These words sealed her doom. The man sprang forward and caught her by the arm.

Something bright and slender gleamed an instant in his upraised hand and then was sheathed in her heart.

As her terrible scream of agony divided the shuddering air, he turned and fled from the scene of his crime.

But poor Sydney, the victim of her own misguided pa.s.sion lay there dying, with the deadly steel of the a.s.sa.s.sin sheathed in her jealous breast.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

That wild and piercing cry penetrated to many ears. The manager and the actress heard it where they stood conversing together, and though Queenie did not know that it was Sydney's voice, still she grew pale as death, and an indefinable fear crept coldly around her heart. The manager put her into a chair, for he saw that she could not stand.

"Stay here until I return," he said, "I will go and see what has happened."

He hurried round to the western door from which the sound had seemed to proceed.

A little knot of theater _attaches_ had preceded him. They were gathered round the prostrate form, and one had unwound the shrouding veil from her pale face and exposed it to the air and light. Her dark eyes were staring upward with a look of pain and horror in their starry depths, her face was ashen white, her lips quivered with faint, anguished moans, and her white, jeweled hands worked convulsively at the hilt of the dagger whose deadly blade was buried in her breast.

She looked up at the manager as he bent over her. A gleam of recognition came into her eyes.

"I am dying," she said, in a faint, gasping voice. "Let someone go into the theater and bring Captain Ernscliffe! Don't let anyone else know I am here! Queenie--I mean--Madame De Lisle--must not know! Let the play go on."

At that moment they brought a physician, summoned in haste from his seat in the theater. He knelt down and tried to draw the dagger from her breast, but desisted in a moment and shook his head ominously.

"Tell me the truth," she moaned. "How many minutes have I to live?"

The physician looked down at her with a grave pity in his kindly eyes.

"Only as long as the dagger remains in the wound," he answered, gently.

"When that is removed you will bleed to death in a minute."

She clasped both hands around the murderous steel as if to drive it deeper into her heart.

"Let it remain there, then," she gasped, "I have something to say before--I go hence!"

"Great Heaven! who has done this?" exclaimed a shocked voice.

They all looked around. It was Captain Ernscliffe who spoke. He knelt down by his wife and looked at the murderous dagger whose hilt she grasped, with eyes full of horror. The pain in her face softened. She put out one hand to him, and he clasped it in his own.

"Lawrence--I have been--cruelly murdered!" she moaned. "Let someone take my dying deposition."

The manager hurriedly produced pencil and paper.

"I went into Madame De Lisle's dressing-room," she began. "She had not come in, and I waited a little while, wishing to speak to her. Have you put that down?"

The manager replied in the affirmative.

"I saw a sealed letter lying on the table," she went on slowly and painfully; "I was jealous of Madame De Lisle, to whom it was addressed.

I thought my husband had written it. I opened it--I--read it."

The physician stopped her a minute to pour a few drops of something between her panting lips. Then she went on:

"It was only a line imploring her to meet him for a moment at the western door. No name was signed, but I was foolish enough to believe it was--my husband."

Her dark eyes lifted to his a moment with a mute appeal for forgiveness in their dusky depths. He pressed her hand and murmured:

"My poor Sydney!"

She lay still a moment while great drops of dew beaded her white brow, forced out by her terrible suffering.

"Can we do nothing to help her?" Captain Ernscliffe inquired anxiously, as he pillowed the dark head gently on his arm.

The physician shook his head gravely.

"No--nothing," Sydney answered him herself. "Only stay by me--till the last. Let me finish my story."

Captain Ernscliffe wiped the cold dews of death from her brow and she continued:

"I took Madame De Lisle's cloak and put it over my dress, I tied her veil about my head and face, and--and--went to the western door--myself!

Oh! G.o.d, this dagger, how it hurts my side!"

A few moans of terrible agony, then she went on, gaspingly:

"There was a tall, dark man outside the door--he said: 'Is it you, Queenie?' Then I saw my mistake--it was not my husband! But I--thought--I might learn--some fatal secret of hers--so I answered yes."

She shuddered from head to foot and a groan of mortal agony broke from her white lips.

"That falsehood sealed my doom! He sprang forward without a word, buried this dagger in my breast, and fled. It was Madame De Lisle's enemy. I know now. I received in my heart the stroke that was meant for hers."

She paused, then repressing a groan of pain, said feebly:

"Have you written it all down?"

"Yes, madam," the manager answered.

"Very well. I want you all to go away now--I want to be alone--with my husband. Don't let anyone else know I am here. The play must not be stopped. Let him be all mine a little longer!"

They turned away in wonder at her strange words, and left her lying there supported on her husband's arm--the beautiful woman with the diamonds in her dark hair, and the dagger's hilt above her heart, her white hand grasping it convulsively while she panted forth to him her strange story in the briefest words she could find, for her strength was ebbing fast, and her pain was becoming almost unendurable.

The manager went back to the actress and told her some plausible tale to allay her fears, and, as Sydney had wished, "the play went on." The foolish, fond old "Lear" ranted and raved his little hour, the cruel sisters of "Cordelia"--even poor "Cordelia" herself--all died their mimic deaths upon the stage--little dreaming that a tragedy in real life had been enacted so close and so near, and that poor, erring Sydney lay dead beneath the same roof where the vast throng of people wept and applauded at the superb rendition of Shakespeare's grand creation, "King Lear."

Yet so it was, for when Sydney had faltered out her mournful story, she looked up at Captain Ernscliffe and said with a quivering sigh:

"I have done now, Lawrence, and the pain is so great I cannot bear it any longer! Will you draw the dagger from my wound and let me die?"