"Admit no one to-night, Elsie," she said, nervously, as the maid turned toward the door.

Elsie came back in a minute with a penciled slip of paper. Her mistress took it, and read these words:

"Will Madame De Lisle accord the favor of a brief interview to a lady who calls on important business?"

"A lady--at this time of the night!" said La Reine Blanche, lifting her arched brows very slightly.

"Yes, madam, a real lady--at least she spoke and moved like one,"

replied Elsie, respectfully.

"Tell her I can see no one to-night. I am too weary; she must call another time," said the actress, in an agitated voice.

Elsie turned away with the message, but before she reached the door she was confronted by the lady, who had heard the refusal and entered in spite of it.

She advanced into the room, and stood before the actress, who had risen from her seat and leaned against a chair, her golden hair falling about her like a misty veil.

"Madame De Lisle," said the intruder, in a slightly tremulous voice, "I entreat you to pardon this untimely intrusion. Will you send your maid away, that I may plead my justifiable excuse?"

La Reine Blanche motioned to the maid to withdraw into an inner room at the pleasure of her visitor. Then she looked wistfully at the lady, who had thrown off her concealing hood and cloak, and stood revealed in all her majestic beauty, clothed splendidly in black velvet and sparkling diamonds.

"You are surprised to see me here?" said Sydney, interrogatively.

The actress bowed silently. She seemed like one stricken dumb and incapable of speech.

"You were annoyed this evening by the persistent attempts of a gentleman to obtain speech with you," went on Sydney.

Again Madame De Lisle bowed silently. She seemed like one dazed, and stood regarding her visitor without remembering that courtesy required her to offer her a seat.

"It is of that I wish to speak, madam. I heard you tell him he might call on you to-morrow at noon. I beg you, Madame De Lisle, to recall that permission, and to utterly decline the acquaintance of Lawrence Ernscliffe now and forever."

The failing senses of La Reine Blanche seemed to return to her with a gasp. She straightened her drooping figure and looked haughtily at the speaker.

"May I inquire why you proffer such a singular request?" she asked, coldly.

"Is it necessary that I should explain my motive for the request? If I do so, it will be at the expense of some humiliation to myself," said the visitor, and a faint flush colored her handsome, high-bred face.

For a moment they stood regarding each other fixedly--the handsome brunette in her velvet and diamonds, the lily-white blonde in her sweeping robe and veil of golden hair, looking like a "white queen"

indeed.

Then the actress said, in a voice full of veiled pa.s.sion and almost defiance:

"It would take a strong motive indeed to cause me to decline the acquaintance of Lawrence Ernscliffe. Let me know your reason that I may judge if it be potent enough to secure your wish."

With a swift rush forward Sydney fell on her knees before the beautiful woman.

"Madame De Lisle," she said, pleadingly, "I humble myself before you to beg for my happiness! I love Lawrence Ernscliffe; I hoped I was winning his love in return until he saw you on the stage to-night. Your beauty, your splendid acting, above all, your striking resemblance to one he has loved and lost, took his heart by storm. He is carried away by this mad and wicked infatuation. Nothing but a studied coldness from you can check this mad pa.s.sion. Will you, now that I have told you all, do as I have begged you?"

Something pathetic in the woman's humility touched a pitying chord in the heart of La Reine Blanche. She took her gently by the hand and placed her in a chair.

"You say that I resemble one whom he has loved and lost," she said. "Who was she?"

"She was his bride," answered Sydney, "his bride and my sister. She died at the altar. But I had the better claim upon him. He admired me and I believe he would have loved and married me if he had not inopportunely met her. But, as I have told you, she died. Now, after years, I had almost won his love again when you came here with _her_ face and won him from me! It is almost as if the dead had come back."

La Reine Blanche looked at her with a strange smile.

"I have heard it said," she remarked, "that if the dead could come back after a few years they would find their places filled, their names forgotten, and themselves unwelcome."

Sydney gave her a keen glance, half-frightened, half-defiant.

"Madam, that is true," she said. "If my sister could come back to us we could not help being sorry. She was a trouble and disgrace to us while living, and we cannot help feeling relieved that the gra.s.s is growing over all her faults and follies."

"You did not love your sister?" said the actress, with her blue eyes blazing like stars.

Sydney looked at her with a flash of hatred in her dusky orbs.

"Madam," she said, "could you love the thing that stood between you and your happiness?"

They looked at each other a moment in silence, and the flashing eyes of the beautiful actress seemed to burn into Sydney's heart. A sudden horrible fear darted into her mind.

"_Has_ the dead come back?" she asked herself. "Oh! no, it _cannot_ be!"

"You will not answer me," she said, wildly. "Oh, Madame De Lisle, be generous! You have lovers by the score; they tell me you have refused to marry a duke. One heart more or less cannot matter to you. You must not take my Lawrence from me! He is my all!"

"Your _all_!" exclaimed La Reine Blanche, with a curling lip. "Lady, you prate of your love for Lawrence Ernscliffe, you tell me that he is your _all_! You tell me what he is to _you_--will you tell me what you are to _him_?"

There was a tone of triumph in her sweet, incisive voice as she confronted her visitor.

"Madam," said Sydney, proudly and haughtily, "_he is my husband--I am his wife!_"

"His wife! Oh! my G.o.d!"

It was the cry of a breaking heart that cleft the midnight air. The actress staggered backward, tried to catch at a chair to save herself from falling, and then dropped heavily to the floor and laid there without a sign of life.

Elsie came rushing in from the next room, frightened at the sound.

"Oh, my poor mistress--you have killed her!" she cried.

"It is nothing but a swoon--she will soon revive," was the contemptuous answer.

But in her heart Sydney prayed, "Oh, that it might be death!"

But the impious prayer was not answered thus. Elsie's energetic efforts soon restored her mistress to consciousness, and lying languidly on a silken divan, she turned her beautiful eyes back to Sydney's face.

"You may retire again," Sydney said to the maid. "We have much still to say to each other."

The maid was about to refuse, but an imperative command from her mistress caused her to retire at once. Then the two beautiful women looked at each other with ominous glances.

"So you _are_ Queenie herself? I thought as much," exclaimed Sydney, in a hissing tone of hate.