The stranger in the cloak left the room, bearing with him the two packages, one of which embraced the mysteries of the house of Frank, and the other contained the story of her life.
And in the darkness, Frank walked up and down the room, pressing one clenched hand against her heaving bosom, and the other against her burning brow.
Soon afterward, Frank and the stranger in the old-fashioned cloak, were closeted for half an hour in earnest conversation.
We will not record the details of the conversation, but its results will perchance be seen in the future pages of our history.
Here, at this point of our story, let us break the seals of the second package which Frank gave to the stranger, and linger for a little while upon the pages of her history, written by her own hand. A strange history in every line! It is called The History of the Midnight Queen!
[CHAPTER III.]
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN.
My childhood's home! O, is there in all the world a phrase so sweet as this, "My childhood's home!" Others may look back to childhood, and be stung by bitter memories, but my childhood was the heaven of my life. As from the hopeless present, I gaze back upon it, I seem like a traveler, half way up the Alps, surrounded by snow and clouds and mist, and looking back upon the happy valley, which, dotted with homes and rich in vines and flowers, smiles in the sunshine far below.
My childhood's home was very beautiful. It was a two-story cottage, situated upon an eminence, its white front and rustic porch, half hidden by the horse-chesnut trees, which in the early summer had snowy blossoms among their deep green leaves. Behind the cottage arose a broad and swelling hill, which, fringed with gardens at its base, and crowned on its summit by a few grand old trees standing alone against the sky, was in summer-time clad along its entire extent with a garment of golden wheat. Beneath the cottage flowed the Neprehaun, a gentle rivulet, which wound among abrupt hills,—every hill rich in foliage and dotted with homes—until it lost itself in the waves of the Hudson. Yes, the Hudson was there, grand and beautiful and visible always from the cottage porch; the Palisades rising from its opposite shore into heaven, and the broad bay of Tapaan Zee glistening in sunlight to the north.