"I have lied to him and gained nothing by it," she murmurs, in a passionate undertone. "He will go back there, he will see that terrible resemblance that shocked us all, and he will be reminded of the one whom I wish him to forget. Oh, it is a dreadful coincidence! The same name, the same face, the same voice! If we had lost her in any way save by death, I could have sworn that it was Queenie herself that I saw to-night dancing on the stage at Lady Capulet's ball."
Captain Ernscliffe hastened back to the theater, anxious to be in time for the second act, which is a favorite with all admirers of "Romeo and Juliet."
Lord Valentine glances around as he enters the box and drops into a chair.
"Ah, Ernscliffe," he says; "just in time. The balcony scene is on."
Ernscliffe leans forward, scanning the stage eagerly, and quite unconscious that his three companions in the box are regarding him with curious eyes, anxious to note what impression the great actress would produce upon him.
He sees the sighing Romeo walking about and soliloquizing in the garden of the hostile Capulet, the gentle Juliet in the balcony above him. His dark eyes rest on her for a moment; then he gives a violent start.
"Heaven!" he mutters under his breath, and grows pale beneath his olive skin.
"He can see the likeness, too," Lady Valentine whispered to her mother.
Rapt, spellbound, like one in a bewildering dream, Captain Ernscliffe bends forward, the deep pallor of painful emotion on his dusk, handsome face, his dark eyes fixed on the hapless young Juliet in a wild, astonished, incredulous gaze as she leans upon the balcony, murmuring words of love to handsome young Romeo in the garden beneath. It was no wonder, for Juliet, in her fair, young beauty, her misty, white robe, looped with rosebuds, her floating curls of gold, is the exact and perfect counterpart of Queenie Lyle when he first met her at Mrs. Kirk's grand ball. Not a tone of her voice, not a curve of her lip, not the fall of a ringlet differs from the lovely girl who had won his heart that never-to-be-forgotten night—the peerless bride that death had torn from his arms in the very moment that he claimed her as his own!