The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 70

"_Reine De Lisle_," repeated Mrs. Lyle, musingly.

Then she gives a great start.

"It would be--ah, it would be Queen Lyle!"

"Exactly," says Georgina. "Quite an odd coincidence. Is it not?"

She leans back in her seat with a thoughtful look on her pretty pink and white face.

Old times and old interests crowd into her mind with the memory of her younger sister. Time has thrown a veil over Queenie's faults and follies, and Georgina recalls her now with a softening remembrance, and half regrets the scorn she cast upon her when she returned to them so strangely.

"But ah! that missing year," she asks herself, as she has done many times before. "Where was it spent?"

Sydney had risen at the first mention of Queenie's name and swept out of the room. Neither time nor change had softened her hatred and resentment against poor little Queenie.

She had hated her beautiful sister while living, and she hated her, even in her grave, so bitterly that she could not endure the mention of her name even now when years had come and gone.

CHAPTER XXII.

"Let us go home, mother, I am tired already. The play is sickening; I always thought so."

It is Sydney who speaks, and her voice is full of restless discontent.

She is in a box at the theater, looking brilliantly beautiful in black velvet and diamonds.

The place is packed from pit to dome; but in the dazzling rows of fair faces, there is not one handsomer than hers, even now when it is marred by that look of impatience, almost anger, that rests upon it like a threatening cloud upon a summer sky.

Mrs. Lyle, a pa.s.sionate lover of the drama, turns a look of dismay upon her handsome daughter.

"Oh, not yet," she said quickly. "I would not miss seeing the play through for anything!"

"You have seen it often enough before," objects Sydney. "But if you are determined to stay I will go alone, if Lord Valentine will put me into the carriage."

"Don't go yet," says Lord Valentine, turning his eyes a moment from the stage to glance at his sister-in-law a trifle impatiently. "At least wait until Ernscliffe comes."

"He does not appear to be coming at all. I will not wait for him,"

Sydney answers, and the look of discontent deepens into downright vexation.

At that moment the box door opens and a gentleman comes up behind her chair.

Georgina turns quickly.

"Ah, Captain Ernscliffe, you are just in time," she says. "Here is Sydney trying to persuade us to go home before the play is half over.

Perhaps you can induce her to wait."

Sydney looks up to him and a tender smile curves her crimson lips.

"You are late," she murmurs.

"I was detained," he answers, carelessly. "How are you enjoying the performance of the great actress?"

Her lip curls scornfully.

"Not at all. I am tired of the whole sickening thing. Will you take me home?"

"Is the balcony scene over yet?" he asks.

"Oh, no," Lady Valentine answers; "only the first act."

"Do you really want to go, Sydney?" he asks.

"I really want to go," she answers, rising and drawing her opera cloak about her white shoulders.

He gives her his arm in silence, and leads her away, puts her into the carriage, and they are whirled rapidly homeward; but when he sees her safely inside Lord Valentine's handsome house he turns to go back.

"You will not leave me?" Sydney says, pleadingly, and laying her white, jeweled hand on his black coat sleeve.

"I wish to see the play out," he answers, with a touch of impatience in his voice.

"I a.s.sure you it is not worth seeing. The acting is merely mediocre.

Madame De Lisle has been greatly over-rated," she urges, with a tone of anxiety in her voice, as she looks down, almost afraid that he will detect the falsehood she is telling in her eager face.

"You make me more curious than ever," he answers, lightly. "I must certainly see her and judge for myself. Perhaps the wonderful beauty over which men rave so much has blinded the judgment of the critics. _Au revoir!_"

He frees himself from her clasp gently but firmly, and runs down the steps.

Sydney stands as he has left her, the rich cloak falling from her shoulders, her hands clasped before her, a tearless misery looking forth from her dark eyes.

"I have lied to him and gained nothing by it," she murmurs, in a pa.s.sionate undertone. "He will go back there, he will see that terrible resemblance that shocked us all, and he will be reminded of the one whom I wish him to forget. Oh, it is a dreadful coincidence! The same name, the same face, the same voice! If we had lost her in any way save by death, I could have sworn that it was Queenie herself that I saw to-night dancing on the stage at _Lady Capulet's_ ball."

Captain Ernscliffe hastened back to the theater, anxious to be in time for the second act, which is a favorite with all admirers of "Romeo and Juliet."

Lord Valentine glances around as he enters the box and drops into a chair.

"Ah, Ernscliffe," he says; "just in time. The balcony scene is on."

Ernscliffe leans forward, scanning the stage eagerly, and quite unconscious that his three companions in the box are regarding him with curious eyes, anxious to note what impression the great actress would produce upon him.

He sees the sighing _Romeo_ walking about and soliloquizing in the garden of the hostile _Capulet_, the gentle _Juliet_ in the balcony above him. His dark eyes rest on her for a moment; then he gives a violent start.

"Heaven!" he mutters under his breath, and grows pale beneath his olive skin.

"He can see the likeness, too," Lady Valentine whispered to her mother.

Rapt, spellbound, like one in a bewildering dream, Captain Ernscliffe bends forward, the deep pallor of painful emotion on his dusk, handsome face, his dark eyes fixed on the hapless young _Juliet_ in a wild, astonished, incredulous gaze as she leans upon the balcony, murmuring words of love to handsome young _Romeo_ in the garden beneath. It was no wonder, for _Juliet_, in her fair, young beauty, her misty, white robe, looped with rosebuds, her floating curls of gold, is the exact and perfect counterpart of Queenie Lyle when he first met her at Mrs. Kirk's grand ball. Not a tone of her voice, not a curve of her lip, not the fall of a ringlet differs from the lovely girl who had won his heart that never-to-be-forgotten night--the peerless bride that death had torn from his arms in the very moment that he claimed her as his own!