"Dead!" exclaimed Queenie, with a start of horror; "oh, no, that cannot
be! It is but a little while since I saw her living and beautiful under
this roof!"
"Her body is here still, Queenie, but her soul has fled to the God who
gave it," he answered solemnly.
She trembled like a leaf in a storm at that grave assurance.
"Queenie, let me take you back to your dressing-room," he said. "Stay
there a little while until I come for you."
Utterly unnerved by the shock of his revelation, she suffered him to
lead her back. He left her at the door of her room and went out to seek
Lord Valentine.
He had just put his wife and mother-in-law into the carriage, and stood
talking with the driver on the pavement.
"Yes sir," the man was saying, "you know you brought her out and put her
into the carriage yourself, and I jumped up on the box and drove right
off. But when I got to Valentine House, my lord, the carriage was empty.
Yet I could swear to you, my lord, that the carriage was never stopped
an instant between here and home."
"Come with me, my lord," said Captain Ernscliffe, in a whisper, as he
touched his arm, "I will explain the mystery."
"Very well. Let the carriage wait until I return," he said to the man as
he walked away with his brother-in-law.
Captain Ernscliffe led him back into the theater where Sydney lay still
and cold in death, watched by the manager and several of the theater
employes. They had lifted the body and laid it on a pile of silken
cushions, to remain until it had been viewed by the coroner, who had
been immediately notified of the terrible event.
At a whispered request the manager gave the paper containing the dying
deposition of Sydney into Ernscliffe's hands, and he in turn passed it
over to Lord Valentine.
"Great Heaven! this is terrible," he exclaimed, looking down at the
rigid form of his sister-in-law. "What is to be done? Who will break the
news to her mother and sister?"
They walked apart, and Captain Ernscliffe briefly told him the
truth--that Madame Reine De Lisle was his lost wife, Queenie, and that
Sydney's knowledge of that fact had maddened her with suspicion and
jealousy, and driven her into the fatal error that had cost her her
life.
"It is too wonderful to be true," said Lord Valentine. "I cannot believe
that the woman I saw lying dead in her coffin has been so strangely
resurrected. Surely, Ernscliffe, this beautiful actress has but traded
on her wonderful resemblance to your lost bride, and deceived you and
Sydney both. Have nothing to do with this beautiful siren."
Captain Ernscliffe looked at him half angrily.
"My Lord Valentine," he answered haughtily, "you charge her with that of
which she is not guilty. She has not deceived us. She did not seek us;
we sought her, and as long as Sydney lived she evaded the truth and
would not acknowledge her identity to me, because my second wife had
begged her to sacrifice herself for her sake. But come with me. Since
you doubt her identity let us see if she will recognize you. If you
appear as a stranger to her we may then afford to doubt her."
They went to Queenie's dressing-room and knocked on the door. She opened
it and bade them enter in a faltering voice, with her cheeks bathed in
tears, her blue eyes downcast and troubled.
"Queenie, look up," said Captain Ernscliffe. "Do you recognize this
gentleman?"
The actress lifted her lovely eyes, dimmed with bitter weeping and
looked at him. A gleam of recognition shone in her face.
"Yes," she answered, in her sweet, low voice. "It is Lord Valentine, who
was married to my sister Georgina the night you married me."
Captain Ernscliffe flashed a triumphant look upon his brother-in-law.
"You see she knows all about us," he said. "Now you cannot but admit her
identity. You must believe that she is my wife!"
Lord Valentine grew white and red by turns as he gazed upon the
beautiful, queenly woman.
"I admit madam's wonderful beauty, her grace and her talent," he said,
slowly, "and I will not deny her astonishing resemblance to your lost
bride; but, Ernscliffe, I will not believe this trumped-up story of poor
Queenie's resurrection. You are the victim of a monstrous fraud!"
Captain Ernscliffe's eyes blazed with anger.
"You deny that this is my wife?" he exclaimed, passionately.
Lord Valentine was silent a moment. After that brief pause for thought
he answered, firmly:
"Yes, I utterly deny it. I will not believe in so stupendous a fraud as
this one which is being perpetrated upon you. Madame De Lisle is a
beautiful woman, and a great actress; but she is not the wife you buried
years ago in Rose Hill Cemetery."
Queenie lifted her head and looked at him proudly, but she did not speak
one word in her own defense. She did not need to do so. She had an
eloquent defender by her side.
"Since you think thus," said Captain Ernscliffe, repressing his anger
and excitement by a powerful effort of his will, "pray go to your wife
and break the news of Sydney's tragic death to her and her mother. You
may tell them also all that I have told you, and we will see if they
will decide as you have done."
Lord Valentine bowed coldly and went away.
Captain Ernscliffe turned to the beautiful woman, who had fallen into a
seat and buried her face in her jeweled hands.
"Queenie," he murmured.
She looked up at his inquiringly.
"Can you bear to hear the circumstances of your poor sister's death?" he
asked, gently.
She bowed without speaking.
For answer he put into her hand Sydney's dying deposition, which Lord
Valentine had returned to him.
She read it silently through. It dropped from her nerveless clasp, and
she looked at him with a bitter pain in her white face.
"Oh, God, my poor, unhappy sister!" she moaned. "I have been the cause
of her death."
"Say rather her own reckless passion was her doom," he answered,
solemnly. "Do not accuse yourself, Queenie. _She_ did not blame you. She
was very sorrowful and repentant at the last. She wanted your
forgiveness."
"Oh, my poor Sydney! She went mad for love," said Queenie, weeping.
"As I had almost done," he answered. "For, Queenie, I have been nearly
beside myself these last few weeks. I knew you in spite of all your
denials, and the bitterness of it all nearly broke my heart. But now I
shall have my own again. Sydney wished it, dearest," he added, seeing a
look of hesitancy on her face.
