"Let us go home, mother, I am tired already. The play is sickening; I always thought so."

It is Sydney who speaks, and her voice is full of restless discontent.

She is in a box at the theater, looking brilliantly beautiful in black velvet and diamonds.

The place is packed from pit to dome; but in the dazzling rows of fair faces, there is not one handsomer than hers, even now when it is marred by that look of impatience, almost anger, that rests upon it like a threatening cloud upon a summer sky.

Mrs. Lyle, a passionate lover of the drama, turns a look of dismay upon her handsome daughter.

"Oh, not yet," she said quickly. "I would not miss seeing the play through for anything!"

"You have seen it often enough before," objects Sydney. "But if you are determined to stay I will go alone, if Lord Valentine will put me into the carriage."

"Don't go yet," says Lord Valentine, turning his eyes a moment from the stage to glance at his sister-in-law a trifle impatiently. "At least wait until Ernscliffe comes."

"He does not appear to be coming at all. I will not wait for him," Sydney answers, and the look of discontent deepens into downright vexation.

At that moment the box door opens and a gentleman comes up behind her chair.

Georgina turns quickly.

"Ah, Captain Ernscliffe, you are just in time," she says. "Here is Sydney trying to persuade us to go home before the play is half over. Perhaps you can induce her to wait."

Sydney looks up to him and a tender smile curves her crimson lips.

"You are late," she murmurs.

"I was detained," he answers, carelessly. "How are you enjoying the performance of the great actress?"

Her lip curls scornfully.

"Not at all. I am tired of the whole sickening thing. Will you take me home?"

"Is the balcony scene over yet?" he asks.

"Oh, no," Lady Valentine answers; "only the first act."

"Do you really want to go, Sydney?" he asks.

"I really want to go," she answers, rising and drawing her opera cloak about her white shoulders.

He gives her his arm in silence, and leads her away, puts her into the carriage, and they are whirled rapidly homeward; but when he sees her safely inside Lord Valentine's handsome house he turns to go back.

"You will not leave me?" Sydney says, pleadingly, and laying her white, jeweled hand on his black coat sleeve.

"I wish to see the play out," he answers, with a touch of impatience in his voice.

"I assure you it is not worth seeing. The acting is merely mediocre. Madame De Lisle has been greatly over-rated," she urges, with a tone of anxiety in her voice, as she looks down, almost afraid that he will detect the falsehood she is telling in her eager face.

"You make me more curious than ever," he answers, lightly. "I must certainly see her and judge for myself. Perhaps the wonderful beauty over which men rave so much has blinded the judgment of the critics. Au revoir!"

He frees himself from her clasp gently but firmly, and runs down the steps.

Sydney stands as he has left her, the rich cloak falling from her shoulders, her hands clasped before her, a tearless misery looking forth from her dark eyes.

"I have lied to him and gained nothing by it," she murmurs, in a passionate undertone. "He will go back there, he will see that terrible resemblance that shocked us all, and he will be reminded of the one whom I wish him to forget. Oh, it is a dreadful coincidence! The same name, the same face, the same voice! If we had lost her in any way save by death, I could have sworn that it was Queenie herself that I saw to-night dancing on the stage at Lady Capulet's ball."

Captain Ernscliffe hastened back to the theater, anxious to be in time for the second act, which is a favorite with all admirers of "Romeo and Juliet."

Lord Valentine glances around as he enters the box and drops into a chair.

"Ah, Ernscliffe," he says; "just in time. The balcony scene is on."

Ernscliffe leans forward, scanning the stage eagerly, and quite unconscious that his three companions in the box are regarding him with curious eyes, anxious to note what impression the great actress would produce upon him.

He sees the sighing Romeo walking about and soliloquizing in the garden of the hostile Capulet, the gentle Juliet in the balcony above him. His dark eyes rest on her for a moment; then he gives a violent start.

"Heaven!" he mutters under his breath, and grows pale beneath his olive skin.

"He can see the likeness, too," Lady Valentine whispered to her mother.

Rapt, spellbound, like one in a bewildering dream, Captain Ernscliffe bends forward, the deep pallor of painful emotion on his dusk, handsome face, his dark eyes fixed on the hapless young Juliet in a wild, astonished, incredulous gaze as she leans upon the balcony, murmuring words of love to handsome young Romeo in the garden beneath. It was no wonder, for Juliet, in her fair, young beauty, her misty, white robe, looped with rosebuds, her floating curls of gold, is the exact and perfect counterpart of Queenie Lyle when he first met her at Mrs. Kirk's grand ball. Not a tone of her voice, not a curve of her lip, not the fall of a ringlet differs from the lovely girl who had won his heart that never-to-be-forgotten night—the peerless bride that death had torn from his arms in the very moment that he claimed her as his own!

