The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret

As she took up the pearl-handled brush there came a timid, hesitating rap at the outer door. Madame De Lisle started and trembled.

"Admit no one to-night, Elsie," she said, nervously, as the maid turned toward the door.

Elsie came back in a minute with a penciled slip of paper. Her mistress took it, and read these words:

"Will Madame De Lisle accord the favor of a brief interview to a lady who calls on important business?"

"A lady—at this time of the night!" said La Reine Blanche, lifting her arched brows very slightly.

"Yes, madam, a real lady—at least she spoke and moved like one," replied Elsie, respectfully.

"Tell her I can see no one to-night. I am too weary; she must call another time," said the actress, in an agitated voice.

Elsie turned away with the message, but before she reached the door she was confronted by the lady, who had heard the refusal and entered in spite of it.

She advanced into the room, and stood before the actress, who had risen from her seat and leaned against a chair, her golden hair falling about her like a misty veil.

"Madame De Lisle," said the intruder, in a slightly tremulous voice, "I entreat you to pardon this untimely intrusion. Will you send your maid away, that I may plead my justifiable excuse?"

La Reine Blanche motioned to the maid to withdraw into an inner room at the pleasure of her visitor. Then she looked wistfully at the lady, who had thrown off her concealing hood and cloak, and stood revealed in all her majestic beauty, clothed splendidly in black velvet and sparkling diamonds.

"You are surprised to see me here?" said Sydney, interrogatively.

The actress bowed silently. She seemed like one stricken dumb and incapable of speech.

"You were annoyed this evening by the persistent attempts of a gentleman to obtain speech with you," went on Sydney.

Again Madame De Lisle bowed silently. She seemed like one dazed, and stood regarding her visitor without remembering that courtesy required her to offer her a seat.

"It is of that I wish to speak, madam. I heard you tell him he might call on you to-morrow at noon. I beg you, Madame De Lisle, to recall that permission, and to utterly decline the acquaintance of Lawrence Ernscliffe now and forever."

The failing senses of La Reine Blanche seemed to return to her with a gasp. She straightened her drooping figure and looked haughtily at the speaker.

"May I inquire why you proffer such a singular request?" she asked, coldly.

"Is it necessary that I should explain my motive for the request? If I do so, it will be at the expense of some humiliation to myself," said the visitor, and a faint flush colored her handsome, high-bred face.

For a moment they stood regarding each other fixedly—the handsome brunette in her velvet and diamonds, the lily-white blonde in her sweeping robe and veil of golden hair, looking like a "white queen" indeed.

Then the actress said, in a voice full of veiled passion and almost defiance:

"It would take a strong motive indeed to cause me to decline the acquaintance of Lawrence Ernscliffe. Let me know your reason that I may judge if it be potent enough to secure your wish."

With a swift rush forward Sydney fell on her knees before the beautiful woman.

"Madame De Lisle," she said, pleadingly, "I humble myself before you to beg for my happiness! I love Lawrence Ernscliffe; I hoped I was winning his love in return until he saw you on the stage to-night. Your beauty, your splendid acting, above all, your striking resemblance to one he has loved and lost, took his heart by storm. He is carried away by this mad and wicked infatuation. Nothing but a studied coldness from you can check this mad passion. Will you, now that I have told you all, do as I have begged you?"

Something pathetic in the woman's humility touched a pitying chord in the heart of La Reine Blanche. She took her gently by the hand and placed her in a chair.

"You say that I resemble one whom he has loved and lost," she said. "Who was she?"

"She was his bride," answered Sydney, "his bride and my sister. She died at the altar. But I had the better claim upon him. He admired me and I believe he would have loved and married me if he had not inopportunely met her. But, as I have told you, she died. Now, after years, I had almost won his love again when you came here with her face and won him from me! It is almost as if the dead had come back."

La Reine Blanche looked at her with a strange smile.

"I have heard it said," she remarked, "that if the dead could come back after a few years they would find their places filled, their names forgotten, and themselves unwelcome."

Sydney gave her a keen glance, half-frightened, half-defiant.

"Madam, that is true," she said. "If my sister could come back to us we could not help being sorry. She was a trouble and disgrace to us while living, and we cannot help feeling relieved that the grass is growing over all her faults and follies."

"You did not love your sister?" said the actress, with her blue eyes blazing like stars.

Sydney looked at her with a flash of hatred in her dusky orbs.

"Madam," she said, "could you love the thing that stood between you and your happiness?"

They looked at each other a moment in silence, and the flashing eyes of the beautiful actress seemed to burn into Sydney's heart. A sudden horrible fear darted into her mind.

"Has the dead come back?" she asked herself. "Oh! no, it cannot be!"

"You will not answer me," she said, wildly. "Oh, Madame De Lisle, be generous! You have lovers by the score; they tell me you have refused to marry a duke. One heart more or less cannot matter to you. You must not take my Lawrence from me! He is my all!"

"Your all!" exclaimed La Reine Blanche, with a curling lip. "Lady, you prate of your love for Lawrence Ernscliffe, you tell me that he is your all! You tell me what he is to you—will you tell me what you are to him?"

There was a tone of triumph in her sweet, incisive voice as she confronted her visitor.

"Madam," said Sydney, proudly and haughtily, "he is my husband—I am his wife!"

"His wife! Oh! my God!"

It was the cry of a breaking heart that cleft the midnight air. The actress staggered backward, tried to catch at a chair to save herself from falling, and then dropped heavily to the floor and laid there without a sign of life.