She did not answer, and her blue eyes drooped away from his fond glance.
He moved nearer and took her unresisting hand in his.
"Darling, forgive me for pressing it now in your grief and trouble, but
tell me, shall it be as Sydney wished? Will you come back to my heart?"
"Perhaps you will not want me when I have told you all I have to tell,"
she answered, her sweet face crimson with painful blushes.
"There is nothing left for you to tell, my darling. Sydney has told me
all," he answered, quickly.
"And you do not blame me? You are not angry with me?" she said, lifting
her fair, troubled face with a look of wonder, mingled with relief.
"No, my sweet one. How could I blame you? It was like your sweet,
impulsive self," he answered. "But tell me now, Queenie if you will----"
But at that moment the shrill scream of a woman broke the silence of the
night, and Queenie sprang to her feet with a sob of grief and terror.
"It is your mother, dearest. She is there with Sydney. Can you bear to
go to her, Queenie? Perhaps it may comfort her to have one daughter
restored to her in the hour that she has lost another."
"Yes, yes, I will go," she moaned, turning toward the door. He drew her
hand into his and led her around to the fatal western door.
Mrs. Lyle was there, down on her knees by her dead daughter, weeping
and mourning, and Georgina stood apart, sobbing in her husband's arms.
Queenie rushed forward and threw herself down by the side of the
kneeling woman.
"Mamma, mamma," she sobbed, "let me comfort you a little. Sydney is
dead, but Queenie has come back to you to try to fill her place."
Mrs. Lyle shook off the white arm that had been thrown around her neck
and sprang to her feet.
"How dare you touch me?" she cried, "you whose siren wiles have wrought
my daughter's death? Go away from me, vile imposter that you are! My
daughter Queenie is dead."
"No, no, mamma, she lives; she was saved from death! Oh, let me tell you
all! I am your daughter Queenie!" cried the actress, in a voice of
passionate pleading, lifting her streaming eyes to her mother's face.
"Begone! You are no child of mine!" was the angry reply, as Mrs. Lyle
drew away from her, disdainful of her very touch. "Oh, go! go! You have
stolen Sydney's husband; you have caused her death; you cannot deceive
me also. Will not someone take her away?"
Queenie stood still, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, listening to
her mother's cruel words. Then she crossed over to Lady Valentine, who
stood within the clasp of her husband's arms weeping bitterly.
"Georgie," she said, in a tremulous voice, "won't _you_ speak to me?
Don't _you_ know me? Sydney recognized me and owned me for her sister,
even though I stood in her way. Surely you will not disown me!"
Georgie lifted her head and looked at the beautiful pleader a moment in
silence.
She was not a bad woman, this Lady Valentine, and for a moment an
impulse of pity stirred her heart and prompted her to believe this
strange story at which her husband had sneered, and which her mother
affected to disbelieve.
If she had been left to herself the better impulse in her heart would
have triumphed, perhaps. Even as it was a momentary tender remembrance
came into her heart as she recalled the night of her father's and
sister's death! She recalled his words:
"Georgie, forgive her; she was more sinned against than sinning. She
went mad and avenged the wrong. Remember that when she comes back."
"How did he know she would come back?" thought Lady Valentine to
herself, in wonder. "We all thought she was dead then. But perhaps dying
eyes can see more clearly than others. Poor papa, must I go against his
dying charge to me?"
Then she remembered what her husband had said to her a little while ago:
"Georgie, do not forget that you have married into a proud old family.
Think of the disgrace to us all if you should own this impostor for your
sister! True, she is beautiful and gifted, but what then? She is an
_actress_! The men and women of our race do not descend to such. They
amuse us on the stage--these clever people. We pay for our amusement,
and that ends all. We have nothing in common. Do not allow this clever,
deceitful woman to impose on you as she did on your brother-in-law."
Lady Valentine knew quite well what those words meant.
She was not to recognize the actress as her sister, no matter what she
thought.
So she strangled the thrill of pity at her heart, and answered in a
cold, hard voice, quite unlike her own:
"Go away, Madame De Lisle. You are no sister of mine!"
Queenie turned from her with a heart-wrung sigh and went back to her
mother.
"Mamma, let me kiss you once," she said, "only once, dear mamma, before
I go away! I have loved you so, I have hungered for you so these long
years while I have been away from you! Let me even kiss your hand,
mamma, and I will try to be content. Oh! surely you will show me a
little kindness if only for papa's sake, who loved me so dearly!"
But the mother's heart was turned to stone. She thrust away the clinging
hands, she spurned the tender, beseeching lips.
"Go away," she harshly reiterated, "you are no child of mine. My
daughter Queenie is dead and buried!"
The discarded daughter knelt down by Sydney's beautiful, lifeless clay
and took the cold hand in hers, then kissed the white, breathless lips.
"Good-bye, Sydney," she whispered against the icy cheek. "You were
kinder to me than they. You sought to kill my body, but they have broken
my heart!"
She rose, after one long look of grief and pain, and went back to
Captain Ernscliffe.
"I have only you left, Lawrence," she said, mournfully.
"I will be father, mother, sister, husband--everything to you, my
darling," he answered, fondly, as he drew her hand in his arm.
"Put me in the carriage now," she said. "I am very weary. I must go
home."
"You will have to be present at the inquest to-morrow. Did you know
that?" he said.
"Yes, I will be there. Good-night, Lawrence," she said, putting her hand
out from the carriage window.
He clasped and kissed it, then after watching the carriage out of sight,
went back to where the mourners kept their weary vigil by the side of
the beautiful woman who had loved him so fondly and fatally.