"It does not seem right to return to you and be happy after--after that terrible tragedy," she objected.

"Queenie, it was not your fault nor mine. Surely you will not doom me to wretchedness for such a scruple as that. You made every sacrifice she asked of you while living, and she would not wish you to immolate our mutual happiness upon her tomb, now that she is dead."

Her own heart seconded his pleading so fully that she could not say him nay.

"I had meant to fulfill my resolve to retire into a convent for life,"

she said, "but I cannot keep down my heart's rebellious throbs. I will go with you, my husband."

So it chanced that two weeks later the strangely-reunited husband and wife stood on the deck of a steamer just leaving her moorings for America, and as Queenie turned away from her last look at old England's fading sh.o.r.e, she saw a gentleman hastening toward her--a gentleman so like her poor, dead father, that her heart leaped into her throat.

"Uncle Rob!" she cried, springing forward with her hands extended.

"My little niece, Queenie!" he exclaimed, taking the two little hands warmly into his own.

"This is my Uncle Robert Lyle," she said, presenting him to her husband.

"You see, Lawrence, _he_ does not disown me!"

The old gentleman looked down fondly into her sweet face.

"Oh! how could they disown you?" he exclaimed. "You have changed but little since I saw you last, and that change has only made you more lovely. I should have known you anywhere, though it is five years since I saw you last. I have heard your sad story, my dear, and I do not doubt its truth for an instant. I would have hastened to you at once, but I was ill and unable to travel."

She flashed a look of silent grat.i.tude upon him from her dusky eyes.

"And by the way," he said, "I owe you a scolding, little Queenie, for your failure to come abroad with your mother and sisters four years ago.

It was a great disappointment to me when they came without you. I did not enjoy the year we traveled together half so well as I should if my little pet had been with us."

Queenie stood silent, growing white and red by turn. Captain Ernscliffe stared from one to the other in blank astonishment.

"Surely, Mr. Lyle, I have misunderstood your meaning," he said, "Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

For a moment there was a blank silence. Robert Lyle stared silently at his niece's husband as though he doubted his sanity, and after a pause Captain Ernscliffe gravely repeated his words:

"Surely I have misunderstood your meaning sir. Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters."

"If she did I was certainly not aware of the fact," Mr. Lyle answered dryly, for he felt just a little nettled at the other's persistent contradiction.

Captain Ernscliffe looked around at his wife. He started and uttered a cry of alarm as he did so.

She had fallen back against the deck-rail, grasping it with both hands as if unable to stand alone; her cheeks and lips had blanched to an ashen hue, her eyes were wild and frightened.

"Queenie," he said, with an unconscious accent of sternness, "do I speak the truth or not?"

"Lawrence," she gasped, in a frightened voice, "I thought you knew--did not Sydney tell you? you said she had told you _all_!"

"I meant she had told me all that had transpired between you two in the last six weeks," he answered; "she did not refer to the past only to say that you had been resurrected from the grave by a disappointed suitor who hated you and kept you for weary months a prisoner. What more is there to tell, Queenie?" he inquired, in a voice rendered sharp by suddenly awakened suspicion that as yet took no tangible form.

Through the wild chaos of conflicting feelings that rushed over her she was conscious of a new feeling of tenderness and respect for poor, erring Sydney.

"She kept my terrible secret after all," she thought. "I believed she had told him everything, but in her desire to atone for her cruelty to me she kept back all that dreadful story, and died in the fond belief that my happiness was secure. She was n.o.bler than I thought. But, oh!

what an awful position I am placed in. I thought he knew all and had forgiven me. I meant to tell him everything before I came back to him, and would have done it but for that dreadful mistake. But now, oh, how can I?"

"Uncle Rob is right, Lawrence," she said, speaking with the calmness of despair. "I did not go to Europe with mamma. I meant to go, but at the very last my heart failed me and I begged to remain at home with papa.

She gave me my will, though very reluctantly, and I staid behind.

Afterward I went out of town on a visit."

"And yet," he said, with a heavy frown, "it was supposed--you allowed everyone to believe that you had been in Europe. Why was that?"

Great crimson waves of color swept into her cheeks at his half-angry words.

"Mamma permitted it," she stammered. "She was so angry and ashamed because I remained behind, and I was, too, after I saw how silly I had been. So when people spoke of it we simply never contradicted it. But you may have noticed that I would never speak of that continental tour--that I always turned the subject when anyone named it."

"Yes, I do remember that," he said. "But you should, at least, have told me, Queenie. It is very strange that you made a secret of such a trifle."

"I am very sorry," she answered, sadly; "I intended to tell you about it before--before I came back to you, but you said when I spoke of it that--that Sydney had told you _all_. I am very, very sorry."

Her eyes fell and rested on the blue waves of the ocean. Her head felt dizzy with the motion of the ship and the waves. It seemed to her as if she could scarcely stand. She seemed to be whirling round and round. Mr.

Lyle came forward and took her hand.

"My dear little Queenie," he said. "I am very sorry that my careless words have exposed your foolish, girlish little secret. But forgive me, my pet, and do not look so sad. Captain Ernscliffe, you must not be angry with my little girl. She was very willful and thoughtless in those days, but she has told you she was sorry and meant to tell you all about it."

One gentle, appealing look from her blue eyes did more to melt the heart of the angry husband than all her uncle's words.

His moody brow unbent; he came back to her side, and, as no one was looking, bent down and kissed away the pearly tears that trembled on her delicate cheek.

"There, I forgive you," he said; "but you must have no more secrets from me, little one."

She shivered slightly, but made no answer, and for this one time the threatened cloud in the sky of their happiness blew safely over, and all was peace between them. Yet the heart of the wife lay like lead in her breast.

Day and night she thought of the terrible secret she was jealously guarding from the eyes of her husband. But after a calm and lovely voyage, in which she had been most tenderly cared for by her uncle and her husband, she found herself once more in the beautiful city where she had been wooed and wedded.

"Uncle Robert, you will go home with us?" she said, as they were getting into the carriage on the wharf.

"Not now," he answered. "You know I told you that it was bad news regarding some of my property here that brought me over to America. I must go to my lawyer's at once and see what can be done. I will come to you in a day or two and see how you like housekeeping," he added, with a laugh.

"We shall certainly expect you," answered Captain Ernscliffe, heartily, as the carriage drove away to the beautiful mansion he had prepared for his bride years ago.

A cablegram from England to his housekeeper had instructed her to prepare the house for the reception of himself and wife.

Now, as they drew up before the grand marble steps, the front door opened as if by magic, and the cruel woman who had turned Queenie away homeless and friendless years before, appeared in the hall, richly clothed in fine black silk, and smirking and smiling upon her master and his beautiful bride as they came up the steps.

Queenie had told him of that cruel deed, and he looked sternly and coldly upon the woman as she came up to them.