Mrs. Bowers, seeing that her mistress had revived, lighted a brilliant
jet of gas and went out. Queenie did not even notice her departure so
intently was her gaze fixed on the man at the window, who stood there
calm, _nonchalant_, even smiling, standing the scathing fire of her
beautiful eyes like a soldier.
"So," she said, at last, and there was surprise and regret both
commingled in her tone, "so you are not _dead_!"
"No thanks to you, little tigress," he answered, with a fierce, yellow
light flaring into his black eyes. "You did your best to further that
end."
"I might have forseen how vain was the endeavor," she retorted, in
passionate anger, and quoted an old saying: "They cannot be drowned who
are born to be _hung_."
He laughed in mockery at the bitter insinuation, but years after, when
the light of Heaven shone on him through the grated bars of a prison
cell, and he heard outside the horrible sound of the hammers driving the
nails into his scaffold, he remembered the words with wonder, and
thought she must have been gifted with "second-sight," as the Scotch
called the gift of prophecy.
"Now I know it was you that sent me the flowers," she said. "Why did you
do it? They were poisoned!"
"No, only drugged! It was a subtle drug I bought in the east long ago--a
drug warranted to produce a long and sudden sleep perfectly resembling
death."
"Again I ask you, why did you do it?" she said, and her voice was full
of wonder.
"I wanted to get you into my power once more. That was the safest plan
to effect it. I let them bury you, and then I resurrected you."
"What did you want of me? You wearied of me before. Why not have let me
go in peace?"
She tried to speak calmly, but her voice trembled with some inward
resentment, and there was a passion of hatred in her dusky eyes that
might have killed him where he stood. A rage as deadly as hers leaped up
in his eyes in answer.
"Because I _hate_ you!" he said, wickedly.
"We always hate those whom we have wronged," she replied, and her whole
form trembled with her passionate indignation.
"I hate you because of that cowardly blow in the dark," he said angrily.
"But for that I might have let you go free, though I pitied Captain
Ernscliffe for being deceived by you."
"Villain!" she exclaimed, "I have not deceived him!"
"You have not?" he sneered. "Did you not withhold from him the story of
that year which he supposed you to have spent in Europe? Did you not
allow him to think you an innocent woman?"
She sprang to her feet and stood facing him, her dark-blue eyes
dilating, her cheeks flushing, her small hands clenched tightly in her
breathless anger. An artist's pencil might have handed his name down to
immortal fame could he have put on canvas that striking scene--the
beautiful room, and the man in his splendid, insolent, satanic beauty,
standing before that lovely incarnation of pride and passion, with her
glorious veil of golden hair falling loosely about her superb form, and
the shining folds of her costly bridal robe sweeping far behind her on
the rich velvet carpet.
"I _am_ an innocent woman," she said, proudly, and the light shone on
her lifted face and the earnest fire in her eyes. "I _am_ an innocent
woman! I have done no wrong, though I am a betrayed, unhappy, and
insulted victim! I have been sinned against, but I have not sinned!"
He laughed, cruelly, mockingly, insultingly.
"Why do you laugh?" she said. "_You_ know that it is true. You deceived
me and betrayed me, but was I to blame? I carried the marriage
certificate in my breast as a precious thing! I thought it was true as
Heaven, I thought I was pure as the snow! And I _am_! How could _your_
sin touch me?"
Again he laughed mockingly.
"Your mind is strangely warped," he said. "But if you were innocent in
the one thing, how about the blow in the dark? Was there no sin in
that?"
"I deny that there was sin!" she said, with passionate defiance in her
look and tone. "It was simple justice--'a blow for a blow.' You drove me
mad with the horror and cruelty of all I learned! It seemed to me that I
was given back from the grave to rid the world of a monster!"
"You failed," he said, derisively.
"Yes, to my sorrow," she answered. "But, ah! Leon Vinton, surely a day
of reckoning will come to you. The justice of God will not always sleep.
I was not permitted to take your punishment out of His hands who has
said 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay.' It will come, it will come!"
