"My poor Queenie, my poor child, you erred greatly in the deception you
practiced in the beginning. It was wrong to desert your home and family
as you did, but I cannot upbraid you now. Your punishment has been
bitter enough. May God help you, my little one!" said Robert Lyle,
smoothing the golden head that lay upon his knee with a gentle, fatherly
caress.
Queenie had come back from that ride which had begun so happily and
found her Uncle Robert waiting for her in the drawing-room. He had
declined her invitation to make his home with her, and taken quarters at
a hotel, but there were very few days when he failed to visit her.
To-day when she came staggering in, looking so fearfully white and
death-stricken, he saw at once that some fearful thing had happened to
her, and started up in alarm.
"Queenie, my dear, what is it? Are you ill?" he exclaimed, going to her,
and taking her cold, nerveless hand in his.
She looked up at him, and Robert Lyle never forgot the tearless despair,
the utter agony of her white face and wild, blue eyes. They haunted his
dreams for many nights after. Yet she tried to smile, and the smile was
sadder than tears.
"I--I--yes, I believe I am ill," she said, dropping down into a great
arm-chair. "I will sit here and rest, Uncle Rob! I shall be better
presently."
"Let me get you some wine," he said. "It will revive you."
"No, no, I will not have anything!" she said. "Nothing could help me."
The tone made his heart ache, it was so hopeless.
He bent over her and removed her hat and gloves as deftly and tenderly
as a woman could have done.
His anxious looks, his tender solicitude made her think of her father.
The tender recollection broke down the barriers of stony calm she was
trying to maintain. Bowing her face on her hands she wept and sobbed
aloud.
Mr. Lyle was greatly shocked and distressed at her vehement exhibition
of grief. He brought a chair, and sitting down beside her, put his
kindly old arm about her heaving shoulders.
"Tell your old uncle what grieves you, pet," he said. "Perhaps I can
help to set it right."
And after a little more passionate 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 noblest 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 God 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 passed 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, God! 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 institute proceedings for a divorce. I can no longer
lend the shelter of my name to one who has so basely deceived and
betrayed me!"