Like one in a dream he listened and looked. He heard Romeo exclaim in deep and passionate accents:

And Juliet interrupted in those silver-sweet tones so strangely familiar to his ear:

With those words:

Juliet raised her eyes that had been downcast and fixed on her lover, and looked upward as if to gaze upon the fair orb of which she spoke.

In that moment her dark-blue eyes, shining like stars of the night, encountered the fixed and passionate gaze of the handsome man in the box above her. She started—it was not his dreaming fancy—it was too palpable to all—recovered herself with an effort, and went on in a voice that trembled in spite of her brave endeavor:

"Great God! It is Queenie herself! Do the dead come back from the grave? I must see her, speak to her!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, in a passionate undertone, as he sprang up and turned toward the box door.

Lord Valentine, who had watched him attentively, caught him by the arm.

"Ernscliffe, are you mad? We all see the resemblance. It is accidental, of course. What would you do?"

Ernscliffe shook off his grasp roughly.

"Yes, I am mad!" he exclaimed, "for I believe that the dead is alive, and that yonder Juliet is my lost bride, Queenie Lyle!"

He opened the box door with a shaking hand and rushed wildly out.

La Reine Blanche went on with her part and acted more brilliantly than ever. She surpassed herself. She seemed under the influence of some strong excitement that lent new power and force to her superb rendition of Juliet. The vast and brilliant audience was fairly carried away.

At the close of the second act flowers fairly rained upon her. She was called back before the curtain and the thunders of applause shook the building.

Then the manager came to her with a little bit of pasteboard in his hand.

"Madame De Lisle," he said, "there is a gentleman outside who is so opportune in his desire to see you that I was forced to bring you his card, although I know you always refuse to make men acquaintances."

She took the card and read the name:

"Lawrence Ernscliffe."

"Will you see him?" asked the manager, seeing that she stood silent as if hesitating.

"No, no," she answered. "Tell him he must excuse me—I have to dress for my part in the third act."

The manager turned away and the beautiful actress pressed her lips passionately upon the insensible little bit of pasteboard she held in her white and jeweled hand.

"At last, at last!" she murmured, "yet I must not meet him to-night. I could not go on with my part—it would unfit me for anything. I must postpone my long-sought happiness yet a little longer. To-morrow—ah, to-morrow!"

She walked up and down, pressing her hands on her wildly beating heart as if to still its convulsive throbs.

"They say that happiness never kills," she said. "If it were otherwise I should feel afraid—my heart aches with joy—it seems as if it would burst, it is so full of happy emotion!"

She went back on the stage and a timid glance showed her Lawrence Ernscliffe back in the box looking terribly restless and disappointed. She was afraid to meet his eyes again, but she knew that he watched her through every scene, devouring every movement with passionate, yearning eyes.

At the close of the act she saw a lovely bouquet thrown from his hand, and picking it up she discovered a tiny note among the flowers.

When the curtain fell she read the hastily penciled lines:

"Madame De Lisle:—For God's sake let me see you, if only for a moment. I must speak to you; I shall go mad if you don't take pity on my anxiety and grant an interview to

"Lawrence Ernscliffe."

Tears came into the eyes of the beautiful actress as she read those lines; but when after another act the same card was handed her, she again refused to see the writer on pretence of dressing for her next appearance.

"To-morrow," she murmured to herself, "I will see him. To-night I cannot, I am utterly exhausted, I must have rest."

When the play was over she came out on the arm of the manager, her maid on the other side of her. As she stepped into her carriage she saw a dark, handsome face regarding her earnestly and a little reproachfully. The closing door sent it from sight, and she was whirled away to her hotel. She did not know that Captain Ernscliffe had sprung into a cab and followed her.

Neither did Captain Ernscliffe know that a mysterious-looking lady, heavily cloaked and veiled, had gotten into another cab and followed him.

It was Sydney, driven to desperation by her jealous misery.

She had returned to the theater sub rosa, and been a witness to Captain Ernscliffe's agitated recognition of the actress, and his subsequent persistent attempt to secure an interview with her. Heedless of everything, and rendered reckless by her indefinable dread of some impending evil, she determined to follow him and prevent, if possible, an interview between him and the brilliant actress who so strikingly resembled his lost and lamented bride.

It was midnight when the three vehicles drew up before the grand entrance of the hotel where La Reine Blanche had her elegant suite of apartments. She was crossing the pavement on the arm of her elderly duenna when a light touch arrested her footsteps. She turned and looked into the face of Captain Ernscliffe. It was white, wild, eager.

"One word, if you please, Madame De Lisle," he exclaimed, in an eager, agitated voice.

She paused a moment and clung tremblingly to the arm of her attendant.

"That is impossible to-night, sir," she answered in a low, constrained voice. "Call on me to-morrow at noon. I will hear you then."

Without another word she turned and fled up the steps. He stood looking at her blankly a moment, then re-entered his cab and was driven away. He did not notice the heavily-draped figure of a woman that had stood almost at his elbow, and that now ran lightly up the hotel steps, into the wide, lighted hall.