A little while afterwards, Isabella stood upon the balcony steps leading from the drawing-room.  Otho was with her.  The threatening clouds had driven almost every one into the house.  There was distant thunder and lightning; but through the cloud-rifts, now and then, the moonlight streamed down.  Isabella and Otho had been talking earnestly,—­so earnestly, that they were quite unobservant of the coming storm, of the strange lurid light that hung around.

“It is strange that this should take place here!” said Isabella,—­“that just here I should learn that you love me!  Strange that my destiny should be completed in this spot!”

“And this spot has its strange associations with me,” said Otho, “of which I must some time speak to you.  But now I can think only of the present.  Now, for the first time, do I feel what life is,—­now that you have promised to be mine!”

Otho was interrupted by a sudden cry.  He turned to find his mother standing behind him.

“You are here with Isabella! she has promised herself to you!” she exclaimed.  “It is a fatality, a terrible fatality!  Listen, Isabella!  You are the Queen of the Red Chessmen; and he, Otho, is the King of the White Chessmen,—­and I, their Queen.  Can there be two queens?  Can there be a marriage between two hostile families?  Do you not see, if there were a marriage between the Reds and the Whites, there were no game?  Look!  I have found our old prison!  The pieces would all be here,—­but we, we are missing!  Would you return to the imprisonment of this poor box,—­to your old mimic life?  No, my children, go back!  Isabella, marry this Lawrence Egerton, who loves you.  You will find what life is, then.  Leave Otho, that he may find this same life also.”

Isabella stood motionless.

“Otho, the White Prince!  Alas! where is my hatred?  But life without him!  Even stagnation were better!  I must needs be captive to the White Prince!”

She stretched out her hand to Otho.  He seized it passionately.  At this moment there was a grand crash of thunder.

A gust of wind extinguished at once all the lights in the drawing-room.  The terrified guests hurried into the hall, into the other rooms.

“The lightning must have struck the house!” they exclaimed.

A heavy rain followed; then all was still.  Everybody began to recover his spirits.  The servants relighted the candles.  The drawing-room was found untenanted.  It was time to go; yet there was a constraint upon all the party, who were eager to find their hostess and bid her good-bye.

But the hostess could not be found!  Isabella and Otho, too, were missing!  The Doctor and Lawrence went everywhere, calling for them, seeking them in the house, in the grounds.  They were nowhere to be found,—­neither that night, nor the next day, nor ever afterwards!

The Doctor found in the balcony a box of chessmen fallen down.  It was nearly filled; but the red queen, and the white king and queen, were lying at a little distance.  In the box was the red king, his crown fallen from his head, himself broken in pieces.  The Doctor took up the red queen, and carried it home.