Mrs. Bowers went up the stairway and opened the door into a large, airy room, exquisitely furnished and draped with hangings of white lace over rose-colored silk. Costly pictures and statuettes adorned the walls, and all the appointments were of elegant design, and evidently selected regardless of expense. Mrs. Bowers held back the sweeping lace canopy of the low French bed, and the man laid his fair burden down upon it, after removing the dark cloak. "What ails her?" asked the woman, starting as a low moan broke from the lips of the only half-conscious girl. "I told you she was ill," he said, curtly. "She has been in a swoon. Get restoratives." Mrs. Bowers obeyed him, and was soon bathing the pale face and limp, nerveless hands, with refreshing perfume. Directly Queenie started up, passed her hand across her brow and looked about her. An expression of loathing swept across her face. "Are you glad to find yourself in your old quarters, my dear?" asked the man, sardonically, from the window to which he had retreated. She started as if someone had struck her a terrible blow, and looked across the room. Fear, horror, despair, were all blended in the look she cast upon his handsome, satanically smiling face. CHAPTER XI. Mrs. Bowers, seeing that her mistress had revived, lighted a brilliant jet of gas and went out. Queenie did not even notice her departure so intently was her gaze fixed on the man at the window, who stood there calm, _nonchalant_, even smiling, standing the scathing fire of her beautiful eyes like a soldier. "So," she said, at last, and there was surprise and regret both commingled in her tone, "so you are not _dead_!" "No thanks to you, little tigress," he answered, with a fierce, yellow light flaring into his black eyes. "You did your best to further that end." "I might have forseen how vain was the endeavor," she retorted, in passionate anger, and quoted an old saying: "They cannot be drowned who are born to be _hung_." He laughed in mockery at the bitter insinuation, but years after, when the light of Heaven shone on him through the grated bars of a prison cell, and he heard outside the horrible sound of the hammers driving the nails into his scaffold, he remembered the words with wonder, and thought she must have been gifted with "second-sight," as the Scotch called the gift of prophecy. "Now I know it was you that sent me the flowers," she said. "Why did you do it? They were poisoned!" "No, only drugged! It was a subtle drug I bought in the east long ago--a drug warranted to produce a long and sudden sleep perfectly resembling death." "Again I ask you, why did you do it?" she said, and her voice was full of wonder. "I wanted to get you into my power once more. That was the safest plan to effect it. I let them bury you, and then I resurrected you." "What did you want of me? You wearied of me before. Why not have let me go in peace?"