Some weird fascination utterly beyond her power of resistance always impelled her to meet his glance, and the fire in his beautiful, dark eyes; the passionate love, the terrible pain, the bitter reproach were killing her slowly but surely. And Lawrence Ernscliffe was going mad. He had no life, no thought, no hope outside the beautiful woman whom he had claimed for his wife, and who had so coldly denied him. He haunted her like her own shadow. Go where she would she saw him, look where she would she met only the eyes of the man she loved and to whom she belonged by the dearest tie on earth. He forgot Sydney utterly, or if he ever remembered her it was only with scorn. Her terrible sin had placed her beyond the pale of his tenderness forever. No reasoning, no sophistry could have convinced him that the beautiful actress was not his own wife whom he had lost in the very moment that made her his bride. He could not have explained himself. He did not understand at all the mysterious chance which had brought it about, yet he knew in his own heart that the woman whom he had seen in her coffin once had been restored to life again, and that the only bar to their happiness now was Sydney, whom he had married through a simple impulse of pity. CHAPTER XXX. It was the last night of Madame De Lisle's engagement. She would make her final appearance before the world in the beautiful tragedy of "King Lear." To-morrow she would retire to the conventional cloister forever. The theater was so densely packed that there was scarcely standing-room on this her farewell night. Lord Valentine and his wife and mother-in-law were in his box from which they had scarcely missed a night of the three weeks. Besides Mrs. Lyle's passionate love of the drama there was a subtle fascination in Madame De Lisle's strange resemblance to her youngest daughter that impelled her thither every night to gaze upon her with eyes that never wearied in looking on her loveliness. She could not have told why it was, but she was vaguely conscious of a troubled tenderness about her heart whenever she looked at the fair young creature and heard the talk of her going into a convent. "She makes me think of poor Queenie," she whispered to Georgina that night. "I cannot help feeling sorry for her, she is so like what she was." "The resemblance is startling, indeed," Lady Valentine whispered back, "but don't let Sydney hear you, mamma. She does not like to hear about it." Sydney made no sign, but she knew very well what they were talking of. She came to the theater every night, though she hated to be there. Jealousy drove her to look on her rival's face every night that she might also watch her husband. Poor Sydney! She sat there pale and haggard, and wretched in her white satin and diamonds, looking with jealous, suspicious eyes at the beautiful and gentle "Cordelia," hating her for the fairness that Lawrence Ernscliffe loved.