"No, Sydney, I never professed to love him. I do not think I loved him when I promised to marry him. And yet, in the few weeks that intervened before he led me to the altar, I learned to love him with as deep and fond a love as the most exacting heart could have asked for. Time, silence and suffering have but deepened and intensified that passion, until it has become like the very pulse of my heart. He is the one dear thing to me, yet you ask me to give him to you."
"You have your art—your profession. Surely you love that," said Sydney, anxiously.
"It has been but the means to an end," replied Queenie. "It has never filled but half my heart. The other half has never been at rest. It has always been seeking its lost mate. How could I give him up now that I have found him?"
"You mean to take him from me, then?" said Sydney, with a dangerous gleam of hatred firing into her black eyes.
La Reine Blanche did not answer. The blush had faded from her cheeks, and left them deathly pale.
Sydney could read nothing of her thoughts in the blue eyes, half veiled by the sweeping lashes. She moved restlessly in her chair.
"You promised to tell me your story," she said, coldly and sharply. "I am here to listen."
The faded color rushed back in crimson waves to Queenie's face. She looked up into the proud, scornful features of her sister.
"I am going to keep my word," she said, "and yet, Sydney, will you believe me when I tell you that I would rather tell my story to any other person on earth than you? Yes, I think I could sooner tell Lawrence Ernscliffe himself. I do not believe that anyone else would judge me as harshly and unpityingly as you will do—not even a stranger."
She was silent a moment, and lay still, shading her face with one small, white hand that sparkled with diamonds; then, as Sydney made no answer, she said, with a visible effort: