"Papa," said Sydney, in a trembling voice, "there is some dreadful mystery here. Queenie did not go to Europe with us. After you bade us good-bye that day on the steamer, she cried and wept, and almost went into hysterics, begging mamma to let her go back and stay with you, instead of going to Europe. She was so unmanageable that mamma consented at last, and she and her trunks were put on sh.o.r.e, and we went aboard without her. Did she not come home to you?"

"No, never," groaned the wretched father, like one demented. "I have never seen her since that day. Oh, Queenie, my lost darling, where are you?"

For a moment there came no answer to the question. They stood around spellbound with horror, while a peal of awful thunder reverberated outside and seemed to shake the house from its foundations. The next moment the door was burst violently open, and the dripping figure of a woman rushed into the room.

"_Queenie!_" burst from the quivering lips of the unhappy father.

Yes, it was Queenie, but oh, how terribly changed! Her streaming golden hair, matted with mold and dead leaves, hung wet and cold over her shoulders. Her dress of dark silk was stained with great patches and wisps of dead autumn leaves. The tight bodice, open at the top, exposed her throat, which--oh, Heaven!--was marked round and round with the purple and red print of finger-marks as though she had been strangled.

Her face was white as death, showing the plainer for its whiteness a mark upon her brow above her eyes--the horrible purple print of a man's boot heel on the tender flesh, from which a thin stream of blood trickled down on her ghastly face. A fearful--fearful apparition, strangely unlike little Queenie of other days. Yet it was Queenie, for she staggered blindly forward, and panting out: "Papa, papa, forgive!"

fell in a lifeless heap at his feet.

CHAPTER VI.

At little Queenie's sudden and terrible appearance Mrs. Lyle and the two elder sisters screamed aloud in fright and horror, and even the agonized father recoiled a moment from the dreadful-looking creature that lay at his feet to all appearances dead.

Directly, however, with a strong revulsion of feeling from dismay and terror to pity and tenderness, he bent down and lifted the white face of his daughter on his arm.

Her head fell back helplessly, and the wet and matted locks of gold trailed over the velvet carpet, drenching it with rain-drops. The long, dark lashes lay close upon the marble-white cheeks and no breath fluttered over the pale, parted lips to show that life still dwelt in the frame of the hapless girl.

A cry of agony broke from the lips of the poor father whose fondest affections had been concentrated on the daughter now lying lifeless in his arms.

"Oh, G.o.d! oh, G.o.d! what fearful mystery is here? Queenie is _dead_; and oh! those _horrible_ marks upon her throat and brow! Someone has _murdered_ my little darling!"

Again the frightened shrieks of the women rose above the dreadful tumult of the storm outside. They huddled together by the marble hearth, shuddering as though afraid to approach that dreadful-looking object that had come upon them with the face of the little Queenie they had alternately scolded and petted in the past. Mr. Lyle looked at them with a keen reproach and pain in his heavy eyes.

"Queenie is _dead_," he said to them, in a hollow, broken voice. "Why do you stand aloof from her?"

His lips were white, and he trembled so that he could scarcely hold the still form that lay so helpless in his arms. But even as he spoke, her lips parted in a faint and scarce audible sigh, the eyelids fluttered slightly and grew still again.

"No, no, she _lives_!" he cried, rapturously. "Quick, quick! let us take her to her room and apply restoratives."

He lifted her in his arms and the women mechanically followed him as he bore her to her room and laid her down upon her little white bed. Then he turned around with the dazed look gone from his white face and a gleam of resolution there instead.

"There is some dreadful mystery here," he said, in deep, low tones. "The servants must not know of this. Let them think that she came back with you from Europe. Sydney and Georgie, you may retire to your rooms. Your mamma and I will do all that is necessary."

Frightened and weeping the girls went away to their rooms and the fearfully stricken parents went to work to restore life in the exhausted frame of poor little Queenie.

They bathed and dressed the wound upon her brow, laved the fearfully discolored throat with arnica, wrung and dried the dripping golden tresses, and lastly Mrs. Lyle removed her soiled, wet garments and robed her in a pretty nightdress. All the while the hapless girl lay still and motionless, without a sign of life save an occasional quiver of the eyelids, and a faint, scarce perceptible throbbing in her wrist.

"My dear, you are tired and overcome," Mr. Lyle said to his wife when they had done all that was possible. "Go to your room and rest. I will stay here and watch by our little girl."

Mrs. Lyle leaned her head on his shoulder and burst into hysterical weeping.

"Oh! what does it mean?" she moaned, wringing her hands. "_Where_, oh!

_where_, has Queenie been this past year?"

"My dear, we shall know when she revives, if she ever does. Go now and rest," he answered, pushing her gently from the room.

He went back to his lonely vigil and watched the weary night through by that silent form upon the bed. Now and then he rose and poured a few drops of wine between the pale, unconscious lips and sat down again with his finger upon the fluttering, thread-like pulse. At length, between the dark and the dawn, Queenie opened her eyes upon his face, sighed, and murmured:

"Papa!"

He bent over her anxiously.

"You are better, darling?" he said.

"I am better," she answered faintly.

There was silence a little while after that. She lay quite still with her large, hollow eyes fixed wistfully on her father's pale and troubled face as he bent over her, holding her white and wasted hand in both his own. Everything was very still about the house. The storm outside had spent itself, and only now and then the fitful muttering of the "homeless wind" reminded one of the war of the elements that had raged so fiercely a few hours ago.

Mr. Lyle's voice, hoa.r.s.e, trembling, agonized, broke strangely upon the utter stillness:

"_Queenie, where have you been all this long, dreadful year?_"

Queenie turned her face and buried it in the pillow, and a low sob of utter agony answered him only.

Again he repeated the question, this time more firmly and resolutely.

"Oh! papa, _must_ I tell you?" she moaned, without lifting her face from its friendly refuge.

"Yes, Queenie, I must have a full explanation of your mysterious absence, for I fear it covers wrong or guilt. Secrecy is seldom without sin," he answered, in a firm but heart-wrung voice.

His daughter wrung her white hands, moaning and weeping.

"Oh! papa, I _cannot, cannot_ tell you," she exclaimed.

Mr. Lyle took the white hands that were wildly beating the air, and held them firmly in both his own.

"Be calm, Queenie," he said, "and listen to me. There can be no question of _cannot_ between you and me! You have deceived us all and spent a year away from us. You return to us wretched and alone, with the marks of cruel violence upon your person. What are we to think of you, Queenie, if you refuse to explain the mystery? How can we receive you back with a secret, perhaps a shameful one, in your life? I must have your vindication from your own lips, my poor child. Answer me, Queenie, where have you spent this missing year of your life?"

She wrenched her hands away and looked about her wildly.

"Let me go--I cannot stay here! Oh! why did I ever come?" she wailed. "I was mad, mad!"

He laid her forcibly back upon the bed. She was too weak to resist him, and lay panting and moaning in wild despair.

"Queenie, you torture me," he said, hoa.r.s.ely; "I must have the truth from you. Tell me, dear, has anyone wronged you? If it is so, I will have the villain's heart's blood!"

She shivered and trembled where she lay held down by his strong hands.

"Too late," she moaned, in a voice half-triumphant, half-despairing. "I have taken vengeance into my own hands--I have," she broke off shivering and sobbing, with a look of awful horror in the white face with the terrible, purple print of a boot-heel on the marble brow.

"Tell me all, dear," he said, his voice sharp with anxiety and foreboding.