The Midnight Queen by May Agnes Fleming (best books under 200 pages txt) 📖

of murdering him, I confess I do not know."

"Then you shall!" she cried, passionately. "And you will wonder at it no longer! You are the last one to whom the revelation can ever be made on earth; and, now that my hours are numbered, it matters little whether it is told or not! Was it not you who first found him dead?"

"It was I--yes. And how he came to his end, I have been puzzling myself in vain to discover ever since."

She rose up, drew herself to her full majestic height, and looked at him with a terrible glance,

"Shall I tell you?"

"You have had no hand in it," he answered, with a cold chill at the tone and look, "for he loved you!"

"I have had a hand in it--I alone have been the cause of it. But for me he would be living still!"

"Madame," exclaimed Sir Norman, in horror.

"You need not look as if you thought me mad, for I tell you it is Heaven's truth! You say right--he loved me; but for that love he would be living now!"

"You speak in riddles which I cannot read. How could that love have caused his death, since his dearest wishes were to be granted to-night?"

"He told you that, did he?"

"He did. He told me you were to remove your mask; and if, on seeing you, he still loved you, you were to be his wife."

"Then woe to him for ever having extorted such a promise from me! Oh, I warned him again, and again, and again. I told him how it would be--I begged him to desist; but no, he was blind, he was mad; he would rush on his own doom! I fulfilled my promise, and behold the result!"

She pointed with a frantic gesture to the plague-pit, and wrung her beautiful hands with the same moaning of anguish.

"Do I hear aright?" said Sir Norman, looking at her, and really doubting if his ears had not deceived him. "Do you mean to say that, in keeping your word and showing him your face, you have caused his death?"

"I do. I had warned him of it before. I told him there were sights too horrible to look on and live, but nothing would convince him! Oh, why was the curse of life ever bestowed upon such a hideous thing as I!"

Sir Norman gazed at her in a state of hopeless bewilderment. He had thought, from the moment he saw her first, that there was something wrong with her brain, to make her act in such a mysterious, eccentric sort of way; but he had never positively thought her so far gone as this. In his own mind, he set her down, now, as being mad as a March hare, and accordingly answered in that soothing tone people use to imbeciles,

"My dear Madame Masque, pray do not excite yourself, or say such dreadful things. I am sure you would not willfully cause the death of any one, much less that of one who loved you as he did."

La Masque broke into a wild laugh, almost worse to hear than her former despairing moans.

"The man thinks me mad! He will not believe, unless he sees and knows for himself! Perhaps you, too, Sir Norman Kingsley," she cried, changing into sudden fierceness, "would like to see the face behind this mask?--would like to see what has slain your friend, and share his fate?"

"Certainly," said Sir Norman. "I should like to see it; and I think I may safely promise not to die from the effects. But surely, madame, you deceive yourself; no face, however ugly--even supposing you to possess such a one--could produce such dismay as to cause death."

"You shall see."

She was looking down into the plague-pit, standing so close to its cracking edge, that Sir Norman's blood ran cold, in the momentary expectation to see her slip and fall headlong in. Her voice was less fierce and less wild, but her hands were still clasped tightly over her heart, as if to ease the unutterable pain there. Suddenly, she looked up, and said, in an altered tone:

"You have lost Leoline?"

"And found her again. She is in the power of one Count L'Estrange."

"And if in his power, pray, how have you found her?"

"Because we are both to meet in her presence within this very hour, and she is to decide between us."

"Has Count L'Estrange promised you this?"

"He has."

"And you have no doubt what her decision will be?"

"Not the slightest."

"How came you to know she was carried off by this count?"

"He confessed it himself."

"Voluntarily?"

"No; I taxed him with it, and he owned to the deed; but he voluntarily promised to take me to her and abide by her decision."

"Extraordinary!" said La Masque, as if to herself. "Whimsical as he is, I scarcely expected he would give her up no easily as this."

"Then you know him, madame?" said Sir Norman, pointedly.

"There are few things I do not know, and rare are the disguises I cannot penetrate. So you have discovered it, too?"

"No, madame, my eyes were not sharp enough, nor had I sufficient cleverness, even, for that. It was Hubert, the Earl of Rochester's page, who told me who he was."

"Ah, the page!" said La Masque, quickly. "You have then been speaking to him? What do you think of his resemblance to Leoline?"

"I think it is the most astonishing resemblance I ever saw. But he is not the only one who bears Leoline's face."

"And the other is?"

