"Have you forgiven me, too, Lawrence?" He bent and kissed the poor, pale, quivering lips. "All is forgiven, Sydney," he answered, gently. "Then call the physician," she moaned. "Let him draw this cruel steel from--my breast! I cannot--bear it--any longer!" But the physician recoiled as Captain Ernscliffe had done when she told him what she wished him to do. "I should feel like a murderer," he gasped. "You could not live a minute after the blade was drawn out of your breast." She turned away from him and put out her hand to the man she loved so madly. "Farewell, Lawrence," she said. "Think of me sometimes as of one who--loved you--'not wisely, but too well!'" Then, before they even guessed what she was about to do, she clasped both hands about the dagger's hilt, and with a terrible effort wrenched it from her breast and threw it far from her. Her heart's blood spurted out in a great, warm, crimson tide over the bodice of her white satin dress, she quivered from head to foot, and died with her dim eyes fixed in a long, last look of love on Lawrence Ernscliffe's handsome face. * * * * * When the play was over, and the beautiful actress was leaving the theater for the last time, someone touched her arm and detained her. She looked up into the pale face of Captain Ernscliffe. "Nay, Queenie," he said gently, "you need not shrink from me now. Sydney has confessed all." She looked up at him in wonder as he drew her hand lovingly within his arm. "She has given you up to me, and you know _all_?" she repeated, like one dazed. "Yes, Queenie, I know all, and I am yours alone now, for--prepare yourself for a great shock, my darling--your sister, Sydney, is dead!" CHAPTER XXXII. "Dead!" exclaimed Queenie, with a start of horror; "oh, no, that cannot be! It is but a little while since I saw her living and beautiful under this roof!" "Her body is here still, Queenie, but her soul has fled to the God who gave it," he answered solemnly. She trembled like a leaf in a storm at that grave assurance. "Queenie, let me take you back to your dressing-room," he said. "Stay there a little while until I come for you." Utterly unnerved by the shock of his revelation, she suffered him to lead her back. He left her at the door of her room and went out to seek Lord Valentine. He had just put his wife and mother-in-law into the carriage, and stood talking with the driver on the pavement. "Yes sir," the man was saying, "you know you brought her out and put her into the carriage yourself, and I jumped up on the box and drove right off. But when I got to Valentine House, my lord, the carriage was empty. Yet I could swear to you, my lord, that the carriage was never stopped an instant between here and home." "Come with me, my lord," said Captain Ernscliffe, in a whisper, as he touched his arm, "I will explain the mystery."