"After that I remember nothing more for several hours," she went on, seeing that Sydney made no answer, "and he must have thought that he had killed me, for when I came to myself I was lying in a grave, a very shallow grave. I was covered with fresh earth and dead leaves, which the hard and steady rain had partly beaten aside, leaving my face exposed. My murderer had not buried me deep enough. I sprang up out of the shallow hole in which he had laid me, my heart beating wildly with hatred and the thirst for revenge. All the hours of unconsciousness, all the rain and cold that had chilled my body had not cooled the fire of hate, the murderous instinct that possessed me. It seemed to me that nothing could wipe out my wrongs except Leon Vinton's blood."
"And this is the innocent little child that used to be my father's pet!" exclaimed the listener, with a shudder.
"Yes," said Queenie, mournfully. "It seems strange, does it not? I, who only four years ago was the petted child of my father's heart—now I am dead to all that once knew and loved me. I have gone wrong. I have wandered into strange paths. I have buried peace and joy. I have broken my father's heart—all for the sin of one man—man did I say? Nay, rather a devil in the guise of an angel of light!"
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
If Sydney's heart had been less hard than marble she must have pitied the beautiful, unfortunate young sister so sadly rehearsing the story of her terrible wrongs.
But she uttered no word of sympathy or pity, she did not take the golden head upon her breast and weep over it as a loving sister would have done. She only said, in her cold, hard, jealous voice:
"Go on, Queenie. You went home to papa then?"
"No, I did not. I went back to the beautiful cottage where I had lived in a fool's Paradise one fatal year. Before I reached there I saw him standing alone on the banks of the river. I told you I thirsted for his blood. Nothing could have cooled the fire of my terrible hate but his life-blood poured out in a free libation. His back was turned to me, he neither saw nor heard me. I crept up behind him, I—oh, Sydney, do not look at me so! Remember it was not little Queenie, but a woman gone mad over her terrible wrongs. I could not help it. I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him down into the river!"
"You are even worse than I thought you, Queenie," exclaimed her sister; "yet you—a Magdalen, a murderess—you dared to come back to us and to marry Captain Ernscliffe!"