"The other is she whom you sent me to see in the old ruins. Madame, I wish you would tell me the secret of this wonderful likeness; for I am certain you know, and I am equally certain it is not accidental."

"You are right. Leoline knows already; for, with the presentiment that my end was near, I visited her when you left, and gave her her whole history, in writing. The explanation is simple enough. Leoline, Miranda, and Hubert, are sisters and brother."

Some misty idea that such was the case had been struggling through Sir Norman's slow mind, unformed and without shape, ever since he had seen the trio, therefore he was not the least astonished when he heard the fact announced. Only in one thing he was a little disappointed.

"Then Hubert is really a boy?" he said, half dejectedly.

"Certainly he is. What did you take him to be?"

"Why, I thought--that is, I do not know," said Sir Norman, quite blushing at being guilty of so much romance, "but that he was a woman in disguise. You see he is so handsome, and looks so much like Leoline, that I could not help thinking so."

"He is Leoline's twin brother--that accounts for it. When does she become your wife?"

"This very morning, God willing!" raid Sir Norman, fervently.

"Amen! And may her life and yours be long and happy. What becomes of the rest?"

"Since Hubert is her brother, he shall come with us, if he will. As for the other, she, alas! is dead."

"Dead!" cried La Masque. "How? When? She was living, tonight!"

"True! She died of a wound."

"A wound? Surely not given by the dwarfs hand?"

"No, no; it was quite accidental. But since you know so much of the dwarf, perhaps you also know he is now the king's prisoner?"

"I did not know it; but I surmised as much when I discovered that you and Count L'Estrange, followed by such a body of men, visited the ruin. Well, his career has been long and dark enough, and even the plague seemed to spare him for the executioner. And so the poor mock-queen is dead? Well, her sister will not long survive her."

"Good Heavens, madame!" cried Sir Norman, aghast. "You do not mean to say that Leoline is going to die?"

"Oh, no! I hope Leoline has a long and happy life before her. But the wretched, guilty sister I mean is, myself; for I, too, Sir Norman, am her sister."

At this new disclosure, Sir Norman stood perfectly petrified; and La Masque, looking down at the dreadful place at her feet, went rapidly on:

"Alas and alas! that it should be so; but it is the direful truth. We bear the same name, we had the same father; and yet I have been the curse and bane of their lives."

"And Leoline knows this?"

"She never knew it until this night, or any one else alive; and no one should know it now, were not my ghastly life ending. I prayed her to forgive me for the wrong I have done her; and she may, for she is gentle and good--but when, when shall I be able to forgive myself?"

The sharp pain in her voice jarred on Sir Norman's ear and heart; and, to get rid of its dreary echo, he hurriedly asked:

"You say you bear the same name. May I ask what name that is?"

"It is one, Sir Norman Kingsley, before which your own ancient title pales. We are Montmorencis, and in our veins runs the proudest blood in France."

"Then Leoline is French and of noble birth?" said Sir Norman, with a thrill of pleasure. "I loved her for herself alone, and would have wedded her had she been the child of a beggar; but I rejoice to hear this nevertheless. Her father, then, bore a title?"

"Her father was the Marquis de Montmorenci, but Leoline's mother and mine were not the same--had they been, the lives of all four might have been very different; but it is too late to lament that now. My mother had no gentle blood in her veins, as Leoline's had, for she was but a fisherman's daughter, torn from her home, and married by force. Neither did she love my father notwithstanding his youth, rank, and passionate love for her, for she was betrothed to another bourgeois, like herself. For his sake she refused even the title of marchioness, offered her in the moment of youthful and ardent passion, and clung, with deathless truth, to her fisher-lover. The blood of the Montmorencis is fierce and hot, and brooks no opposition" (Sir Norman thought of Miranda, and inwardly owned that that was a fact); "and the marquis, in his jealous wrath, both hated and loved her at the same time, and vowed deadly vengeance against her bourgeois lover. That vow he kept. The young fisherman was found one morning at his lady-love's door without a head, and the bleeding trunk told no tales.

"Of course, for a while, she was distracted and so on; but when the first shock of her grief was over, my father carried her off, and forcibly made her his wife. Fierce hatred, I told you, was mingled with his fierce love, and before the honeymoon was over it began to break out. One night, in a fit of jealous passion, to which he was addicted, he led her into a room she had never before been permitted to enter; showed her a grinning human skull, and told her it was her lover's! In his cruel exultation, he confessed all; how he had caused him to be murdered; his head severed from the body; and brought here to punish her, some day, for her obstinate refusal to love him.

"Up to this time she