admirer."

"The fellow had fine taste anyway," laughed the captain, "both in the selection of the flowers and their recipient."

"Thank you," answered Queenie, demurely, looking up with a smile, and dropping her lashes very quickly a minute after, for something in the glance of his dark eyes sent a blush to her cheek and made her silly little heart thrill strangely.

Captain Ernscliffe only smiled like one used to such effects. He was a bachelor, and thirty years old, and women called him a flirt. Be that as it may, he was as handsome as a prince, and knew how to make women's lashes flutter down upon cheeks that blushed crimson under his glance.

"What an innocent little darling she is," he thought, to himself. "How different from her sisters, and from the girls one meets usually in society! One might well resign all the liberties of bachelorhood to win and wear so sweet a flower." "Doubtless you have woven a pretty web of romance about the unknown giver of your flowers, Miss Lyle," he said, jestingly.

She had pressed the flowers to her lips unconsciously, and at his words she started and smiled, and looked up to reply with the brightest face he had ever looked upon. But suddenly, before a single word left her lips, her aspect changed strangely and marvelously. Her cheeks and lips grew white as death, her eyes grew wild with horror, and she swept her hand across her brow as if to dispel some horrid vision. Her form trembled like a leaf in a storm, and with a wild, inarticulate cry she wavered and fell in a lifeless heap at Captain Ernscliffe's feet.

It was all so sudden that Captain Ernscliffe lifted her up and carried her through the low window out on the balcony before anyone had noticed her fall. He laid her down on a rustic lounge, turned her white face up to the air, and went and called her mother very quietly.

"Oh! Captain Ernscliffe, is she dead?" exclaimed Mrs. Lyle, wringing her hands in terror.

"Oh! no, she has only fainted, I think. The rooms were too warm, perhaps. See, she is already reviving in the cooler air out here."

The girl's breath came fluttering back in a long, quivering sigh. She caught Captain Ernscliffe's arm and half-lifted herself without seeming to notice her mother.

"Oh! Captain Ernscliffe, did you see _it_?" she gasped, rather than spoke.

"Did I see _what_?" he inquired, rather blankly.