It was the cry of a breaking heart that cleft the midnight air. The actress staggered backward, tried to catch at a chair to save herself from falling, and then dropped heavily to the floor and laid there without a sign of life.
Elsie came rushing in from the next room, frightened at the sound.
"Oh, my poor mistress—you have killed her!" she cried.
"It is nothing but a swoon—she will soon revive," was the contemptuous answer.
But in her heart Sydney prayed, "Oh, that it might be death!"
But the impious prayer was not answered thus. Elsie's energetic efforts soon restored her mistress to consciousness, and lying languidly on a silken divan, she turned her beautiful eyes back to Sydney's face.
"You may retire again," Sydney said to the maid. "We have much still to say to each other."
The maid was about to refuse, but an imperative command from her mistress caused her to retire at once. Then the two beautiful women looked at each other with ominous glances.
"So you are Queenie herself? I thought as much," exclaimed Sydney, in a hissing tone of hate.
"Yes, I am Queenie," answered the actress, coolly. "I have come back from the grave, Sydney; but it seems that I have neither name nor place in the hearts that once were mine!"