Elsie came rushing in from the next room, frightened at the sound.

"Oh, my poor mistress—you have killed her!" she cried.

"It is nothing but a swoon—she will soon revive," was the contemptuous answer.

But in her heart Sydney prayed, "Oh, that it might be death!"

But the impious prayer was not answered thus. Elsie's energetic efforts soon restored her mistress to consciousness, and lying languidly on a silken divan, she turned her beautiful eyes back to Sydney's face.

"You may retire again," Sydney said to the maid. "We have much still to say to each other."

The maid was about to refuse, but an imperative command from her mistress caused her to retire at once. Then the two beautiful women looked at each other with ominous glances.

"So you are Queenie herself? I thought as much," exclaimed Sydney, in a hissing tone of hate.

"Yes, I am Queenie," answered the actress, coolly. "I have come back from the grave, Sydney; but it seems that I have neither name nor place in the hearts that once were mine!"

"No, and never shall have!" exclaimed Sydney, passionately, to herself, but aloud she said, in a voice that she strove to render calm and controlled:

"Will you tell me why you are here?"

"I am here to claim my husband!" answered Queenie, promptly and firmly.

If a look could have killed, Queenie Ernscliffe would have been stricken dead at her sister's feet.

"You will have to prove a few things before you accomplish your purpose," she retorted.

"I can prove all that is necessary," was the calm reply.

"Can you justify yourself in the matter of that shameful hidden year in your life of which I shall surely inform Captain Ernscliffe?" asked Sydney, malevolently.

"Sydney, forbear," exclaimed the actress, lifting her hand as if to ward off some cruel blow. "I have borne all that I can bear to-night! You must leave me now. Come and lunch with me to-morrow, and you shall hear the story of that missing year—you shall judge whether I can justify myself in the eyes of my husband."

"Will you promise not to see him until after that?" asked Sydney, anxiously, as she turned to go.

"Yes, I will promise," answered Queenie.

CHAPTER XXIV

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."

CHAPTER XXV

Queenie paused a moment, and Sydney saw that warm, passionate tears were streaming down her cheeks. The sight awoke no pity in the heart of the elder sister. It seemed to her that her hatred was simply measureless for the beautiful young sister who, living or dead, held Lawrence Ernscliffe's heart.

"Papa looked up and saw me," continued Queenie, brushing away the crystal drops with her perfumed handkerchief. "He took me for a ghost, I think. I ran away and met Mr. Vinton coming after me. He was very angry with me, and I promised him I would not venture near the place again. Poor papa! As I went away I heard him wandering in the garden, calling my name. I longed to turn back and throw my arms about his neck. I often begged Mr. Vinton to allow me to make known our marriage to papa and trust to his kind heart to forgive us, but he always refused angrily. He had a terrible temper—a sleeping devil coiled within his heart."

"You said that you had but two things to complain of," suggested Sydney. "You have named but one."

"The other was Mr. Vinton's frequent absence from me. He spent more than half his time in the city, and I passed more than half my time alone, save for the company of his housekeeper, a wicked woman, whom I cordially detested. When I complained of his long absence, he represented that business detained him from my side, but when I ventured to inquire into the nature of his business, he almost rudely informed me that it was no part of my province to inquire into his affairs. I asked him no more questions, and I do not know to this day what engaged his time and attention, nor what was the source of his apparent wealth.

"We had been married almost a year," she continued, after a slight pause, "when I began to notice that Mr. Vinton grew cold and careless to me, and his mysterious absences became longer and more frequent. In my loneliness and isolation I began to pine more and more for papa, whose sad and troubled face, as I saw it last, when I looked into the window that night, haunted me persistently. To my surprise, Mr. Vinton ceased to chide me for indulging in my grief, and pretended to be willing to reveal our marriage to papa and beg his forgiveness. In my joy at this assurance, I threw my arms around his neck, and kissed him as fondly as I had ever done in the first days of our union. That evening he ordered out the phaeton to take me home to papa. You know how fond I was of papa, Sydney—you can imagine my happiness."

Sydney only bowed coldly in reply.

"'I am going to take you home by a new route,' Mr. Vinton said to me, turning the phaeton into a lonely, unfrequented road. In my joy at going back to papa, I consented without a thought of the oddity of the words. I only said to him: 'Do not make it a longer route, dear Leon. I am so impatient to see papa again.'"

She was growing more excited now. She rose from her reclining position, and sitting upright, looked at Sydney with scarlet cheeks and burning, violet eyes. She was dazzlingly beautiful in this new phase.

Her fair, expressive face, and graceful, white throat rose from the rich and somber setting of black velvet like some rare flower. Her voice sounded like a wail of the saddest music.

"It was the cruelest lie a man ever told a woman, Sydney!" she went on, clasping and unclasping her white hands together in passionate excitement. "We never went near home. He never intended it. It began to rain soon, and we had no cover to the phaeton. We were passing through a thick wood, and he forced me to get out and stand under the trees under pretense of seeking shelter. Then, oh, Sydney, Sydney, with the chilly rain beating down upon us, and our feet half buried in the thick drifts of autumn leaves, he told me—oh, Sydney, can you guess what horrible thing that villain told me?"

The tears were falling down her cheeks like rain as she looked at her sister, but she, conjecturing the truth at once, answered, promptly and coldly:

"He told you that he had deceived you—that you were not his wife!"