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

Her dark, handsome, dignified husband thrilled with pleasure and pride as he noted the many admiring glances that followed his beautiful and dearly-beloved wife.

"I have had news from England, Queenie," he said, presently.

"From England?" she said, and her delicate cheeks grew white. "Oh, Lawrence, have they found out who murdered Sydney yet?"

"Not yet, dear, but the detective is very hopeful. He is on the villain's track."

"Who was he? What is his name?" she asked, eagerly.

"I do not know. He writes very meagerly, though hopefully. He merely says that he has found your maid, Elsie Gray, and that she has put him on the track of the murderer."

"It is not possible that Elsie Gray was concerned in the murder of my sister!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, no, she was a witness to the deed only—at least I gather that much from his letter. I think she has been pursuing him ever since. The detective says that we may expect startling developments soon."

"God grant that the cowardly criminal may soon be discovered and punished for his awful sin!" she exclaimed, shuddering.

"Queenie," he said, musingly, "have you ever thought that but for the sin of this unknown man we should never, perhaps, have been reunited in peace and happiness? To-day you might have been in the lonely convent cell, while I, perhaps, should have raved in the chains of a lunatic, for, Queenie, I was going mad with the horror of losing you again."

"I have thought of it often," she said, gravely, "and I have thought again and again that it was almost wrong to accept happiness that was bought at so fearful a price to my poor Sydney. Her death lies heavy on my heart."

"Queenie, we both did what we could to insure her happiness while she lived. I married her because one very near to her hinted to me that the poor girl was dying of a broken heart for my sake. I did not love her, but I sacrificed myself to save her, as you afterward sacrificed us both at her request. And yet those mutual bitter sacrifices of ours availed very little to secure the end she sought. I begin to believe that such terrible self-abnegations are wrong and unjustifiable, and that they never work out good to any."

"It may be true," she answered, thoughtfully, and relapsed into silence, her eyes downcast, her lips set in a half-sorrowful line, while she unconsciously checked the speed of the horses and allowed them to walk slowly along the drive.

Absorbed in thought she did not observe a handsome, fashionably-dressed man coming along the side-path toward them, airily swinging a natty little cane.

"I hope and trust, darling, that you will not allow any weak and morbid fancies regarding Sydney to sadden and depress you," continued Captain Ernscliffe. "I know she would not wish it to be so."

Queenie looked up at him gently with the words of reply just forming on her lips.

But they died unspoken, and she uttered a low cry of fear and terror commingled, while her whole form trembled violently.

She had caught sight of the man in the road who had just come abreast of the phaeton.

At that moment the man, who had been observing her for some moments, looked at her with a sardonic smile, lifted his hat, bowed deeply, and murmuring familiarly:

"Good-evening, Queenie," passed insolently on.

Captain Ernscliffe grew ashen white. Something like an imprecation was smothered between his firmly-cut lips.

"Good Heaven, Queenie!" he exclaimed. "Is it possible that you know that man?"

She did not speak, she could not. She only stared at him speechlessly, her lips parted in terror, her breath coming and going in quick gasps like one dying.

"Do you know who and what that man is?" he reiterated, hoarsely. "Queenie, it is Leon Vinton, the most notorious gambler and roue in the city! And he dared to speak to you! What did he mean by it? You surely do not know him. Tell me?"

Still she did not speak. It seemed to her that her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.

She had thought that her enemy was dead—had she not seen him lying cold and still, with his heart's blood staining the snowy earth? Yet there he walked, smiling, evil, triumphant. The horror of the sight struck her dumb.

"You will not answer me," passionately cried her husband. "Very well. I will wring the truth from that insolent villain! I will know why he dared bow and speak to my wife. Drive on home, madam; I will follow the villain and make him retract the insult!"

He sprang from the moving phaeton at the imminent risk of his neck, and followed Leon Vinton with a quick stride down the road.

Like one in a fearful dream, Queenie gathered the reins in her trembling hands and drove recklessly homeward through the beautiful sunshine.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The angry husband followed Leon Vinton's leisurely steps, and quickly overtook him.

Placing one hand on the villain's shoulder with a grasp like steel, Captain Ernscliffe whirled him round face to face.

A malevolent sneer curved the lips of the handsome scoundrel as he recognized his assailant. He tried to shake himself free from that painfully tight grasp, but it was useless. He seemed to be held in a vise.

"Unhand me, sir," he said, in a voice of angry expostulation.

"Villain!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, in a low, deep voice of concentrated passion. "How dared you speak to my wife? Apologize immediately for the insult."

Leon Vinton's face assumed a blank stare of astonishment.

"Does she consider it an insult to be recognized by an old friend?" he inquired, in a voice of mocking courtesy.

Captain Ernscliffe's brow grew as dark as night. He shook the sneering scoundrel by the shoulder as though he would have shaken the life out of him.

"How dare you claim her as an old friend?" he thundered. "You whose acquaintance is a disgrace to any woman. You, the most notorious and unprincipled villain in the city. Retract those words before I kill you."

