It was a dark and stormy night when the Lyles came home again. Mr. Lyle had not known when the _Europa_ would be in, so they took him by surprise when they drove up to the door that night. It was verging on to midnight and the domestics were all asleep, but Mr. Lyle was still up, poring over an account book. "This is a joyful surprise!" he exclaimed, as he led the way to the drawing-room and turned up the gas that he might look at their sweet faces clearly. Mrs. Lyle fell on his neck and embraced him, and Sydney, then Georgina, glided forward and touched his cheek with their lips. He looked behind them for the little one whom he had thought would be first to embrace him. "Queenie--where is Queenie?" he asked. Mrs. Lyle, slowly drawing off her gray kid gloves, looked at him in some surprise. "Bless the darling--is she not asleep?" she said. "It was so late and stormy that we expected you would all be in bed and asleep." The rain beat dismally outside, the wind howled like a demon in despair. Something of the chill and coldness outside seemed to strike to the man's heart as he said quickly: "The servants are all asleep--but Queenie--she is with you, of course?" "Why do you say _of course_, papa?" said Sydney. "Did Queenie come down to the steamer to meet us in this dreadful storm?" Mr. Lyle looked bewildered. "Sydney," he exclaimed hoarsely, "did not Queenie come home with you from Europe?" "Why, Papa, Queenie did not go with us, you know," said Georgina, coming forward, and laying her hand on his arm. "She came back to stay with you. Is she not at home?" Mr. Lyle dropped back into a chair, and wrung his hands like one distracted. "My God!" he exclaimed. "You torture me with your inexplicable words. I tell you I have never laid eyes on Queenie, living, since I bade her good-bye on the deck of the _Europa_ a year ago." "My God!" screamed Mrs. Lyle, falling down upon the floor, while Sydney and Georgina looked like statues of horror, "what has become of my little Queenie?" "Papa," said Sydney, in a trembling voice, "there is some dreadful mystery here. Queenie did not go to Europe with us. After you bade us good-bye that day on the steamer, she cried and wept, and almost went into hysterics, begging mamma to let her go back and stay with you, instead of going to Europe. She was so unmanageable that mamma consented at last, and she and her trunks were put on shore, and we went aboard without her. Did she not come home to you?" "No, never," groaned the wretched father, like one demented. "I have never seen her since that day. Oh, Queenie, my lost darling, where are you?" For a moment there came no answer to the question. They stood around spellbound with horror, while a peal of awful thunder reverberated outside and seemed to shake the house from its foundations. The next moment the door was burst violently open, and the dripping figure of a woman rushed into the room.