Sydney nodded an affirmative answer.

"I was very young and foolish in those days," said Queenie, with a sigh.

"I do not suppose that any girl ever lived more silly and romantic than I was. I brooded day and night over the mysterious donor of the fan and flowers. All my secret thoughts were of him. I felt quite sure in my own mind that the handsome man who had looked at me so admiringly in the fancy store was my unknown admirer. I expected daily to meet him somewhere in the haunts of the gay society in which I had become somewhat of a belle. You remember, Sydney?"

Sydney did not answer, and she went on, slowly:

"I did not meet him in society; but after a time we met in a public park. I was walking there alone. I slipped and fell, spraining my ankle severely. A gentleman rushed to my a.s.sistance. It was the handsome stranger of whom I had dreamed so much that I had become perfectly infatuated with him. He placed me in a carriage and took me home. You were all out that day, and I never told of that event in my life through some undefined fear of censure. That was where my fault began--in that first act of secrecy."

She paused a moment, and a heart-wrung sigh drifted over her pale and quivering lips.

Sydney sat perfectly still, regarding her with stern, unpitying eyes, as though they were strangers instead of sisters whom the same mother had nursed on her breast.

"We met again and again," said Queenie, slowly. "Always by accident, it seemed at first, Sydney, and I am quite sure it _was_ accident on my part; but I know now that it was by design on the part of Mr. Vinton. He wooed me in the most romantic fashion. Flowers and poetry were the vehicles through which he conveyed his sentiments, until at last grown bolder, he openly avowed his love for me."

"You must have been very forward to have encouraged him to a declaration so soon," said Sydney, with a sneer.

"Sydney, I declare to you I was not. Oh! if you knew Leon Vinton as I do now, you would know that I was not--you would know that the more timid and shrinking the dove the more fierce and unrelenting would be his pursuit," exclaimed Queenie, with a scarlet blush at her sister's cruel charge.

"I knew, of course," she continued, after a moment's thoughtful pause, "home was the proper place for my lover to woo me. I said as much to him. His ready excuse appeared perfectly sufficient in my silly eyes. He told me that he was a foreigner of high birth and rank, exiled from his native land through a political offense and that he had heard that my father was bitterly opposed to all foreigners. He, therefore, felt it to be quite hopeless to seek for the _entree_ to my father's house. Little simpleton that I was, I swallowed the whole stupendous lie because it was baited with the one single grain of truth--namely, the well-known fact that my father was bitterly prejudiced against all persons of foreign birth. I believed all he told me, and, worse than all, I believed that I was deeply and devotedly in love with him. That was the blind mistake of my life, Sydney. _Now_ I know that I was not in love with the _man_. It was the romance and poetry of his manner of wooing me, the mystery that surrounded him with an atmosphere of ideality that fascinated and infatuated me. I was very young and romantic, as he well knew when he set his artful trap for me. He knew too well how to bait it. It was only the wooing that I loved when I thought it was the wooer."

Her voice broke a moment, and she buried her face in her hands.

Sydney offered no comment, but sat as still and silent as a statue, regarding her intently.

"Yet, why do I linger over those fatal hours?" resumed Queenie, with a heavy sigh. "They can have but little interest for you. I will briefly relate what came after. You remember, Sydney, how I left you all the day we started to Europe on the pretense of returning to remain with papa?"

"Yes," Sydney answered, in a tone of scorn.

"It was a preconcerted plan," said the actress, dropping her eyes in shame and remorse. "In less than an hour after I left you, Sydney, I met Leon Vinton and was married to him."

"Married to him!" exclaimed Sydney, incredulously.

The blue eyes and the black ones met for a moment--one pair cold and incredulous, the others full of raging scorn.

"Sydney, you are cruel!" exclaimed Queenie, indignantly. "How else should I have gone away with him? I was as pure and innocent as a little child. There was not a thought of evil in my heart. I would have died the most horrible death that could be conceived of before I would have willfully sinned."

"Why, then, did you not confess the truth when you came home?" asked Sydney. "If you were married, where was your husband? Why did you suffer us to think worse things of you?"

"Wait until I have finished my story, Sydney, then you will understand why," answered Queenie, mournfully. "We were married, as I told you,"

she continued. "We went to live in a beautiful cottage on the banks of the river, about five miles from the city where we lived. My husband appeared to be a man of wealth and taste. My home was splendidly furnished. I had servants to wait upon me, the best of everything to eat and wear. He appeared to be perfectly devoted to me. I had but two things to complain of. One was the utter seclusion in which we lived. He went into no society, and we saw no company--not a single person ever visited us. I rode out in a carriage with Mr. Vinton sometimes. Once we went to the theater near my old home, and an irresistible desire seized upon me to look upon the face of my father once more. Mr. Vinton had always sternly forbidden me to venture near my home, but I eluded him somehow in the crush coming out of the theater, and ran homeward with flying footsteps. I looked into the window, Sydney. It was late, but I saw papa. He was sitting, sad and alone, thinking, perhaps, of his absent dear ones. He looked so old and broken it almost broke my heart."

CHAPTER XXV.

Queenie paused a moment, and Sydney saw that warm, pa.s.sionate tears were streaming down her cheeks. The sight awoke no pity in the heart of the elder sister. It seemed to her that her hatred was simply measureless for the beautiful young sister who, living or dead, held Lawrence Ernscliffe's heart.

