"Come," said Leon Vinton, "go home with me. My carriage is outside the gate. I merely chose to saunter in the park. You shall see her letters to me, you shall hear what my housekeeper knows about the matter." "I will go with you," said Captain Ernscliffe, rousing himself as from a painful dream. "But if I find that you have lied to me, Vinton, I will kill you!" CHAPTER XXXVII. "My poor Queenie, my poor child, you erred greatly in the deception you practiced in the beginning. It was wrong to desert your home and family as you did, but I cannot upbraid you now. Your punishment has been bitter enough. May God help you, my little one!" said Robert Lyle, smoothing the golden head that lay upon his knee with a gentle, fatherly caress. Queenie had come back from that ride which had begun so happily and found her Uncle Robert waiting for her in the drawing-room. He had declined her invitation to make his home with her, and taken quarters at a hotel, but there were very few days when he failed to visit her. To-day when she came staggering in, looking so fearfully white and death-stricken, he saw at once that some fearful thing had happened to her, and started up in alarm. "Queenie, my dear, what is it? Are you ill?" he exclaimed, going to her, and taking her cold, nerveless hand in his. She looked up at him, and Robert Lyle never forgot the tearless despair, the utter agony of her white face and wild, blue eyes. They haunted his dreams for many nights after. Yet she tried to smile, and the smile was sadder than tears. "I--I--yes, I believe I am ill," she said, dropping down into a great arm-chair. "I will sit here and rest, Uncle Rob! I shall be better presently." "Let me get you some wine," he said. "It will revive you." "No, no, I will not have anything!" she said. "Nothing could help me." The tone made his heart ache, it was so hopeless. He bent over her and removed her hat and gloves as deftly and tenderly as a woman could have done. His anxious looks, his tender solicitude made her think of her father. The tender recollection broke down the barriers of stony calm she was trying to maintain. Bowing her face on her hands she wept and sobbed aloud. Mr. Lyle was greatly shocked and distressed at her vehement exhibition of grief. He brought a chair, and sitting down beside her, put his kindly old arm about her heaving shoulders. "Tell your old uncle what grieves you, pet," he said. "Perhaps I can help to set it right." And after a little more passionate weeping she answered, without looking up: "It is one of those troubles that nothing can set right, Uncle Rob, but I will tell you the truth, for perhaps you may hear it from other lips than mine soon." She stole one hand into his and nestled her bright head against his shoulder. "Promise not to hate me, Uncle Rob," she whispered through her tears. "I have only you now. Father, mother, sisters, husband--I have lost them all. In all the wide world I have but you to love me!"