Sydney looked at her with a flash of hatred in her dusky orbs.
"Madam," she said, "could you love the thing that stood between you and your happiness?"
They looked at each other a moment in silence, and the flashing eyes of the beautiful actress seemed to burn into Sydney's heart. A sudden horrible fear darted into her mind.
"Has the dead come back?" she asked herself. "Oh! no, it cannot be!"
"You will not answer me," she said, wildly. "Oh, Madame De Lisle, be generous! You have lovers by the score; they tell me you have refused to marry a duke. One heart more or less cannot matter to you. You must not take my Lawrence from me! He is my all!"
"Your all!" exclaimed La Reine Blanche, with a curling lip. "Lady, you prate of your love for Lawrence Ernscliffe, you tell me that he is your all! You tell me what he is to you—will you tell me what you are to him?"
There was a tone of triumph in her sweet, incisive voice as she confronted her visitor.
"Madam," said Sydney, proudly and haughtily, "he is my husband—I am his wife!"
"His wife! Oh! my God!"