He reached out and laid one trembling hand on the fair head still crowned with the orange wreath. His words, though they seemed to the physicians but the purposeless ravings of a disordered fancy, burnt themselves upon her memory as if written in fire. "Georgie, forgive her--she was more sinned against than sinning--and she went mad and avenged the wrongs--remember that when she comes back." "Queenie is _dead_, papa," sobbed Lady Valentine. "Dead--who said that Queenie is dead?" he asked, looking vacantly about him. The physician came forward and forced a composing draught upon him. "Do the vagaries of illness often assume such forms as this?" inquired Sydney's clear voice from the foot of the bed, where she stood supporting the form of her hysterical mother. "As what, miss?" inquired the physician, politely. "These strange and dreadful fancies about--about my sister," she answered, flushing slightly. "His words, if _rational_, would imply so much." "But taken as the ravings of a disordered fancy they imply nothing," answered he, quickly. "He is not conscious of what he says. The shock of your sister's sudden death has simply assumed some other form to his delirious brain. Who can fathom the mysterious workings of a mind diseased?" Sydney glanced furtively across at Captain Ernscliffe. He was listening, and his heavy, grief-filled gaze met her strange, inscrutable one. "Do not distress yourself, Sydney," he said, very gently, "it is only the raving of a mind distraught. Of course we know that our lost darling"--his voice broke and quivered over the words and he paused a moment and repeated them--"of course we know that our lost darling was as pure as the snow. She never could have sinned." "Who says that she sinned?" exclaimed Mr. Lyle, rousing slightly from the stupor stealing over him. "Who says that she sinned? Let him among you that is without sin, cast the first stone!" He fell back exhausted on his pillow, and never spoke again. With the first faint glimmer of the dawn the flickering spark of his life went out--went out so gently that they could scarcely tell what moment the soul was released from its earthly tabernacle. His heart had been a tender one, more tender than is often found in man, and his youngest daughter had been his idol all her life long. Her protracted absence and her terrible return had strained the chords of his heart almost to breaking--her sudden death had snapped them asunder. Two days later they buried the two who had been so fondly united in life, side by side, in a green and quiet graveyard, away from the noise and tumult of the great, crowded city, and Lawrence Ernscliffe, as he stood by the grave, calm to all outward appearance, though pale as sculptured marble, when he turned away left all the heart he ever had to give buried in the low mound that held his lost little Queenie.