"Papa looked up and saw me," continued Queenie, brushing away the crystal drops with her perfumed handkerchief. "He took me for a ghost, I think. I ran away and met Mr. Vinton coming after me. He was very angry with me, and I promised him I would not venture near the place again.

Poor papa! As I went away I heard him wandering in the garden, calling my name. I longed to turn back and throw my arms about his neck. I often begged Mr. Vinton to allow me to make known our marriage to papa and trust to his kind heart to forgive us, but he always refused angrily. He had a terrible temper--a sleeping devil coiled within his heart."

"You said that you had but two things to complain of," suggested Sydney.

"You have named but one."

"The other was Mr. Vinton's frequent absence from me. He spent more than half his time in the city, and I pa.s.sed more than half my time alone, save for the company of his housekeeper, a wicked woman, whom I cordially detested. When I complained of his long absence, he represented that business detained him from my side, but when I ventured to inquire into the nature of his business, he almost rudely informed me that it was no part of my province to inquire into his affairs. I asked him no more questions, and I do not know to this day what engaged his time and attention, nor what was the source of his apparent wealth.

"We had been married almost a year," she continued, after a slight pause, "when I began to notice that Mr. Vinton grew cold and careless to me, and his mysterious absences became longer and more frequent. In my loneliness and isolation I began to pine more and more for papa, whose sad and troubled face, as I saw it last, when I looked into the window that night, haunted me persistently. To my surprise, Mr. Vinton ceased to chide me for indulging in my grief, and pretended to be willing to reveal our marriage to papa and beg his forgiveness. In my joy at this a.s.surance, I threw my arms around his neck, and kissed him as fondly as I had ever done in the first days of our union. That evening he ordered out the phaeton to take me home to papa. You know how fond I was of papa, Sydney--you can imagine my happiness."

Sydney only bowed coldly in reply.

"'I am going to take you home by a new route,' Mr. Vinton said to me, turning the phaeton into a lonely, unfrequented road. In my joy at going back to papa, I consented without a thought of the oddity of the words.

I only said to him: 'Do not make it a longer route, dear Leon. I am so impatient to see papa again.'"

She was growing more excited now. She rose from her reclining position, and sitting upright, looked at Sydney with scarlet cheeks and burning, violet eyes. She was dazzlingly beautiful in this new phase.

Her fair, expressive face, and graceful, white throat rose from the rich and somber setting of black velvet like some rare flower. Her voice sounded like a wail of the saddest music.

"It was the cruelest lie a man ever told a woman, Sydney!" she went on, clasping and unclasping her white hands together in pa.s.sionate excitement. "We never went near home. He never intended it. It began to rain soon, and we had no cover to the phaeton. We were pa.s.sing through a thick wood, and he forced me to get out and stand under the trees under pretense of seeking shelter. Then, oh, Sydney, Sydney, with the chilly rain beating down upon us, and our feet half buried in the thick drifts of autumn leaves, he told me--oh, Sydney, can you guess what horrible thing that villain told me?"

The tears were falling down her cheeks like rain as she looked at her sister, but she, conjecturing the truth at once, answered, promptly and coldly:

"He told you that he had deceived you--that you were not his wife!"

"Yes, Sydney, that was what he told me," answered Queenie, with burning cheeks. "He said that the minister who united us was no more a minister than he was, and had only done it for a lark! He said he was tired of me and did not intend to charge himself with my support any longer, and that I might return to my father."

She stopped a moment and brushed away the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.

"Oh! how can I go on?" she exclaimed.

"I am impatient," remarked Sydney.

"I was fairly maddened by that cruel revelation," continued Queenie.

"Oh, Sydney, may the dear Lord spare you from such suffering as was mine in that terrible hour! I went mad! All the softness of womanhood died out of me in the face of that cruel wrong! The instinct of the tigress sprang into my heart. I thirsted for Leon Vinton's blood. I cursed him.

I rushed upon him and fastened my little, white fingers in his throat and tried to kill the wretch who had betrayed me."

"A murderess!" exclaimed Sydney, recoiling.

"My hands were all too weak and frail to wreak justice upon the villain," Queenie went on, heedless of her sister's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. "He pushed me off, he swore at me, he strangled me with his strong, white fingers, threw me down upon the earth and spurned me with his foot--aye, trampled upon me! You saw the purple print of his boot-heel on my brow, Sydney. It is here yet," she said, pushing back the fluffy waves of golden hair from her brow and showing the livid scar.

"After that I remember nothing more for several hours," she went on, seeing that Sydney made no answer, "and he must have thought that he had killed me, for when I came to myself I was lying in a grave, a very shallow grave. I was covered with fresh earth and dead leaves, which the hard and steady rain had partly beaten aside, leaving my face exposed.

My murderer had not buried me deep enough. I sprang up out of the shallow hole in which he had laid me, my heart beating wildly with hatred and the thirst for revenge. All the hours of unconsciousness, all the rain and cold that had chilled my body had not cooled the fire of hate, the murderous instinct that possessed me. It seemed to me that nothing could wipe out my wrongs except Leon Vinton's blood."

"And this is the innocent little child that used to be my father's pet!"

exclaimed the listener, with a shudder.

"Yes," said Queenie, mournfully. "It seems strange, does it not? I, who only four years ago was the petted child of my father's heart--now I am dead to all that once knew and loved me. I have gone wrong. I have wandered into strange paths. I have buried peace and joy. I have broken my father's heart--all for the sin of one man--_man_ did I say? Nay, rather a devil in the guise of an angel of light!"