"Come, come," answered Vinton, coolly and maliciously, "I am but speaking the truth. As for killing, let me remind you that two can play at that game. I have a pistol in my pocket, and I believe I am a better shot than you are. But your wife, as you call her, is not worthy the shedding of an honest man's blood! I will keep my weapon in its place, and all I ask you is to confront me with the lady whose honor you are so zealously defending. I think she will not dare to deny that once she claimed me as her dearest friend!"

Captain Ernscliffe drew back his hand to strike him in the face, but something in his enemy's words and looks seemed to stagger him. He hoarsely exclaimed:

"I will not pollute the pure air she breathes with your foul presence. As for you, liar, beware how you assert things that you cannot prove."

"Hard words break no bones," laughed Leon Vinton, seeming to take downright pleasure in tormenting the other. "I'm determined not to be angry with you, for I do not think the lady we are discussing is worth the trouble. I can prove all that I assert, and more besides."

"How? How?" exclaimed Ernscliffe, in sheer amaze at his unparalleled effrontery.

"I could prove it by the lady herself, but since you refuse to admit me to her presence, come with me to my home, a few miles from the city, and my housekeeper shall show you the elegant rooms Mrs. Ernscliffe occupied when she was my dear friend and guest for a year."

The cool, insolent assertion fell on Captain Ernscliffe's ears like a thunderbolt. He staggered back and stared at the calm, smiling villain in wonder mingled with indefinable dread.

"My God!" he muttered, half to himself, "you would not make such an assertion unless you could prove it."

"I can prove every assertion I have made," was the confident reply. "Queenie Lyle ran away with me the day her mother and sisters went to Europe. She lived with me nearly a year. I can prove this, remember."

"You married her!" gasped his adversary, his eyes starting, his face as white as death.

Leon Vinton looked at that pale, anguish-stricken face, and laughed aloud, the mocking laugh of a fiend.

"Married her?" he asked, sneeringly. "Oh, no, I am not one of the marrying kind. She knew that, but she loved me, and was content to live with me on my own terms."

There was a blank silence. Captain Ernscliffe dimly felt that the agony he was enduring was commensurate with the pains of hell.

Leon Vinton enjoyed his misery to the utmost.

"We lived together a year," he went on, after a moment. "At first we were very loving and very happy, but well—you know how such cases always terminate—we wearied of each other. She was a spit-fire and a termagant. She pushed me into the river and tried to drown me. She thought she had succeeded, and ran away home. Her family kept her fatal secret, and married her off to you."

"This is horrible if true!" ejaculated the listener.

"Come," said Leon Vinton, "go home with me. My carriage is outside the gate. I merely chose to saunter in the park. You shall see her letters to me, you shall hear what my housekeeper knows about the matter."

"I will go with you," said Captain Ernscliffe, rousing himself as from a painful dream. "But if I find that you have lied to me, Vinton, I will kill you!"

CHAPTER XXXVII

"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!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The letter dropped from Queenie's shaking hand, and she fell heavily into a seat, her slender form trembling with great, tearless emotion.

"Oh, God!" she moaned, "it is indeed a bitter cup that is pressed to my lips! A disowned daughter and sister, and a divorced wife!"

"What does he say, Queenie?" inquired her uncle, pausing in his weary march up and down the room.

She silently pointed to the letter that lay upon the carpet, where it had fallen from her hands.

He picked it up and read it, then turned his kindly blue eyes upon her with an expression of pity and distress.

"The scoundrel Vinton must indeed have traduced and maligned you to have elicited such a scathing letter from your devoted husband. Let me go and bring Lawrence to you, Queenie, that you may vindicate yourself."

But she shook her head sorrowfully yet firmly.

"No Uncle Rob; he asks for no defense from me; he tacitly accepts all that Vinton has told him as the truth. He will hear nothing from you or me. There is nothing left me but to hide myself somewhere in the great cruel world and die," she said, with inexpressible bitterness.

"Queenie, let me entreat you not to throw away your happiness thus. Let me explain everything to Lawrence as you have told it to me. He could not be hard upon you then. He would see how cruelly you had been wronged, and how much you had suffered for it. If he loves you as much as he has seemed to do he could not but forgive you."

She took the letter from his hand and glanced over its brief contents again.

"No, no, his love must have been dead indeed before he could write to me so cruelly as this. Let him think what he will, Uncle Rob. The best is bad enough; so why should I try to vindicate myself? He shall have his freedom since he wants it so much."

"But, my dear, surely you will not permit the divorce without contesting it? Think what a terrible thing it would be to remain silent in such a case. A divorced woman is always a disgraced woman in the eyes of the world, no matter how unjustly the verdict was given against her. It must not be permitted. We must engage a lawyer to defend your case. I do not believe that your husband could obtain a divorce from any court in the land if the truth of the matter were rightly known."

"Do you think that I would belong to him and bear his name against his will?" she exclaimed, with all the passion and fire of tone and gesture that had won her fame and fortune on the tragic stage. "No, never, never! I will not raise my hand to stay the divorce. I will be silent, whatever they lay to my charge. His quick unkindness, his readiness to believe evil against me, has been the bitterest of all to bear, but I will not speak one word to let him know it. My heart shall break in silence!"

