At little Queenie's sudden and terrible appearance Mrs. Lyle and the two elder sisters screamed aloud in fright and horror, and even the agonized father recoiled a moment from the dreadful-looking creature that lay at his feet to all appearances dead.

Directly, however, with a strong revulsion of feeling from dismay and terror to pity and tenderness, he bent down and lifted the white face of his daughter on his arm.

Her head fell back helplessly, and the wet and matted locks of gold trailed over the velvet carpet, drenching it with rain-drops. The long, dark lashes lay close upon the marble-white cheeks and no breath fluttered over the pale, parted lips to show that life still dwelt in the frame of the hapless girl.

A cry of agony broke from the lips of the poor father whose fondest affections had been concentrated on the daughter now lying lifeless in his arms.

"Oh, God! oh, God! what fearful mystery is here? Queenie is dead; and oh! those horrible marks upon her throat and brow! Someone has murdered my little darling!"

Again the frightened shrieks of the women rose above the dreadful tumult of the storm outside. They huddled together by the marble hearth, shuddering as though afraid to approach that dreadful-looking object that had come upon them with the face of the little Queenie they had alternately scolded and petted in the past. Mr. Lyle looked at them with a keen reproach and pain in his heavy eyes.

"Queenie is dead," he said to them, in a hollow, broken voice. "Why do you stand aloof from her?"

His lips were white, and he trembled so that he could scarcely hold the still form that lay so helpless in his arms. But even as he spoke, her lips parted in a faint and scarce audible sigh, the eyelids fluttered slightly and grew still again.

"No, no, she lives!" he cried, rapturously. "Quick, quick! let us take her to her room and apply restoratives."

He lifted her in his arms and the women mechanically followed him as he bore her to her room and laid her down upon her little white bed. Then he turned around with the dazed look gone from his white face and a gleam of resolution there instead.

"There is some dreadful mystery here," he said, in deep, low tones. "The servants must not know of this. Let them think that she came back with you from Europe. Sydney and Georgie, you may retire to your rooms. Your mamma and I will do all that is necessary."

Frightened and weeping the girls went away to their rooms and the fearfully stricken parents went to work to restore life in the exhausted frame of poor little Queenie.

They bathed and dressed the wound upon her brow, laved the fearfully discolored throat with arnica, wrung and dried the dripping golden tresses, and lastly Mrs. Lyle removed her soiled, wet garments and robed her in a pretty nightdress. All the while the hapless girl lay still and motionless, without a sign of life save an occasional quiver of the eyelids, and a faint, scarce perceptible throbbing in her wrist.

"My dear, you are tired and overcome," Mr. Lyle said to his wife when they had done all that was possible. "Go to your room and rest. I will stay here and watch by our little girl."

Mrs. Lyle leaned her head on his shoulder and burst into hysterical weeping.

"Oh! what does it mean?" she moaned, wringing her hands. "Where, oh! where, has Queenie been this past year?"

"My dear, we shall know when she revives, if she ever does. Go now and rest," he answered, pushing her gently from the room.

He went back to his lonely vigil and watched the weary night through by that silent form upon the bed. Now and then he rose and poured a few drops of wine between the pale, unconscious lips and sat down again with his finger upon the fluttering, thread-like pulse. At length, between the dark and the dawn, Queenie opened her eyes upon his face, sighed, and murmured:

"Papa!"

He bent over her anxiously.

"You are better, darling?" he said.

"I am better," she answered faintly.

There was silence a little while after that. She lay quite still with her large, hollow eyes fixed wistfully on her father's pale and troubled face as he bent over her, holding her white and wasted hand in both his own. Everything was very still about the house. The storm outside had spent itself, and only now and then the fitful muttering of the "homeless wind" reminded one of the war of the elements that had raged so fiercely a few hours ago.

Mr. Lyle's voice, hoarse, trembling, agonized, broke strangely upon the utter stillness:

"Queenie, where have you been all this long, dreadful year?"

Queenie turned her face and buried it in the pillow, and a low sob of utter agony answered him only.

Again he repeated the question, this time more firmly and resolutely.

"Oh! papa, must I tell you?" she moaned, without lifting her face from its friendly refuge.

"Yes, Queenie, I must have a full explanation of your mysterious absence, for I fear it covers wrong or guilt. Secrecy is seldom without sin," he answered, in a firm but heart-wrung voice.

His daughter wrung her white hands, moaning and weeping.

"Oh! papa, I cannot, cannot tell you," she exclaimed.

Mr. Lyle took the white hands that were wildly beating the air, and held them firmly in both his own.

"Be calm, Queenie," he said, "and listen to me. There can be no question of cannot between you and me! You have deceived us all and spent a year away from us. You return to us wretched and alone, with the marks of cruel violence upon your person. What are we to think of you, Queenie, if you refuse to explain the mystery? How can we receive you back with a secret, perhaps a shameful one, in your life? I must have your vindication from your own lips, my poor child. Answer me, Queenie, where have you spent this missing year of your life?"

She wrenched her hands away and looked about her wildly.

"Let me go—I cannot stay here! Oh! why did I ever come?" she wailed. "I was mad, mad!"

He laid her forcibly back upon the bed. She was too weak to resist him, and lay panting and moaning in wild despair.

"Queenie, you torture me," he said, hoarsely; "I must have the truth from you. Tell me, dear, has anyone wronged you? If it is so, I will have the villain's heart's blood!"

She shivered and trembled where she lay held down by his strong hands.

"Too late," she moaned, in a voice half-triumphant, half-despairing. "I have taken vengeance into my own hands—I have," she broke off shivering and sobbing, with a look of awful horror in the white face with the terrible, purple print of a boot-heel on the marble brow.

"Tell me all, dear," he said, his voice sharp with anxiety and foreboding.

She looked up, trembling and shivering, and wailed out:

"Papa, be merciful—spare me, spare me!"

He made no answer. His head was bowed on his hands, his face hidden. Queenie looked at him and saw with a sudden sharp pang how strangely his clustering locks had whitened in the past year. She raised herself up and threw her arms around him, laying her cheek against his shoulder.

"Papa," she whispered, mournfully, "look up—I will tell you all—but only to you, you alone, dearest and best of fathers—can I reveal the terrible secret that has ruined my life!"

With her cheek against his shoulder and her hand locked in his, Queenie Lyle poured forth in burning words the story of that missing year—the saddest story to which her father had ever listened—yet he made no comment, uttered no word, until she had finished and thrown herself down at his feet with the wailing cry:

"Papa, can you ever forgive me?"

He did not try to lift her up as she lay there. He only said in a deep, intense voice, with a lightning flash in his deep eyes:

"Queenie, you have forgotten to tell me one thing—his name."

She shuddered from head to foot.

"Papa, it is the only thing I must keep from you—that hated name! What matters it? Is he not beyond the reach of your vengeance?"

"True, true," he answered with a strong shudder. "Oh, Queenie, my poor child, would to God I had died before this terrible thing came upon me!"

She crept nearer him and rested her bowed head on his knee, all her glorious, golden tresses sweeping to the floor.

His heart ached as he saw that bright head lying there bowed low with shame and disgrace.

"Papa," she whispered, in a voice like saddest music, "papa, do you condemn me?"

He was silent a moment, struggling with the keenest agony he had ever known. Then he answered very gently:

"My poor Queenie, I forgive you." Then added in the words of the great Teacher of men: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."

And the first beams of the newly risen day shone into the room and crowned his gray head like a halo of light.