Sydney could not wait until the hour for luncheon next day. She was
terribly afraid that Captain Ernscliffe might by some means secure a
meeting with La Reine Blanche, and that the fatal truth might be
revealed, to the utter destruction of the frail superstructure of her
own happiness.
He had not been back to the house since he had left her to return to the
theater the night before, and the most dreadful fancies continually
darted through her mind.
It was impossible for her to wait until the hour her sister had
specified. As early as ten o'clock she entered the hotel and was shown
into the parlor of the great actress.
Queenie was at home. She had just returned from an early rehearsal at
the theater, and lay resting on a low divan of cushioned blue satin.
She wore a trained dress of black velvet and satin, with creamy-hued
laces at the wrists, and a fichu of the rarest old lace fastened at her
throat by a brooch of dead gold. A single cluster of white hyacinth was
fastened in with the lace, and filled the room with its subtle,
delicious fragrance.
Her abundant, golden hair was braided into a coronet and confined with a
comb of pearl. In spite of an almost marble pallor, and a look of
terrible suffering, she appeared as lovely as Sydney had ever seen her.
At the entrance of her rival she lifted her head, and with a faint sigh
motioned her to a seat near her.
"You come early," she said.
"I could not wait," Sydney answered. "I was too impatient. You have not
spoken with--with----"
"_Our_ husband!" said the actress, filling up the embarrassed pause with
a faint and mirthless laugh. "No, Sydney, I have not spoken with him. I
saw him on the pavement this morning when I left the theater, but I drew
down my veil and looked another way."
The look of dread in Sydney's dark eyes softened into relief.
"Oh, Queenie," she exclaimed, "if you only _would_ go away from here
without speaking to him! Think of the consequences that would follow
such a revelation--the nine days' wonder over you, the shame, the
despair, the utter desolation for me! Oh, Queenie, if you would but go
away with your secret untold, and leave my husband."
Queenie's red lips curled scornfully.
"Ah! Sydney," she said, "you were always selfish. You think only of
yourself. You would sacrifice my happiness to your own."
"_Your_ happiness, Queenie? Ah! what happiness could it give you to be
re-united to Lawrence Ernscliffe? You never professed to love him!"
A crimson blush rose into Queenie's cheek. She put up her small hand to
hide it; but when it fell to her side again the warm color had not
faded. It seemed but to burn the brighter as she said in a low and
earnest voice:
"No, Sydney, I never professed to love him. I do not think I loved him
when I promised to marry him. And yet, in the few weeks that intervened
before he led me to the altar, I learned to love him with as deep and
fond a love as the most exacting heart could have asked for. Time,
silence and suffering have but deepened and intensified that passion,
until it has become like the very pulse of my heart. He is the one dear
thing to me, yet you ask me to give him to you."
"You have your art--your profession. Surely you love that," said Sydney,
anxiously.
"It has been but the means to an end," replied Queenie. "It has never
filled but half my heart. The other half has never been at rest. It has
always been seeking its lost mate. How could I give him up now that I
have found him?"
"You mean to take him from me, then?" said Sydney, with a dangerous
gleam of hatred firing into her black eyes.
La Reine Blanche did not answer. The blush had faded from her cheeks,
and left them deathly pale.
Sydney could read nothing of her thoughts in the blue eyes, half veiled
by the sweeping lashes. She moved restlessly in her chair.
"You promised to tell me your story," she said, coldly and sharply. "I
am here to listen."
The faded color rushed back in crimson waves to Queenie's face. She
looked up into the proud, scornful features of her sister.
"I am going to keep my word," she said, "and yet, Sydney, will you
believe me when I tell you that I would rather tell my story to any
other person on earth than you? Yes, I think I could sooner tell
Lawrence Ernscliffe himself. I do not believe that anyone else would
judge me as harshly and unpityingly as you will do--not even a
stranger."
She was silent a moment, and lay still, shading her face with one small,
white hand that sparkled with diamonds; then, as Sydney made no answer,
she said, with a visible effort:
"Where shall I begin, Sydney?"
"At the beginning," answered Sydney, curtly.
"I must go back four years, then," said Queenie. "Sydney, do you
remember the day that I sold my painted fan that Uncle Robert gave me to
buy a tarleton dress to wear to Mrs. Kirk's grand ball?"
"Yes, I remember."
"_That_ was the beginning, Sydney. I saw a gentleman in the store where
I sold my fan--the handsomest man I ever saw in my life--tall, dark,
elegant. He looked me straight in the face as I left the store, and my
foolish heart fluttered into my mouth. You know I was very young and
romantic at that time--both things of which I cannot accuse myself now,"
added Queenie, thinking sagely that her present twenty-one years made
her quite elderly.
"Yes," said Sydney, curtly.
"The man bought my fan as soon as I left the store; then he followed me.
I did not know these things then, but I learned them afterward. Perhaps
you remember that 'an unknown admirer' sent the fan back to me?"
"Yes," said Sydney, curtly.
"You remember also, Sydney, that every day an elegant bouquet, formed of
the choicest hot-house flowers, came to me from the same unknown
source?"
Sydney nodded an affirmative answer.
