Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor

While Kathleen was still weeping over Ralph Chainey's appealing letter her uncle was announced.

She dried her tears and went down to welcome the old man.

Mrs. Stone had taken the children out for the morning, so Kathleen had a long interview with her new-found relative.

He was so much like her dead father in his voice and looks that he won Kathleen's heart at once, and when he expressed his love and sympathy for her in moving terms, the unhappy young girl gave him her confidence in the fullest measure.

She told him the story of her young life from the beginning—her step-mother's cruelty, Alpine's unkindness, and Ivan's attempts at courtship, which she had repelled with scorn.

Then her indignant voice softened as she murmured over the story of her happy love-dream—her first romantic meeting with Ralph Chainey, when he had saved her life, and her later acquaintance with him, down to the moment when she had repulsed him with scorn, and, in a fit of pique, engaged herself to Teddy Darrell.

"I was wrong—all wrong!" she cried, self-upbraidingly, and gave him Ralph's letter to read.

Benjamin Carew listened in dead silence to all that Kathleen told him of the young actor, and if she had observed him closely, she would have seen that his brows were drawn together by a heavy frown.

Once or twice he seemed about to speak to her, but checked himself abruptly and waited.

Kathleen, as soon as he had finished the letter, cried out, eagerly:

"Do you not see that I was wrong to judge him so hardly?"

Uncle Ben looked gravely into his niece's face and answered, almost sternly:

"No; you were right, for appearances were against him."

"But, dear Uncle Ben, all that is explained away now, and I know that I was wrong not to trust my lover," cried the girl, anxiously.

But he answered, firmly:

"You must not call that actor your lover. You are betrothed to Mr. Darrell."

"But Teddy will release me if I ask him."

"Would you wound your true lover so cruelly?" asked the old man, almost angrily.

The beautiful dark eyes were raised to his, swimming in tears.

"Oh, how unhappy I am!" cried poor Kathleen. "I am the most wretched girl in the whole world! Every one is against me!"

The old man did not answer. He regarded her with sad, troubled eyes through his smoky glasses.

"You, too, Uncle Ben, have turned against me just when I thought you would be such a comfort to me," sobbed his niece.

"You are willful and unjust, my child, if you expect me to counsel you to throw over your lover for the sake of a man who has a wife already," was the mild reply.

"But he will be divorced, uncle, and then we will be free to love each other."

"And this honorable young man, Mr. Darrell, will be thrown over remorselessly for the world to laugh at as a jilted man!"

"Uncle Ben, I can explain it all to Teddy. He is so good and kind he will forgive me. He would not want to marry me if he knew that I loved another man."

Her heart, thrilling with the intensity of her love, lent fire to her eyes and passion to her voice. She felt that it would be a sin to marry Teddy with her heart so full of Ralph.

But the old man she had thought so kind and gentle rose up angrily and caught her hand.

"You are mad—mad, girl, to think of throwing over Teddy Darrell for this miserable actor! You shall not do it!" he cried, violently.

Kathleen tore her little white hand from his clasp in haughty amazement.

"You have no right to control my actions!" she exclaimed; and he sunk back into his chair and covered his face with his hand.

"True, true!" she heard him murmur, dejectedly. "I have no authority over my brother's child. I am only a poor, humble old farmer, and my advice is not desired, even though I would save my brother's only child from wrecking her life for the sake of an unwise love! So be it. I will go now, a sadder, wiser old man."

The pitiful words touched the girl's heart, melting her resentment.

She knelt by him and drew the hand away from his moist eyes, murmuring, remorsefully:

"Dear Uncle, forgive me. I was hasty, and am sorry that I wounded you. What would you have me do?"

"To marry Mr. Darrell," he replied, firmly.

"How can I?" she moaned, wearily.

"At least say nothing to any one of your change of mind just yet, Kathleen. Think a moment. Ralph Chainey may not get his divorce. Then, were it not better, child, for you not to compromise yourself by declaring your love for him?"

"Perhaps so," she replied, dejectedly.

"Then you promise me not to have anything to say to Ralph Chainey until the divorce is secured?" he went on, eagerly.

"I promise," answered the girl, with a long, heart-breaking sigh. "Oh!" she thought, "how cold and cruel old people are! Surely they forget they were ever young, or that they ever loved!"

But she could not bear to grieve the poor old man, and so she gave him her promise.

"It is not for long, anyhow," she consoled herself with thinking, for she thought it could not be long before Ralph secured the divorce.

