Flowers rained upon her. The costliest gifts of jewels and rare _bric-a-brac_ were sent to her from such unknown sources that she could neither refuse nor send them back as she would otherwise have done.

There was always a great throng of people waiting to see her step into the carriage every night.

But in all that throng La Reine Blanche never saw but one face. There was one man who always held the same position beside her carriage door.

He never spoke to her, he never touched her, but stood there patiently every night, thrilled to the depths of his soul if the hem of her perfumed robe but brushed him in pa.s.sing.

Some weird fascination utterly beyond her power of resistance always impelled her to meet his glance, and the fire in his beautiful, dark eyes; the pa.s.sionate love, the terrible pain, the bitter reproach were killing her slowly but surely.

And Lawrence Ernscliffe was going mad. He had no life, no thought, no hope outside the beautiful woman whom he had claimed for his wife, and who had so coldly denied him.

He haunted her like her own shadow. Go where she would she saw him, look where she would she met only the eyes of the man she loved and to whom she belonged by the dearest tie on earth.

He forgot Sydney utterly, or if he ever remembered her it was only with scorn. Her terrible sin had placed her beyond the pale of his tenderness forever. No reasoning, no sophistry could have convinced him that the beautiful actress was not his own wife whom he had lost in the very moment that made her his bride.

He could not have explained himself. He did not understand at all the mysterious chance which had brought it about, yet he knew in his own heart that the woman whom he had seen in her coffin once had been restored to life again, and that the only bar to their happiness now was Sydney, whom he had married through a simple impulse of pity.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

It was the last night of Madame De Lisle's engagement. She would make her final appearance before the world in the beautiful tragedy of "King Lear." To-morrow she would retire to the conventional cloister forever.

The theater was so densely packed that there was scarcely standing-room on this her farewell night.

Lord Valentine and his wife and mother-in-law were in his box from which they had scarcely missed a night of the three weeks.

Besides Mrs. Lyle's pa.s.sionate love of the drama there was a subtle fascination in Madame De Lisle's strange resemblance to her youngest daughter that impelled her thither every night to gaze upon her with eyes that never wearied in looking on her loveliness. She could not have told why it was, but she was vaguely conscious of a troubled tenderness about her heart whenever she looked at the fair young creature and heard the talk of her going into a convent.

"She makes me think of poor Queenie," she whispered to Georgina that night. "I cannot help feeling sorry for her, she is so like what she was."

"The resemblance is startling, indeed," Lady Valentine whispered back, "but don't let Sydney hear you, mamma. She does not like to hear about it."

Sydney made no sign, but she knew very well what they were talking of.

She came to the theater every night, though she hated to be there.

Jealousy drove her to look on her rival's face every night that she might also watch her husband.

Poor Sydney! She sat there pale and haggard, and wretched in her white satin and diamonds, looking with jealous, suspicious eyes at the beautiful and gentle "Cordelia," hating her for the fairness that Lawrence Ernscliffe loved.

Queenie's sacrifice, made at so costly a price to herself, had utterly failed to purchase her sister's happiness.

Captain Ernscliffe had a seat in another part of the house where Sydney could watch his every movement. Her heart swelled with bitter pain and pa.s.sionate anger as she looked at him. He did not even seem to know that she was there. His dark, melancholy eyes never once moved from the graceful form of the unhappy "Cordelia" as she acted her part on the stage. When the curtain fell he dropped his eyes and never looked up again until his beautiful idol reappeared.

La Reine Blanche had never acted better. She gave her whole attention to her part. She did not seem to see that one pair of eyes had watched her with such wild entreaty and pa.s.sionate love in their beautiful depths.

There was one box at which she never looked but once, and it was when, in obedience to her husband's command, "Bid farewell to your sisters,"

she slowly repeated:

"'Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are; And, like a sister, am most loth to call Your faults as they are named. Love well our father: To your professed bosoms I commit him; But yet, alas! stood I within his grace, I would prefer him to a better place.

So farewell to you both.'"

Everyone in the house saw her brilliant eyes fixed on Lord Valentine's box as she repeated those words, but perhaps no one but the actress herself saw that Sydney's eyes drooped in shame and confusion, while a scarlet blush stained her cheek.

Ah, she, and no other, comprehended the bitter meaning of Queenie's words as she fixed her blue eyes mournfully on the sister who had wronged her so deeply.

"This is her last night," Sydney murmured to herself, "but is it true that she will go into a convent? I must see her, I must know the truth for certain. I will go round to her dressing-room and ask her."

When the act was over she complained of sickness and asked Lord Valentine to take her down to the carriage.

Lord Valentine complied and left her sitting in the carriage, the coachman mounting to his box.

But in a moment, before the two prancing horses had started, Sydney slipped out of the carriage so noiselessly that the man drove on never dreaming but that she was shut up within.

Then she ran round breathlessly to the private entrance of the theater.

She told the man who kept the door that she had an engagement with Madame De Lisle and desired him to show her to that lady's dressing-room.

Two minutes later she found herself alone in the small apartment where the actress changed her costumes for the different acts and scenes.

Queenie had not yet come in. The manager had detained her a few minutes and Sydney had time to draw breath and look about her while she waited for her sister.

There was not much to see. The room was dingy and sparely furnished, as the dressing-room of a theater is apt to be.

Costumes were laid over the backs of chairs, and the maid who should have been guarding them was "off duty," gossiping, no doubt, with some humble _attache_ of the place. There was little to interest one, and Sydney grew impatient.

Suddenly she saw a letter lying carelessly on the toilet table. She took it up and looked at it.

It was addressed to Madame De Lisle, and had never been unsealed.

"It has been left here during the first act, and Queenie has never seen it," she said to herself. "It looks like my husband's writing. I will see what he has to say to her."

Recklessly, desperately, she tore it open, and drew out the sheet of note paper.

"MY DARLING," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. I _must_ see you a moment."

No name was signed to the mysterious note, but Sydney felt sure that it was her husband's writing.

"Queenie has deceived me," she said to herself, angrily. "She is in collusion with Lawrence. I might have known she would play me false!"

She looked about her hurriedly. A long, black silk circular, lined with fur, hung over a chair. She put it on over her white dress, caught up a thick veil, winding it about her head and face, and hurried out to the retired western door.

Outside in the darkness stood a tall, m.u.f.fled form.

"Queenie, is it you?" he said in unfamiliar tones.

In a moment she realized her mistake. It was not her husband, but in the hope of unearthing some fatal mystery, she said softly:

"Yes, it is Queenie."