"It was the cruelest lie a man ever told a woman, Sydney!" she went on, clasping and unclasping her white hands together in passionate excitement. "We never went near home. He never intended it. It began to rain soon, and we had no cover to the phaeton. We were passing through a thick wood, and he forced me to get out and stand under the trees under pretense of seeking shelter. Then, oh, Sydney, Sydney, with the chilly rain beating down upon us, and our feet half buried in the thick drifts of autumn leaves, he told me—oh, Sydney, can you guess what horrible thing that villain told me?"
The tears were falling down her cheeks like rain as she looked at her sister, but she, conjecturing the truth at once, answered, promptly and coldly:
"He told you that he had deceived you—that you were not his wife!"
"Yes, Sydney, that was what he told me," answered Queenie, with burning cheeks. "He said that the minister who united us was no more a minister than he was, and had only done it for a lark! He said he was tired of me and did not intend to charge himself with my support any longer, and that I might return to my father."
She stopped a moment and brushed away the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.
"Oh! how can I go on?" she exclaimed.
"I am impatient," remarked Sydney.
"I was fairly maddened by that cruel revelation," continued Queenie. "Oh, Sydney, may the dear Lord spare you from such suffering as was mine in that terrible hour! I went mad! All the softness of womanhood died out of me in the face of that cruel wrong! The instinct of the tigress sprang into my heart. I thirsted for Leon Vinton's blood. I cursed him. I rushed upon him and fastened my little, white fingers in his throat and tried to kill the wretch who had betrayed me."
"A murderess!" exclaimed Sydney, recoiling.
"My hands were all too weak and frail to wreak justice upon the villain," Queenie went on, heedless of her sister's ejaculation. "He pushed me off, he swore at me, he strangled me with his strong, white fingers, threw me down upon the earth and spurned me with his foot—aye, trampled upon me! You saw the purple print of his boot-heel on my brow, Sydney. It is here yet," she said, pushing back the fluffy waves of golden hair from her brow and showing the livid scar.