The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 81

Captain Ernscliffe's eyes blazed with anger.

"You deny that this is my wife?" he exclaimed, pa.s.sionately.

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 circ.u.mstances 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, G.o.d, my poor, unhappy sister!" she moaned. "I have been the cause of her death."

"Say rather her own reckless pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sionate 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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.