"Then nothing on earth shall keep us apart," she thought, blissfully. "Poor Teddy! he will soon get over his disappointment and love some other girl."

Mrs. Stone came in at this juncture, and Kathleen began to feel quite conscience-stricken over the treachery she was meditating to the kind lady's cousin.

Strangely enough, after she had cordially welcomed Uncle Ben Carew, Mrs. Stone plunged into the subject of which they had been speaking—Ralph Chainey.

"I've just met the young actor," she said; "and congratulate me, my dear, for he likes my plot, and I am to write him a play. Won't that be nice? For he will make it famous. Teddy has been begging me to create a part in it for him, and to ask Mr. Chainey to take him into the company. Isn't it ridiculous in that spoiled boy? Why, he will be a married man then, with no time for acting."

Kathleen turned the subject as quickly as she could, and then Mrs. Stone devoted herself to Uncle Ben, persuading him to become her guest for a week.

"I shall be delighted to have you, and Teddy will be glad to have the pleasure of showing you the great sights of Boston," she declared.

So it was arranged, and Mr. Darrell manfully fell into the line of duty, escorting Uncle Ben to all the places of interest in the city, feeling fully rewarded for all his trouble by the murmured thanks of his beautiful betrothed.

So three days passed by peacefully, and although Kathleen wept bitter tears, when alone, over the dear letter her uncle had forbidden her to answer, she managed to preserve a calm aspect before her friends, and they did not guess how her heart was aching with its secret pain. It grieved Teddy that she seemed to shrink from him a little, but he kept on hoping he would win her love in the end.

Toward the middle of the week a great surprise came to Kathleen.

The long-hoped-for letter came at last.

The Southern relatives, so long deaf to her loving appeals, wrote at last to say that they wanted Kathleen to come and live with them. They were rich now, and could make her life as gay and luxurious as it was before her father's death.

"I should like to go and visit them. My heart always yearned for my mother's people," Kathleen said, wistfully.

Uncle Ben was thoughtfully perusing the letter. He answered:

"I will take you to them, my dear. I should not like for you to travel alone any more."

"Oh, how good you are, dearest uncle!" cried the girl, gladly. "But do you see they want me to come right away? They want me to be there at the celebration of my grandmother's birthday, which, she says, will be quite an event in the Franklyn family, so that all the clan will be gathered at the old homestead, and I can see all of them."

"We can start for Richmond to-morrow," her uncle answered, smilingly.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER'S STORY.

"But my diamonds, Uncle Ben. I must wait here for them, you know," said Kathleen.

"Pooh! We can leave that affair in the hands of a lawyer," he replied, carelessly.

He was determined that nothing should hinder this opportune trip.

He was anxious to get Kathleen away from Boston, where Ralph Chainey was playing every night to crowded houses. It would seem as if Uncle Ben had as vigorous a dislike for actors as his dead brother had cherished.

So he carefully smoothed away all her objections, declaring that he had money enough to take them both to Richmond, and that she could repay him, if she insisted on it, when she got back her diamonds.

"I wonder if papa thought, when he gave them to me, that some day they would be my sole little fortune!" sighed the young girl.

Uncle Ben did not answer. He was looking out of the window at the country scenery, for they were on their journey now. Kathleen was sitting opposite to him in the parlor car, with a big bouquet of roses in her lap, the gift of the adoring Teddy, from whom she had just parted at the station.

"A noble young fellow," Uncle Ben had said, and his niece answered, with a little sigh:

"He has been very good to me; but, Uncle Ben, he is called the greatest flirt in Boston, and I shouldn't wonder if he threw me over at any time for a newer fancy."

"You are just wishing he would!" the old man exclaimed, curtly, and she replied only by a roguish laugh.

The train rushed on and on through the wintry landscape, and both of them grew very thoughtful. At last Kathleen touched her uncle's arm with a timid hand.

"Uncle Ben, this going home to my mother's people makes me think so much about her to-day. Tell me, did you ever see mamma?"

The man's strong arm trembled under the pressure of her little white hand, and he answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion:

"Yes, I knew little Zaidee—poor little darling!"

"Was she as beautiful as the portrait a great artist made of her? There is one that hangs in my room at my old home. It is beautiful as an angel, and papa used to come there often to look at it. I don't think he cared for my step-mother to know how often he came."

"Zaidee was more beautiful than the portrait," answered the old man, in a low voice.

