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.