The glare of that hatred of which she spoke flamed luridly up in his dark eyes. "That is the very reason that I brought you back," he answered; "because I hated you, and because I intended to make your life one long, insufferable weariness to you until you die." Again she looked at him with wonder. Her gentler nature could not fathom the cruel vindictiveness of his. "Oh, Leon," she gasped, "you would not be so cruel? Think of all that I have suffered at your hands already. Let me go, I beg you! I am so young, I may make something of my life yet, if I can only go back to the good, true man I have already learned to love and honor." The words seemed to madden him. "Never!" he shouted, hoarsely, with a terrible oath. "Never! I hate Lawrence Ernscliffe--I have an old grudge against him. I will have my revenge on you both. You shall stay here, locked in these four walls, a hated prisoner, as long as you live. Mrs. Bowers shall be your jailer, and here you shall dwell, eating your heart out in abject wretchedness and misery unutterable. Do you like the picture? _Au revoir, Mrs. Ernscliffe!_" CHAPTER XII. Queenie heard the key grate in the lock and sprang up, uttering wild shrieks of passion and despair, almost beside herself with the horror of her new situation. But no response came to her frenzied screams and cries. Perhaps those gilded walls had echoed such wails of agony before, and the hearts of those who heard them had grown callous with long familiarity. She ran up and down the room like one mad, alternately skrieking and beating upon the locked door, until she fell upon the floor, conquered by sheer exhaustion. She lay there awhile, then sprang up restlessly again. "I will endure it no longer," she said, passionately; "I will throw myself down from the window and kill myself!" Full of that wild, suicidal resolve, she ran to the window and pushed up the sash. The night was far spent, and that awful darkness that comes just before dawn obscured everything, its blackness intensified by the drizzling rain that still poured steadily down. Queenie fell upon her knees with the rain beating in upon her white face and long, flowing hair, and clasped her little hands together as her father had taught her to do when she was but a toddling baby-girl. "Oh, God!" she prayed, lifting her lovely, despairing face to the dark sky as if to catch a glimpse of the all-merciful Father to whom she appealed. "Oh, God, pity and forgive me for sending my soul uncalled for before its divine Maker. And, Heavenly Father, whatever of wrong I have committed, do Thou pity and pardon it. That sin with which I stand charged Thou knowest I would have died a thousand deaths rather than willfully commit it, and----" She paused, overcome by agonized recollections, and rising, peered out into the darkness below.