She looked up at the manager as he bent over her. A gleam of recognition came into her eyes. "I am dying," she said, in a faint, gasping voice. "Let someone go into the theater and bring Captain Ernscliffe! Don't let anyone else know I am here! Queenie--I mean--Madame De Lisle--must not know! Let the play go on." At that moment they brought a physician, summoned in haste from his seat in the theater. He knelt down and tried to draw the dagger from her breast, but desisted in a moment and shook his head ominously. "Tell me the truth," she moaned. "How many minutes have I to live?" The physician looked down at her with a grave pity in his kindly eyes. "Only as long as the dagger remains in the wound," he answered, gently. "When that is removed you will bleed to death in a minute." She clasped both hands around the murderous steel as if to drive it deeper into her heart. "Let it remain there, then," she gasped, "I have something to say before--I go hence!" "Great Heaven! who has done this?" exclaimed a shocked voice. They all looked around. It was Captain Ernscliffe who spoke. He knelt down by his wife and looked at the murderous dagger whose hilt she grasped, with eyes full of horror. The pain in her face softened. She put out one hand to him, and he clasped it in his own. "Lawrence--I have been--cruelly murdered!" she moaned. "Let someone take my dying deposition." The manager hurriedly produced pencil and paper. "I went into Madame De Lisle's dressing-room," she began. "She had not come in, and I waited a little while, wishing to speak to her. Have you put that down?" The manager replied in the affirmative. "I saw a sealed letter lying on the table," she went on slowly and painfully; "I was jealous of Madame De Lisle, to whom it was addressed. I thought my husband had written it. I opened it--I--read it." The physician stopped her a minute to pour a few drops of something between her panting lips. Then she went on: "It was only a line imploring her to meet him for a moment at the western door. No name was signed, but I was foolish enough to believe it was--my husband." Her dark eyes lifted to his a moment with a mute appeal for forgiveness in their dusky depths. He pressed her hand and murmured: "My poor Sydney!" She lay still a moment while great drops of dew beaded her white brow, forced out by her terrible suffering. "Can we do nothing to help her?" Captain Ernscliffe inquired anxiously, as he pillowed the dark head gently on his arm. The physician shook his head gravely. "No--nothing," Sydney answered him herself. "Only stay by me--till the last. Let me finish my story." Captain Ernscliffe wiped the cold dews of death from her brow and she continued: "I took Madame De Lisle's cloak and put it over my dress, I tied her veil about my head and face, and--and--went to the western door--myself! Oh! God, this dagger, how it hurts my side!" A few moans of terrible agony, then she went on, gaspingly: