Weakened and shocked by the terrible scene she had witnessed, Queenie
hid her face in her hands and fell back on her sofa. She lay there
trembling and agitated, and musing on the sudden end of the wicked Leon
Vinton.
Presently the door was pushed open and Mrs. Bowers entered in such high
excitement that she forgot to lock the door behind her.
"Oh!" she cried out, "did you hear the pistol shot? Leon Vinton is
dead!"
A sudden impulse decided Queenie to conceal her knowledge of the fact.
She sprang up in apparent wild excitement.
"Is it possible?" she cried. "I heard a pistol-shot a moment ago. Who
killed him?"
"I cannot tell you," said Mrs. Bowers. "I heard a shot, and ran to the
window just in time to see a man going out of the gate. He had a wide
hat on, and I couldn't make out his features."
"You shall never learn his name from me," thought Queenie to herself,
for her whole sympathies were with the wronged father of the poor,
betrayed Jennie.
"But there laid poor Mr. Vinton, stone dead, in the path," continued
Mrs. Bowers, excitedly. "Look out of the window there, and you can see
it all for yourself."
Queenie glanced out of the window and drew back with a shudder.
"Oh! it is horrible," she said. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to send for the coroner," said Mrs. Bowers. "That's the
proper thing to do. I must go right away and do it. Dear, dear, who was
that murderous man, I'd like to know? I'd have followed after him, and,
mayhap, caught him, only I was so flustrated I didn't know what to do
first. The mean, murderous villain!"
She bustled out so full of excitement that she forgot to lock her
prisoner's door.
Queenie started up full of joyful emotion.
"Now is my chance!" she exclaimed, "Leon Vinton is dead, and Mrs. Bowers
has no right to detain me. I will leave this dreadful place at once."
She opened the wardrobe and took out a long waterproof cloak and hood,
putting them on with trembling hands.
Then she exchanged her thin shoes for thick walking boots, and doubled a
dark-brown barege veil over her face.
Thus equipped she opened the door and ran down the steps to the hall
with her heart beating almost to suffocation.
In the doorway she paused. Mrs. Bowers was standing in the path by the
side of the dead man, and Queenie was afraid she would attempt to detain
her.
"I must make a run for it," she thought, and suiting the action to the
word, she flitted down the steps and ran at break-neck speed down the
path, past her living and dead persecutors, and sprang through the gate
and out into the road.
Mrs. Bowers heard the patter of her feet and the rustle of her garments
as she rushed past her, and looking up she recognized the girl, and
recollected instantly that she had forgotten to lock the door after her.
"Come back, you jade!" she screamed, "come back this instant!"
But the fugitive hurried on without looking back, and Mrs. Bowers in a
rage set out in a headlong pace after her.
But the good lady was not as young as she had once been, and she found
herself rather heavy on her feet. But panting and blowing she raced on
in the useless pursuit, until suddenly both her feet slipped from under
her, and she measured her length on the icy ground.
Muttering some words rather spirited in their meaning, and not often
heard on feminine lips, the wicked woman rose from the cold earth, and
shaking her fist after the fast retreating figure of her whilom
prisoner, began to retrace her steps to the house, rubbing sundry
bruises on her person as she went.
"The keen-witted little wretch!" she thought, "how quick she was to take
advantage of my momentary forgetfulness. But after all, Vinton is dead,
and what do I want to keep her for? I shall have to leave here, anyway.
Mayhap, it's better as it is."
Thus consoling herself, she returned to her watch over the dead man who
lay in a crimson pool of his life-blood across the snowy path, his eyes
glaring glassily, his handsome face set in the expression of fear and
horror that had settled on it when Mr. Thorn's terrible denunciation had
been thundered in his ears.
Meanwhile Queenie ran on in her headlong flight until her limbs began to
tremble beneath her. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she saw that
she had outrun her pursuer so far that she was no longer visible. She
slackened her pace then, and began to walk at a slower and more
reasonable gait.
"I may take my time now," she thought. "Mrs. Bowers is too old and slow
to overtake me. Besides she can have no interest in keeping me a
prisoner since Leon Vinton is dead. She will have enough to do to take
care of herself."
She pushed back her veil, showing a face so bright with hope and
happiness, that it was hardly recognizable for the pale and dejected
countenance that had looked from the window of the river cottage an hour
ago. Joy had fairly transfigured it.
She walked along unconscious of the keen, cold, wintery air in the rush
of happy thoughts that crowded over her.
She would go home to her father first. She would tell him everything--he
should break the news of her return to her husband.
"I cannot tell Lawrence the _whole_ truth," she said, shuddering. "I
would rather die than that he should know the terrible secret! He is so
proud and he told me once he would not marry a woman with the faintest
shadow of disgrace upon her name. I have deceived him, and I must never
let him know now, for I love him, and it would kill me to have him put
me away! I will tell him something plausible, though I will not tell a
direct lie if I can help."
