She was not to recognize the actress as her sister, no matter what she thought.
So she strangled the thrill of pity at her heart, and answered in a cold, hard voice, quite unlike her own:
"Go away, Madame De Lisle. You are no sister of mine!"
Queenie turned from her with a heart-wrung sigh and went back to her mother.
"Mamma, let me kiss you once," she said, "only once, dear mamma, before I go away! I have loved you so, I have hungered for you so these long years while I have been away from you! Let me even kiss your hand, mamma, and I will try to be content. Oh! surely you will show me a little kindness if only for papa's sake, who loved me so dearly!"
But the mother's heart was turned to stone. She thrust away the clinging hands, she spurned the tender, beseeching lips.
"Go away," she harshly reiterated, "you are no child of mine. My daughter Queenie is dead and buried!"
The discarded daughter knelt down by Sydney's beautiful, lifeless clay and took the cold hand in hers, then kissed the white, breathless lips.
"Good-bye, Sydney," she whispered against the icy cheek. "You were kinder to me than they. You sought to kill my body, but they have broken my heart!"
She rose, after one long look of grief and pain, and went back to Captain Ernscliffe.