He gave up the point, seeing that it was utterly useless to urge it upon her.

"Since you are determined to sacrifice yourself thus on the altar of Vinton's fiendish revenge," he said, "tell me what I can do for you, my poor child. You will not wish to remain at Ernscliffe's house, of course?"

"Of course not," she answered.

Then after a moment's thought, she said, abruptly:

"Why, Uncle Rob, I shall have to go upon the stage again. I had forgotten until this moment that I am poor, that I have nothing at all to live upon. When I gave up my theatrical career and returned to my husband, I deeded away, with his consent, all my earnings on the stage to build a free church for the poor of London."

"You shall never go upon the stage again with my consent," he answered. "I have enough for us both to live in luxury all our lives. It is true I have lost a few thousands recently by the failure of a bank, but that is a mere nothing. I am a very wealthy man yet. You shall be my dear and honored daughter so long as I live, Queenie, and my heiress when I die."

She thanked him with a silent, eloquent glance.

"And now," he continued, "it will not do for you to remain in Ernscliffe's house any longer than to-morrow. Let your maid pack your trunks for you to-night, and to-morrow I will take you away to some health resort—the mountains or the seashore—anywhere you like, so that I get you out of this city."

"And I shall never see my husband again," she said, clasping her hands with a gesture of despair. "Oh, how fleeting and evanescent was my dream of happiness! How can I live without him now, when I have been so happy with him?"

Uncle Robert took her tenderly in his arms, and kissed her white forehead.

"It is hard, dear," he said, "but we learn after awhile to do without the things that have been dearest to us on earth. I lost the darling of my heart many years ago. It was very hard to bear at first, but after awhile I learned patience and resignation."

"You have loved and lost?" she said, looking at him in great surprise.

"Yes, pet. Did you think I was a crusty, forlorn old bachelor from choice? No, no; I was betrothed to a sweet and lovely girl in my early youth, but she went away to live with the angels, and I have been true to her memory ever since."

"Poor uncle! I did not know you had so sad a secret in your life," she said, with the dew of sympathy shining in her beautiful blue eyes.

"Every heart knoweth its own bitterness," answered the kind, old man, sadly.

The next day he took her away to the seashore, hoping that the change of air and scene might divert her mind from its sorrows.

It was a vain hope. Her terrible trouble was too deeply graven on her mind. She became ill the day they took possession of their cottage, and for several weeks lay tossing with fever, closely attended by a skillful physician and two careful old nurses, while Mr. Lyle veered to and fro, his gentle heart nearly broken by this unexpected stroke of fate.

But at length, when they had almost begun to despair of her recovery, her illness took a sudden turn for the better.

She began to convalesce slowly but surely, and one day she turned the nurses out of the room and sent for her Uncle Robert.

"I want to ask you something," she said, putting her feverish, wasted little hand into his strong, tender clasp.

"I am listening, dear," he answered, kindly.

"Has—has that divorce been granted yet?" she inquired, flushing slightly.

"Oh, no, my dear. Your husband has applied for it, but they have been waiting since your illness to know what steps you will take in the matter—whether or not you would engage a lawyer and contest the divorce. I would not give them any satisfaction while you were sick, for I thought you might change your mind."

"I have changed my mind, Uncle Rob," she said. "I mean to contest the divorce. There is a reason now" (she blushed and drooped her eyes from his perplexed gaze) "why I should try to save my fair fame as much as I can. Not that I wish to live with Lawrence again, whether there is a divorce or not, but I wish to defend my own honor and leave behind me as pure a name as I can. You will secure an able lawyer for me, will you not, Uncle Robbie?"

"Yes, darling, you shall have the best counsel that money can procure," he answered, deeply moved at her earnest words.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Captain Ernscliffe sat alone in the spacious library of his elegant mansion.

The windows were raised, and the rich curtains of silk and lace were drawn back, admitting the bracing October air.

The playful breeze lifted the dark, clustering locks from his high, white brow, and wafted to his senses the delicate perfume of roses and lilies that filled the vases on the marble mantel.

The evening sunshine lay in great, golden bars on the emerald-velvet carpet.

But none of these beautiful things attracted the attention of the master of this luxurious mansion.

He sat at his desk with an open book before him, and a half-smoked cigar between his white, aristocratic fingers; but the fire had died out on the tip of his prime Havana, and the idle breeze turned the leaves of his book at its wanton will.

He sat there, perfectly still and silent, in his great arm-chair, staring drearily before him, a stern, sad look on his handsome face, the fire of a jealous, all-consuming passion smouldering gloomily in the beautiful dark eyes, half veiled by their sweeping lashes.

He had been trying to read, but the strange unrest that possessed him was too great to admit of fixing his attention on the author, yet now he slowly repeated some lines that caught his eye as the light breeze fluttered the book leaves:

"Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung."

"Ah! she is all that, and more," he exclaimed, bitterly, showing by those quick words where his thoughts were.

A slight cough interrupted him. He looked up quickly and saw Robert Lyle standing within the half-open door. The old man moved forward deprecatingly.