Costumes were laid over the backs of chairs, and the maid who should have been guarding them was "off duty," gossiping, no doubt, with some humble _attache_ of the place. There was little to interest one, and Sydney grew impatient. Suddenly she saw a letter lying carelessly on the toilet table. She took it up and looked at it. It was addressed to Madame De Lisle, and had never been unsealed. "It has been left here during the first act, and Queenie has never seen it," she said to herself. "It looks like my husband's writing. I will see what he has to say to her." Recklessly, desperately, she tore it open, and drew out the sheet of note paper. "MY DARLING," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. I _must_ see you a moment." No name was signed to the mysterious note, but Sydney felt sure that it was her husband's writing. "Queenie has deceived me," she said to herself, angrily. "She is in collusion with Lawrence. I might have known she would play me false!" She looked about her hurriedly. A long, black silk circular, lined with fur, hung over a chair. She put it on over her white dress, caught up a thick veil, winding it about her head and face, and hurried out to the retired western door. Outside in the darkness stood a tall, muffled form. "Queenie, is it you?" he said in unfamiliar tones. In a moment she realized her mistake. It was not her husband, but in the hope of unearthing some fatal mystery, she said softly: "Yes, it is Queenie." These words sealed her doom. The man sprang forward and caught her by the arm. Something bright and slender gleamed an instant in his upraised hand and then was sheathed in her heart. As her terrible scream of agony divided the shuddering air, he turned and fled from the scene of his crime. But poor Sydney, the victim of her own misguided passion lay there dying, with the deadly steel of the assassin sheathed in her jealous breast. CHAPTER XXXI. That wild and piercing cry penetrated to many ears. The manager and the actress heard it where they stood conversing together, and though Queenie did not know that it was Sydney's voice, still she grew pale as death, and an indefinable fear crept coldly around her heart. The manager put her into a chair, for he saw that she could not stand. "Stay here until I return," he said, "I will go and see what has happened." He hurried round to the western door from which the sound had seemed to proceed. A little knot of theater _attaches_ had preceded him. They were gathered round the prostrate form, and one had unwound the shrouding veil from her pale face and exposed it to the air and light. Her dark eyes were staring upward with a look of pain and horror in their starry depths, her face was ashen white, her lips quivered with faint, anguished moans, and her white, jeweled hands worked convulsively at the hilt of the dagger whose deadly blade was buried in her breast.