"How did he know she would come back?" thought Lady Valentine to herself, in wonder. "We all thought she was dead then. But perhaps dying eyes can see more clearly than others. Poor papa, must I go against his dying charge to me?" Then she remembered what her husband had said to her a little while ago: "Georgie, do not forget that you have married into a proud old family. Think of the disgrace to us all if you should own this impostor for your sister! True, she is beautiful and gifted, but what then? She is an _actress_! The men and women of our race do not descend to such. They amuse us on the stage--these clever people. We pay for our amusement, and that ends all. We have nothing in common. Do not allow this clever, deceitful woman to impose on you as she did on your brother-in-law." Lady Valentine knew quite well what those words meant. She was not to recognize the actress as her sister, no matter what she thought. So she strangled the thrill of pity at her heart, and answered in a cold, hard voice, quite unlike her own: "Go away, Madame De Lisle. You are no sister of mine!" Queenie turned from her with a heart-wrung sigh and went back to her mother. "Mamma, let me kiss you once," she said, "only once, dear mamma, before I go away! I have loved you so, I have hungered for you so these long years while I have been away from you! Let me even kiss your hand, mamma, and I will try to be content. Oh! surely you will show me a little kindness if only for papa's sake, who loved me so dearly!" But the mother's heart was turned to stone. She thrust away the clinging hands, she spurned the tender, beseeching lips. "Go away," she harshly reiterated, "you are no child of mine. My daughter Queenie is dead and buried!" The discarded daughter knelt down by Sydney's beautiful, lifeless clay and took the cold hand in hers, then kissed the white, breathless lips. "Good-bye, Sydney," she whispered against the icy cheek. "You were kinder to me than they. You sought to kill my body, but they have broken my heart!" She rose, after one long look of grief and pain, and went back to Captain Ernscliffe. "I have only you left, Lawrence," she said, mournfully. "I will be father, mother, sister, husband--everything to you, my darling," he answered, fondly, as he drew her hand in his arm. "Put me in the carriage now," she said. "I am very weary. I must go home." "You will have to be present at the inquest to-morrow. Did you know that?" he said. "Yes, I will be there. Good-night, Lawrence," she said, putting her hand out from the carriage window. He clasped and kissed it, then after watching the carriage out of sight, went back to where the mourners kept their weary vigil by the side of the beautiful woman who had loved him so fondly and fatally. CHAPTER XXXIII.