"_Queenie!_" burst from the quivering lips of the unhappy father. Yes, it was Queenie, but oh, how terribly changed! Her streaming golden hair, matted with mold and dead leaves, hung wet and cold over her shoulders. Her dress of dark silk was stained with great patches and wisps of dead autumn leaves. The tight bodice, open at the top, exposed her throat, which--oh, Heaven!--was marked round and round with the purple and red print of finger-marks as though she had been strangled. Her face was white as death, showing the plainer for its whiteness a mark upon her brow above her eyes--the horrible purple print of a man's boot heel on the tender flesh, from which a thin stream of blood trickled down on her ghastly face. A fearful--fearful apparition, strangely unlike little Queenie of other days. Yet it was Queenie, for she staggered blindly forward, and panting out: "Papa, papa, forgive!" fell in a lifeless heap at his feet. CHAPTER VI. At little Queenie's sudden and terrible appearance Mrs. Lyle and the two elder sisters screamed aloud in fright and horror, and even the agonized father recoiled a moment from the dreadful-looking creature that lay at his feet to all appearances dead. Directly, however, with a strong revulsion of feeling from dismay and terror to pity and tenderness, he bent down and lifted the white face of his daughter on his arm. Her head fell back helplessly, and the wet and matted locks of gold trailed over the velvet carpet, drenching it with rain-drops. The long, dark lashes lay close upon the marble-white cheeks and no breath fluttered over the pale, parted lips to show that life still dwelt in the frame of the hapless girl. A cry of agony broke from the lips of the poor father whose fondest affections had been concentrated on the daughter now lying lifeless in his arms. "Oh, God! oh, God! what fearful mystery is here? Queenie is _dead_; and oh! those _horrible_ marks upon her throat and brow! Someone has _murdered_ my little darling!" Again the frightened shrieks of the women rose above the dreadful tumult of the storm outside. They huddled together by the marble hearth, shuddering as though afraid to approach that dreadful-looking object that had come upon them with the face of the little Queenie they had alternately scolded and petted in the past. Mr. Lyle looked at them with a keen reproach and pain in his heavy eyes. "Queenie is _dead_," he said to them, in a hollow, broken voice. "Why do you stand aloof from her?" His lips were white, and he trembled so that he could scarcely hold the still form that lay so helpless in his arms. But even as he spoke, her lips parted in a faint and scarce audible sigh, the eyelids fluttered slightly and grew still again. "No, no, she _lives_!" he cried, rapturously. "Quick, quick! let us take her to her room and apply restoratives."