"You will not answer me," pa.s.sionately cried her husband. "Very well. I will wring the truth from that insolent villain! I will know why he dared bow and speak to _my_ wife. Drive on home, madam; I will follow the villain and make him retract the insult!"

He sprang from the moving phaeton at the imminent risk of his neck, and followed Leon Vinton with a quick stride down the road.

Like one in a fearful dream, Queenie gathered the reins in her trembling hands and drove recklessly homeward through the beautiful sunshine.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

The angry husband followed Leon Vinton's leisurely steps, and quickly overtook him.

Placing one hand on the villain's shoulder with a grasp like steel, Captain Ernscliffe whirled him round face to face.

A malevolent sneer curved the lips of the handsome scoundrel as he recognized his a.s.sailant. He tried to shake himself free from that painfully tight grasp, but it was useless. He seemed to be held in a vise.

"Unhand me, sir," he said, in a voice of angry expostulation.

"Villain!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, in a low, deep voice of concentrated pa.s.sion. "How dared you speak to my wife? Apologize immediately for the insult."

Leon Vinton's face a.s.sumed a blank stare of astonishment.

"Does _she_ consider it an insult to be recognized by an old friend?" he inquired, in a voice of mocking courtesy.

Captain Ernscliffe's brow grew as dark as night. He shook the sneering scoundrel by the shoulder as though he would have shaken the life out of him.

"How dare you claim her as an old friend?" he thundered. "You whose acquaintance is a disgrace to any woman. You, the most notorious and unprincipled villain in the city. Retract those words before I kill you."

"Come, come," answered Vinton, coolly and maliciously, "I am but speaking the truth. As for killing, let me remind you that two can play at that game. I have a pistol in my pocket, and I believe I am a better shot than you are. But your wife, as you call her, is not worthy the shedding of an honest man's blood! I will keep my weapon in its place, and all I ask you is to confront me with the lady whose honor you are so zealously defending. I think she will not dare to deny that once she claimed me as her _dearest_ friend!"

Captain Ernscliffe drew back his hand to strike him in the face, but something in his enemy's words and looks seemed to stagger him. He hoa.r.s.ely exclaimed:

"I will not pollute the pure air she breathes with your foul presence.

As for you, _liar_, beware how you a.s.sert things that you cannot prove."

"Hard words break no bones," laughed Leon Vinton, seeming to take downright pleasure in tormenting the other. "I'm determined not to be angry with you, for I do not think the lady we are discussing is worth the trouble. I can prove all that I a.s.sert, and more besides."

"How? How?" exclaimed Ernscliffe, in sheer amaze at his unparalleled effrontery.

"I _could_ prove it by the lady herself, but since you refuse to admit me to her presence, come with me to my home, a few miles from the city, and my housekeeper shall show you the elegant rooms Mrs. Ernscliffe occupied when she was my dear friend and guest for a year."

The cool, insolent a.s.sertion fell on Captain Ernscliffe's ears like a thunderbolt. He staggered back and stared at the calm, smiling villain in wonder mingled with indefinable dread.

"My G.o.d!" he muttered, half to himself, "you would not make such an a.s.sertion unless you could prove it."

"I can prove every a.s.sertion I have made," was the confident reply.

"Queenie Lyle ran away with me the day her mother and sisters went to Europe. She lived with me nearly a year. I can prove this, remember."

"You married her!" gasped his adversary, his eyes starting, his face as white as death.

Leon Vinton looked at that pale, anguish-stricken face, and laughed aloud, the mocking laugh of a fiend.

"Married her?" he asked, sneeringly. "Oh, no, I am not one of the marrying kind. She knew that, but she loved me, and was content to live with me on my own terms."

There was a blank silence. Captain Ernscliffe dimly felt that the agony he was enduring was commensurate with the pains of h.e.l.l.

Leon Vinton enjoyed his misery to the utmost.

"We lived together a year," he went on, after a moment. "At first we were very loving and very happy, but well--you know how such cases always terminate--we wearied of each other. She was a spit-fire and a termagant. She pushed me into the river and tried to drown me. She thought she had succeeded, and ran away home. Her family kept her fatal secret, and married her off to you."

"This is horrible if true!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the listener.

"Come," said Leon Vinton, "go home with me. My carriage is outside the gate. I merely chose to saunter in the park. You shall see her letters to me, you shall hear what my housekeeper knows about the matter."

"I will go with you," said Captain Ernscliffe, rousing himself as from a painful dream. "But if I find that you have lied to me, Vinton, I will kill you!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

"My poor Queenie, my poor child, you erred greatly in the deception you practiced in the beginning. It was wrong to desert your home and family as you did, but I cannot upbraid you now. Your punishment has been bitter enough. May G.o.d help you, my little one!" said Robert Lyle, smoothing the golden head that lay upon his knee with a gentle, fatherly caress.

Queenie had come back from that ride which had begun so happily and found her Uncle Robert waiting for her in the drawing-room. He had declined her invitation to make his home with her, and taken quarters at a hotel, but there were very few days when he failed to visit her.

To-day when she came staggering in, looking so fearfully white and death-stricken, he saw at once that some fearful thing had happened to her, and started up in alarm.

"Queenie, my dear, what is it? Are you ill?" he exclaimed, going to her, and taking her cold, nerveless hand in his.

She looked up at him, and Robert Lyle never forgot the tearless despair, the utter agony of her white face and wild, blue eyes. They haunted his dreams for many nights after. Yet she tried to smile, and the smile was sadder than tears.

"I--I--yes, I believe I am ill," she said, dropping down into a great arm-chair. "I will sit here and rest, Uncle Rob! I shall be better presently."

"Let me get you some wine," he said. "It will revive you."

"No, no, I will not have anything!" she said. "Nothing could help me."

The tone made his heart ache, it was so hopeless.

He bent over her and removed her hat and gloves as deftly and tenderly as a woman could have done.

His anxious looks, his tender solicitude made her think of her father.

The tender recollection broke down the barriers of stony calm she was trying to maintain. Bowing her face on her hands she wept and sobbed aloud.

Mr. Lyle was greatly shocked and distressed at her vehement exhibition of grief. He brought a chair, and sitting down beside her, put his kindly old arm about her heaving shoulders.