"Tell your old uncle what grieves you, pet," he said. "Perhaps I can help to set it right."

And after a little more pa.s.sionate weeping she answered, without looking up:

"It is one of those troubles that nothing can set right, Uncle Rob, but I will tell you the truth, for perhaps you may hear it from other lips than mine soon."

She stole one hand into his and nestled her bright head against his shoulder.

"Promise not to hate me, Uncle Rob," she whispered through her tears. "I have only you now. Father, mother, sisters, husband--I have lost them all. In all the wide world I have but you to love me!"

"My dear, you talk wildly," he said, in wonder. "It is true that your mother and sister have shown hearts harder than the nether mill-stone to you, but you have the n.o.blest and most loving husband in the world!"

"He will not love me any longer when he has heard all that I am going to tell you, Uncle Rob," she murmured through her choking sobs.

And then she told him the shameful story of that missing year of her life as she had told it to Sydney a few months before; but it was not so hard to tell now, for instead of her sister's scornful looks and cruel words, she had a listener as tender and pitying as her own father had been--a listener whose tears fell more than once on the golden head bowed meekly on his shoulder.

And when it all had been told and the weary head had slipped down to his knee, he had no reproaches for the suffering young heart that had already been so cruelly punished. He could only repeat:

"My poor little one, my poor little one, may G.o.d help you!"

"And you'll not desert me, Uncle Rob--not even if--if _he_ does?" she murmured.

"No, never," he answered, fondly. "I'll stand by you, Queenie, if all the world forsakes you. You never meant to do wrong, I know that, and I will not scorn you because a devil in human shape has made desolate the fair young life that opened with such sweet promise. If Lawrence deserts you, we will go away together--you and I, pet--and wander around the world, restless and lonely, and yet not altogether desolate, for we shall still have each other for comfort and support."

"But, oh, Uncle Rob, I love him so, I love him so. How can I give him up now, when I have been so happy with him? It is more than I could bear.

He had as well plunge a knife into my heart and lay me dead before him as to leave me now," cried the wretched young wife, giving way to a very abandonment of grief.

Uncle Rob could only say:

"My poor Queenie, my poor darling, let us hope for the best!"

He did not know how to comfort her, for he could not tell what course Captain Ernscliffe would pursue after hearing Leon Vinton's garbled version of Queenie's early error. He hoped for the best; but he feared the worst.

He could not bear to leave her in her sorrow, so he remained with her until the luncheon hour, hoping that Captain Ernscliffe might return while he--her uncle--was present, that he might defend her from his possible reproaches. But the hours pa.s.sed slowly by, and dinner was announced, yet he failed to come.

They made no pretence at eating--these two sorrowing ones. They remained in the drawing-room alone, talking but little, and both on the alert for Captain Ernscliffe's coming. But the lovely, starry night had fallen, and the lamps were lighted before a strange step ran up the marble steps, and a letter was handed to Queenie.

"It is from Lawrence," she said, tearing it open with a sinking heart.

"MADAM," her husband wrote, "I have heard the whole disgraceful story of the year you were supposed to have been absent in Europe from the lips of Leon Vinton and his housekeeper. I need not ask you if he told the truth. Your looks when you met him to-day were sufficient corroboration of his story. No wonder you looked so ghastly at the reappearance of the man you thought you had murdered. Oh, G.o.d! to think of it. You whom I have loved so madly, whom I thought so true and pure--you, a sinner, with a soul as black and unrepentant as a fiend in Hades!

"To-morrow I shall inst.i.tute proceedings for a divorce. I can no longer lend the shelter of my name to one who has so basely deceived and betrayed me!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

The letter dropped from Queenie's shaking hand, and she fell heavily into a seat, her slender form trembling with great, tearless emotion.

"Oh, G.o.d!" she moaned, "it is indeed a bitter cup that is pressed to my lips! A disowned daughter and sister, and a divorced wife!"

"What does he say, Queenie?" inquired her uncle, pausing in his weary march up and down the room.

She silently pointed to the letter that lay upon the carpet, where it had fallen from her hands.

He picked it up and read it, then turned his kindly blue eyes upon her with an expression of pity and distress.

"The scoundrel Vinton must indeed have traduced and maligned you to have elicited such a scathing letter from your devoted husband. Let me go and bring Lawrence to you, Queenie, that you may vindicate yourself."

But she shook her head sorrowfully yet firmly.

"No Uncle Rob; he asks for no defense from me; he tacitly accepts all that Vinton has told him as the truth. He will hear nothing from you or me. There is nothing left me but to hide myself somewhere in the great cruel world and die," she said, with inexpressible bitterness.

"Queenie, let me entreat you not to throw away your happiness thus. Let me explain everything to Lawrence as you have told it to me. He could not be hard upon you then. He would see how cruelly you had been wronged, and how much you had suffered for it. If he loves you as much as he has seemed to do he could not but forgive you."

She took the letter from his hand and glanced over its brief contents again.

"No, no, his love must have been dead indeed before he could write to me so cruelly as this. Let him think what he will, Uncle Rob. The best is bad enough; so why should I try to vindicate myself? He shall have his freedom since he wants it so much."

"But, my dear, surely you will not permit the divorce without contesting it? Think what a terrible thing it would be to remain silent in such a case. A divorced woman is always a disgraced woman in the eyes of the world, no matter how unjustly the verdict was given against her. It must not be permitted. We must engage a lawyer to defend your case. I do not believe that your husband could obtain a divorce from any court in the land if the truth of the matter were rightly known."

"Do you think that I would belong to him and bear his name against his will?" she exclaimed, with all the pa.s.sion and fire of tone and gesture that had won her fame and fortune on the tragic stage. "No, never, _never_! I will not raise my hand to stay the divorce. I will be silent, whatever they lay to my charge. His quick unkindness, his readiness to believe evil against me, has been the bitterest of all to bear, but I will not speak one word to let him know it. My heart shall break in silence!"

He gave up the point, seeing that it was utterly useless to urge it upon her.

"Since you are determined to sacrifice yourself thus on the altar of Vinton's fiendish revenge," he said, "tell me what I can do for you, my poor child. You will not wish to remain at Ernscliffe's house, of course?"

"Of course not," she answered.

Then after a moment's thought, she said, abruptly:

"Why, Uncle Rob, I shall have to go upon the stage again. I had forgotten until this moment that I am poor, that I have nothing at all to live upon. When I gave up my theatrical career and returned to my husband, I deeded away, with his consent, all my earnings on the stage to build a free church for the poor of London."

"You shall never go upon the stage again with my consent," he answered.

"I have enough for us both to live in luxury all our lives. It is true I have lost a few thousands recently by the failure of a bank, but that is a mere nothing. I am a very wealthy man yet. You shall be my dear and honored daughter so long as I live, Queenie, and my heiress when I die."

She thanked him with a silent, eloquent glance.

"And now," he continued, "it will not do for you to remain in Ernscliffe's house any longer than to-morrow. Let your maid pack your trunks for you to-night, and to-morrow I will take you away to some health resort--the mountains or the seash.o.r.e--anywhere you like, so that I get you out of this city."

"And I shall never see my husband again," she said, clasping her hands with a gesture of despair. "Oh, how fleeting and evanescent was my dream of happiness! How can I live without him now, when I have been so happy with him?"

Uncle Robert took her tenderly in his arms, and kissed her white forehead.

"It is hard, dear," he said, "but we learn after awhile to do without the things that have been dearest to us on earth. I lost the darling of my heart many years ago. It was very hard to bear at first, but after awhile I learned patience and resignation."

"You have loved and lost?" she said, looking at him in great surprise.