Poor little Queenie!--once so innocent and transparent that her very
thoughts could be read in her eyes--her terrible misfortunes had taught
her strange subterfuges and deceit.
"I wonder if there will be any trouble about proving my identity," she
thought; "I have heard of such things, and it _will_ appear very strange
to them at first. Papa will take me for a ghost, as he did the night I
went and looked at him through the window when he thought I was
traveling in Europe. Poor Uncle Rob! I wonder if he was sorry much when
he heard I was dead."
She passed the farm-house where the Thorns lived, but the doors and
windows were both closed, and the only sign of life was a faint blue
smoke curling up from the chimney.
"I should like to stop and see what has become of that poor, willful
girl," she said to herself, "but I am so impatient I cannot spare the
time."
She walked on faster as she neared the great city. Her impatience
redoubled by the thought that every step brought her nearer to her loved
ones.
"I wonder if they will be glad to see me," she thought wistfully; "I
know papa _will_! Poor old darling, I could never doubt _him_! I do not
know about Georgie and mamma. _They_, perhaps, were relieved that I and
my terrible secret were buried together--they may be sorry to see me
resurrected. But of one thing I am certain. Sydney was glad when she
thought I was dead. She will hate me more than ever when I go back. But
I shall not trouble any of them, I shall have my husband--he is all I
want. He shall take me away from here to some other place where I can
forget all the terrible past in my new happiness."
All the while she was thinking she was walking quickly on, buoyed up by
the joyous anticipations. At last, foot-sore and weary, she entered the
great city and walked on until she stood in front of her father's
handsome residence.
Trembling with passionate joy, and with her heart beating so that she
could hear it in her ears, she went up the steps and rang the bell.
The door was opened to her by a strange man in livery instead of the
female servant who had formerly answered the bell.
Her first sensation of surprise and disappointment was succeeded by an
amusing thought.
"Mamma and Sydney are grander than ever. They have set up a
man-servant."
"Is Mr. Lyle at home?" she timidly inquired.
The man stared at her a moment in blank surprise; then getting his wits
together, replied respectfully:
"The Lyles don't live here now, miss."
"Where have they removed? Can you tell me?" she inquired, thinking that
perhaps her mother's and sister's extravagance had caused her father's
failure at last, and that they had taken a cheaper house.
"Mrs. Lyle and Miss Lyle, and Lady Valentine are all in Europe, ma'am,"
he answered, wondering what made the bright, pretty face turn so pale as
he gave her the information.
"And Mr. Lyle--you can tell me where I can find _him_?" she inquired,
eagerly.
The polite servant looked as if he thought the girl was out of her mind.
After a blank stare into her lovely, eager face, he said, surprisedly:
"Mr. Lyle--why, ma'am--_he's dead_, you know!"
If the man had struck her the cruelest blow in the face she could not
have recoiled more suddenly. She stepped backward so quickly, and with
such a wild, low cry of pain that she would have fallen down the steps
if the man had not thrown out his arm and caught her.
"Oh, ma'am, don't take it hard," he said, in a voice of respectful
sympathy. "Was he any relation of yours?"
She turned her beautiful face toward him with the whiteness of death
upon it.
"When did he die?" she asked, unheeding his question.
"The same night that his daughter died--you've heard of that, ma'am,
have you?" asked the man, who seemed rather of a gossiping turn.
"Yes, I've heard of that," she said, in a hollow voice totally unlike
her own.
"Well, Mr. Lyle, he died that same night of a broken heart, folk said.
She was his youngest daughter, and his favorite. They were both buried
the same day."
"Dead, dead!" she murmured.
"What did you say, ma'am?" asked the man, not hearing the low words.
"Nothing," she answered. "I thank you for your information," and
staggered down the steps into the street again.
"Dead, dead!" she kept moaning to herself as she staggered along the
street in white, tearless despair. "Papa is dead! and died of a broken
heart for me. Oh, I was not worth such devotion!"
Her mind was so full of this terrible blow that had fallen upon her that
she could think of nothing else, until suddenly she saw that the brief
winter twilight was settling fast over everything. Then a terror of the
night and cold took hold of her. She thought of her husband.
"They are all gone--papa and the rest," she murmured; "I have no one but
Lawrence now. I will go to him."
The thought seemed to invest him with added tenderness and dearness. She
hastened her footsteps, and before long she stood in front of the
splendid mansion where Captain Ernscliffe lived, and which he had
refurnished in splendid style for his fair young bride. The windows were
closed as if the house was deserted, but she went up the steps and rang
the bell. A woman servant answered the summons.
"Is Captain Ernscliffe at home?" asked Queenie, in a faint and trembling
voice.