"I knew, of course," she continued, after a moment's thoughtful pause, "home was the proper place for my lover to woo me. I said as much to him. His ready excuse appeared perfectly sufficient in my silly eyes. He told me that he was a foreigner of high birth and rank, exiled from his native land through a political offense and that he had heard that my father was bitterly opposed to all foreigners. He, therefore, felt it to be quite hopeless to seek for the _entree_ to my father's house. Little simpleton that I was, I swallowed the whole stupendous lie because it was baited with the one single grain of truth--namely, the well-known fact that my father was bitterly prejudiced against all persons of foreign birth. I believed all he told me, and, worse than all, I believed that I was deeply and devotedly in love with him. That was the blind mistake of my life, Sydney. _Now_ I know that I was not in love with the _man_. It was the romance and poetry of his manner of wooing me, the mystery that surrounded him with an atmosphere of ideality that fascinated and infatuated me. I was very young and romantic, as he well knew when he set his artful trap for me. He knew too well how to bait it. It was only the wooing that I loved when I thought it was the wooer." Her voice broke a moment, and she buried her face in her hands. Sydney offered no comment, but sat as still and silent as a statue, regarding her intently. "Yet, why do I linger over those fatal hours?" resumed Queenie, with a heavy sigh. "They can have but little interest for you. I will briefly relate what came after. You remember, Sydney, how I left you all the day we started to Europe on the pretense of returning to remain with papa?" "Yes," Sydney answered, in a tone of scorn. "It was a preconcerted plan," said the actress, dropping her eyes in shame and remorse. "In less than an hour after I left you, Sydney, I met Leon Vinton and was married to him." "Married to him!" exclaimed Sydney, incredulously. The blue eyes and the black ones met for a moment--one pair cold and incredulous, the others full of raging scorn. "Sydney, you are cruel!" exclaimed Queenie, indignantly. "How else should I have gone away with him? I was as pure and innocent as a little child. There was not a thought of evil in my heart. I would have died the most horrible death that could be conceived of before I would have willfully sinned." "Why, then, did you not confess the truth when you came home?" asked Sydney. "If you were married, where was your husband? Why did you suffer us to think worse things of you?"