"What was it you saw, Miss Lyle?" he inquired, gently.
"Perhaps you will not credit it," she said, lifting her white, awe-stricken face in the moonlight that flooded the balcony, "but, Captain Ernscliffe, just as I looked up from my flowers to speak to you, the whole scene of the ball faded out into blackness, and then I saw a vision come before me in its place."
She paused, shuddered visibly, then resumed:
"I saw a thick, dark wood before me with the rain-drops falling down through the leaves of the trees. I saw a tall man with his back to me, and close by that man was a grave—a shallow grave, so shallow that it could not hide the girl that lay within it, for the wind and the rain had beaten away the earth and the dead leaves with which the man had covered her. I saw her awfully white, dead face upturned to the light, and there were cruel black marks around her throat as if someone had choked her—and a purple wound on her brow."
"My darling, it was only your excited imagination," said Mrs. Lyle, soothingly.
"Oh, no, I saw it quite plainly," answered little Queenie, with a sharp wail of anguish; "and, oh, mamma, mamma, the face of that dead girl was just exactly like mine!"
[CHAPTER IV.]
"I always knew you were a little simpleton, Queenie, but I never thought you could be so foolish and ungrateful as this! No girl in her senses would refuse the chance of spending Captain Ernscliffe's money!"
Three months had elapsed since the grand ball at Mrs. Kirk's, and Queenie Lyle was arraigned before the bar of maternal justice. Little Queenie had spent those three months in a perfect whirl of excitement, pleasure and conquest. And now Captain Ernscliffe, the irresistible, the invincible, had surrendered at discretion, and actually proposed to marry her! And little Queenie Lyle had had the audacity to refuse the honor.