The letter dropped from Queenie's shaking hand, and she fell heavily into a seat, her slender form trembling with great, tearless emotion.

"Oh, God!" she moaned, "it is indeed a bitter cup that is pressed to my lips! A disowned daughter and sister, and a divorced wife!"

"What does he say, Queenie?" inquired her uncle, pausing in his weary march up and down the room.

She silently pointed to the letter that lay upon the carpet, where it had fallen from her hands.

He picked it up and read it, then turned his kindly blue eyes upon her with an expression of pity and distress.

"The scoundrel Vinton must indeed have traduced and maligned you to have elicited such a scathing letter from your devoted husband. Let me go and bring Lawrence to you, Queenie, that you may vindicate yourself."

But she shook her head sorrowfully yet firmly.

"No Uncle Rob; he asks for no defense from me; he tacitly accepts all that Vinton has told him as the truth. He will hear nothing from you or me. There is nothing left me but to hide myself somewhere in the great cruel world and die," she said, with inexpressible bitterness.

"Queenie, let me entreat you not to throw away your happiness thus. Let me explain everything to Lawrence as you have told it to me. He could not be hard upon you then. He would see how cruelly you had been wronged, and how much you had suffered for it. If he loves you as much as he has seemed to do he could not but forgive you."

She took the letter from his hand and glanced over its brief contents again.

"No, no, his love must have been dead indeed before he could write to me so cruelly as this. Let him think what he will, Uncle Rob. The best is bad enough; so why should I try to vindicate myself? He shall have his freedom since he wants it so much."

"But, my dear, surely you will not permit the divorce without contesting it? Think what a terrible thing it would be to remain silent in such a case. A divorced woman is always a disgraced woman in the eyes of the world, no matter how unjustly the verdict was given against her. It must not be permitted. We must engage a lawyer to defend your case. I do not believe that your husband could obtain a divorce from any court in the land if the truth of the matter were rightly known."

"Do you think that I would belong to him and bear his name against his will?" she exclaimed, with all the passion and fire of tone and gesture that had won her fame and fortune on the tragic stage. "No, never, never! I will not raise my hand to stay the divorce. I will be silent, whatever they lay to my charge. His quick unkindness, his readiness to believe evil against me, has been the bitterest of all to bear, but I will not speak one word to let him know it. My heart shall break in silence!"

He gave up the point, seeing that it was utterly useless to urge it upon her.

"Since you are determined to sacrifice yourself thus on the altar of Vinton's fiendish revenge," he said, "tell me what I can do for you, my poor child. You will not wish to remain at Ernscliffe's house, of course?"

"Of course not," she answered.

Then after a moment's thought, she said, abruptly:

"Why, Uncle Rob, I shall have to go upon the stage again. I had forgotten until this moment that I am poor, that I have nothing at all to live upon. When I gave up my theatrical career and returned to my husband, I deeded away, with his consent, all my earnings on the stage to build a free church for the poor of London."

"You shall never go upon the stage again with my consent," he answered. "I have enough for us both to live in luxury all our lives. It is true I have lost a few thousands recently by the failure of a bank, but that is a mere nothing. I am a very wealthy man yet. You shall be my dear and honored daughter so long as I live, Queenie, and my heiress when I die."

She thanked him with a silent, eloquent glance.

"And now," he continued, "it will not do for you to remain in Ernscliffe's house any longer than to-morrow. Let your maid pack your trunks for you to-night, and to-morrow I will take you away to some health resort—the mountains or the seashore—anywhere you like, so that I get you out of this city."

"And I shall never see my husband again," she said, clasping her hands with a gesture of despair. "Oh, how fleeting and evanescent was my dream of happiness! How can I live without him now, when I have been so happy with him?"

Uncle Robert took her tenderly in his arms, and kissed her white forehead.

"It is hard, dear," he said, "but we learn after awhile to do without the things that have been dearest to us on earth. I lost the darling of my heart many years ago. It was very hard to bear at first, but after awhile I learned patience and resignation."

"You have loved and lost?" she said, looking at him in great surprise.

"Yes, pet. Did you think I was a crusty, forlorn old bachelor from choice? No, no; I was betrothed to a sweet and lovely girl in my early youth, but she went away to live with the angels, and I have been true to her memory ever since."

"Poor uncle! I did not know you had so sad a secret in your life," she said, with the dew of sympathy shining in her beautiful blue eyes.

"Every heart knoweth its own bitterness," answered the kind, old man, sadly.

The next day he took her away to the seashore, hoping that the change of air and scene might divert her mind from its sorrows.

It was a vain hope. Her terrible trouble was too deeply graven on her mind. She became ill the day they took possession of their cottage, and for several weeks lay tossing with fever, closely attended by a skillful physician and two careful old nurses, while Mr. Lyle veered to and fro, his gentle heart nearly broken by this unexpected stroke of fate.

But at length, when they had almost begun to despair of her recovery, her illness took a sudden turn for the better.

She began to convalesce slowly but surely, and one day she turned the nurses out of the room and sent for her Uncle Robert.

"I want to ask you something," she said, putting her feverish, wasted little hand into his strong, tender clasp.

"I am listening, dear," he answered, kindly.

"Has—has that divorce been granted yet?" she inquired, flushing slightly.

"Oh, no, my dear. Your husband has applied for it, but they have been waiting since your illness to know what steps you will take in the matter—whether or not you would engage a lawyer and contest the divorce. I would not give them any satisfaction while you were sick, for I thought you might change your mind."

"I have changed my mind, Uncle Rob," she said. "I mean to contest the divorce. There is a reason now" (she blushed and drooped her eyes from his perplexed gaze) "why I should try to save my fair fame as much as I can. Not that I wish to live with Lawrence again, whether there is a divorce or not, but I wish to defend my own honor and leave behind me as pure a name as I can. You will secure an able lawyer for me, will you not, Uncle Robbie?"

"Yes, darling, you shall have the best counsel that money can procure," he answered, deeply moved at her earnest words.