"You prate of God's vengeance," he said, sneeringly, "but it suits you
to forget that the preachers call him also a God of mercy, and love, and
forgiveness!"
"Forgiveness!" she echoed, wildly. "Neither God nor man could forgive
you, Leon Vinton! You have committed an unpardonable sin. You have
broken my heart, you have tried to kill my soul, you murdered me! Can I
ever forgive _this_?"
She swept back the golden waves of hair that shaded her white brow and
showed him the livid scar of a deep wound beneath them.
"It is your hellish work!" she said. "You ground your cruel boot-heel
into the brow your false lips had kissed a thousand times; you strangled
my life out with the hands that had caressed me uncounted times! Oh, my
God, can I ever forgive or forget my wrongs?"
"I will kill you the next time more surely, curse you!" he hissed, in
ungovernable rage, and striding forward, he caught her white arm rudely,
almost crushing it in his iron grasp. "Cease, girl, not another word!"
She wrenched herself out of his grasp and answered, defiantly:
"Let me go, then, if you cannot bear my reproaches. Let me return to my
husband."
A sneer curled his thin lips as she spoke with an unconscious accent of
tenderness on the words "my husband."
"Your husband, as you call him, shall never know that you are not
mouldering yonder in Rose Hill Cemetery. You shall never look upon his
face again, Queenie Lyle."
"Mrs. Ernscliffe, if you please," she said, drawing her graceful form
erect with a defiant dignity.
"Mrs. Ernscliffe, then, if it pleases you better," he answered,
mockingly. "Though why you care for the name I do not know. You do not
love the man."
"I _do_ love him," she answered, firmly, her fair head slightly drooped,
and a burning blush crimsoning her cheeks.
"Since when?" he queried, sneeringly. "You did not love him when he
asked you to marry him. I heard you tell him so."
"You heard me!" she exclaimed, in surprise.
"Yes, I was a witness to that moonlight wooing. I have seldom lost sight
of you since you returned to your father's house, and resumed the _role_
of innocent maidenhood."
"A spy!" she said, scornfully.
"Yes, if you put it so," he answered, coolly. "We need not be particular
about terms."
She looked at him as if he were something wonderful. The effrontery of
his wickedness almost paralyzed her. She clasped her hands and lifted
her blue eyes.
"Oh, just Heaven," she said, "why does thy vengeance tarry in smiting
this monster?"
"Permit me to commend your dramatic ability," he said, with a
mock-courtly bow. "Your tones and gestures would make your fortune on
the tragic stage."
She sank into a chair and dropped her face into her hands. She was very
weary and physically exhausted, having eaten nothing since the day of
her supposed death, but she felt no hunger now, though she was faint and
thirsty.
"Your tirade appears to be over," he remarked, with his evil sneer.
She looked up.
"Tell me one thing," she said, trying to speak calmly. "What do you want
of me? Why did you care to get me back, when we both hate each other?"
The glare of that hatred of which she spoke flamed luridly up in his
dark eyes.
"That is the very reason that I brought you back," he answered; "because
I hated you, and because I intended to make your life one long,
insufferable weariness to you until you die."
Again she looked at him with wonder. Her gentler nature could not fathom
the cruel vindictiveness of his.
"Oh, Leon," she gasped, "you would not be so cruel? Think of all that I
have suffered at your hands already. Let me go, I beg you! I am so
young, I may make something of my life yet, if I can only go back to the
good, true man I have already learned to love and honor."
The words seemed to madden him.
"Never!" he shouted, hoarsely, with a terrible oath. "Never! I hate
Lawrence Ernscliffe--I have an old grudge against him. I will have my
revenge on you both. You shall stay here, locked in these four walls, a
hated prisoner, as long as you live. Mrs. Bowers shall be your jailer,
and here you shall dwell, eating your heart out in abject wretchedness
and misery unutterable. Do you like the picture? _Au revoir, Mrs.
Ernscliffe!_"