"I was very young and foolish in those days," said Queenie, with a sigh.
"I do not suppose that any girl ever lived more silly and romantic than
I was. I brooded day and night over the mysterious donor of the fan and
flowers. All my secret thoughts were of him. I felt quite sure in my own
mind that the handsome man who had looked at me so admiringly in the
fancy store was my unknown admirer. I expected daily to meet him
somewhere in the haunts of the gay society in which I had become
somewhat of a belle. You remember, Sydney?"
Sydney did not answer, and she went on, slowly:
"I did not meet him in society; but after a time we met in a public
park. I was walking there alone. I slipped and fell, spraining my ankle
severely. A gentleman rushed to my assistance. It was the handsome
stranger of whom I had dreamed so much that I had become perfectly
infatuated with him. He placed me in a carriage and took me home. You
were all out that day, and I never told of that event in my life through
some undefined fear of censure. That was where my fault began--in that
first act of secrecy."
She paused a moment, and a heart-wrung sigh drifted over her pale and
quivering lips.
Sydney sat perfectly still, regarding her with stern, unpitying eyes, as
though they were strangers instead of sisters whom the same mother had
nursed on her breast.
"We met again and again," said Queenie, slowly. "Always by accident, it
seemed at first, Sydney, and I am quite sure it _was_ accident on my
part; but I know now that it was by design on the part of Mr. Vinton. He
wooed me in the most romantic fashion. Flowers and poetry were the
vehicles through which he conveyed his sentiments, until at last grown
bolder, he openly avowed his love for me."
"You must have been very forward to have encouraged him to a declaration
so soon," said Sydney, with a sneer.
"Sydney, I declare to you I was not. Oh! if you knew Leon Vinton as I do
now, you would know that I was not--you would know that the more timid
and shrinking the dove the more fierce and unrelenting would be his
pursuit," exclaimed Queenie, with a scarlet blush at her sister's cruel
charge.
"I knew, of course," she continued, after a moment's thoughtful pause,
"home was the proper place for my lover to woo me. I said as much to
him. His ready excuse appeared perfectly sufficient in my silly eyes. He
told me that he was a foreigner of high birth and rank, exiled from his
native land through a political offense and that he had heard that my
father was bitterly opposed to all foreigners. He, therefore, felt it to
be quite hopeless to seek for the _entree_ to my father's house. Little
simpleton that I was, I swallowed the whole stupendous lie because it
was baited with the one single grain of truth--namely, the well-known
fact that my father was bitterly prejudiced against all persons of
foreign birth. I believed all he told me, and, worse than all, I
believed that I was deeply and devotedly in love with him. That was the
blind mistake of my life, Sydney. _Now_ I know that I was not in love
with the _man_. It was the romance and poetry of his manner of wooing
me, the mystery that surrounded him with an atmosphere of ideality that
fascinated and infatuated me. I was very young and romantic, as he well
knew when he set his artful trap for me. He knew too well how to bait
it. It was only the wooing that I loved when I thought it was the
wooer."
Her voice broke a moment, and she buried her face in her hands.
Sydney offered no comment, but sat as still and silent as a statue,
regarding her intently.
"Yet, why do I linger over those fatal hours?" resumed Queenie, with a
heavy sigh. "They can have but little interest for you. I will briefly
relate what came after. You remember, Sydney, how I left you all the day
we started to Europe on the pretense of returning to remain with papa?"
"Yes," Sydney answered, in a tone of scorn.
"It was a preconcerted plan," said the actress, dropping her eyes in
shame and remorse. "In less than an hour after I left you, Sydney, I met
Leon Vinton and was married to him."
"Married to him!" exclaimed Sydney, incredulously.
The blue eyes and the black ones met for a moment--one pair cold and
incredulous, the others full of raging scorn.
"Sydney, you are cruel!" exclaimed Queenie, indignantly. "How else
should I have gone away with him? I was as pure and innocent as a little
child. There was not a thought of evil in my heart. I would have died
the most horrible death that could be conceived of before I would have
willfully sinned."
"Why, then, did you not confess the truth when you came home?" asked
Sydney. "If you were married, where was your husband? Why did you suffer
us to think worse things of you?"
"Wait until I have finished my story, Sydney, then you will understand
why," answered Queenie, mournfully. "We were married, as I told you,"
she continued. "We went to live in a beautiful cottage on the banks of
the river, about five miles from the city where we lived. My husband
appeared to be a man of wealth and taste. My home was splendidly
furnished. I had servants to wait upon me, the best of everything to eat
and wear. He appeared to be perfectly devoted to me. I had but two
things to complain of. One was the utter seclusion in which we lived. He
went into no society, and we saw no company--not a single person ever
visited us. I rode out in a carriage with Mr. Vinton sometimes. Once we
went to the theater near my old home, and an irresistible desire seized
upon me to look upon the face of my father once more. Mr. Vinton had
always sternly forbidden me to venture near my home, but I eluded him
somehow in the crush coming out of the theater, and ran homeward with
flying footsteps. I looked into the window, Sydney. It was late, but I
saw papa. He was sitting, sad and alone, thinking, perhaps, of his
absent dear ones. He looked so old and broken it almost broke my heart."