He pressed her little hand tenderly as it rested on his arm, and said:

"Tell me all that you know about your mother, my child."

"They have told me that she died by her own hand. Was it not terrible?" whispered the young girl, with paling lips.

"Terrible!" he echoed, with emotion; and then she asked:

"Uncle Ben, who was to blame for that awful tragedy?"

"No one," he answered, sadly. "Zaidee was passionate, willful, jealous. She became madly jealous of a governess—a young widow who was employed in the house to teach her painting and music. Before poor Vincent at all comprehended the situation, his young wife, in a fit of anger, destroyed herself by thrusting a little jeweled dagger into her breast."

"And you are sure no one was to blame?" she persisted and after a moment's hesitation he replied:

"Perhaps Vince was to blame; but he did not realize it then, poor fellow! You see, Kathleen, he worshipped his lovely little bride, and it grieved him that she was lacking in certain accomplishments familiar to most young girls in his cultured set. To remedy this, he employed teachers and Zaidee learned rapidly until——" he passed the back of his hand across his eyes and groaned.

"Until——" repeated Kathleen.

"Quite unexpected by him—for she was probably too proud to betray herself to him—Zaidee became quite jealous of that pretty young widow, Mrs. Belmont, and in a fit of madness took her own life, and nearly broke her husband's heart."

"He married the young widow in a little more than a year," the girl replied, unable to resist this bitter fling at her dead father's memory.

He winced, the poor old man, as she spoke thus of her father, and answered, almost excusingly:

"He was so wretched, and Mrs. Belmont comforted him. She, too, had loved Zaidee, and shared his grief with him. That was how she made herself so necessary to the unhappy man."

"The fiend!" broke hissingly from Kathleen's white lips.

He turned to her in amazement.

"What do you mean?" he asked, hoarsely.

It was well that they were alone in the car, for Kathleen's excitement was terrible. Her eyes blazed, her cheeks paled, her heart beat violently against her side.

"Uncle Ben, I am speaking of that woman who so unworthily took my dead mother's place!" she exclaimed. "Yes, she is a fiend! She to pretend that she loved the memory of the woman she goaded to madness—perhaps murdered; for no one saw my poor young mother drive the fatal steel into her heart. Oh, God! what deceit—what treachery!"

He grasped her wrist with steely fingers, his eyes flashed with a fire akin to hers, and he whispered;

"Hush! You must not dare accuse her so! You drive me mad! Oh, it can not be!"

"You take that false woman's part, then, Uncle Ben, against me and my poor young mother? Listen, then; let me tell you all I know—a secret I kept from my dead father, because I believed in him, trusted him, in spite of the servants' gossip that accused him of complicity in his young wife's death."

"They dared, the hounds! accuse m-my brother thus?" he breathed, fiercely, the perspiration starting out on his brow, his strong frame trembling.

"Yes, they accused him," answered the girl. "Do not take it so hard, Uncle Ben. He was innocent, I know; but that fiendish woman played her part to perfection. She made my mother believe that Vincent Carew wished her out of the way, so that he might wed her, the traitress! She made the servants believe the same. She even plotted——" But suddenly the girl paused with clasped hands. "Oh! uncle, dear, it will wound you if I mention this; it will blacken my father's memory in your eyes—and I always loved him—I love him still, in spite of what he has done to me, and I ought to spare him."

"Go on, Kathleen. I command you to tell me everything. I have a sacred right to know," commanded the agitated man by her side.

"Listen, then, dear uncle: Just a few months before my father went away on that foreign tour, from which he never returned alive, I received a message from an old woman calling me to her death-bed in the suburbs of the city. I went, taking my maid with me. In a secret interview that followed the dying woman told me she had been housekeeper at the Carew mansion in my mother's time. She could not die easy without revealing to me a secret she had carried untold for sixteen years."

"That secret?" questioned Benjamin Carew, wildly.

"Was this," replied the girl, solemnly: "On the day of the tragedy, Mrs. Belmont sought the housekeeper, pretending to be overcome with grief, surprise, and indignation. She confided to the woman that Vincent Carew had been making secret love to her ever since she first entered the house, and that day had openly declared his passion, begging her to fly with him to Europe, saying that his ignorant child-wife would then secure a divorce, and he could then marry his heart's best love. With tears and shame, Mrs. Belmont owned that she could not help loving her handsome employer, but that she had repulsed him with scorn, and resigned her situation to take leave immediately. Mrs. Belmont was too much overcome to explain to her pupil, and wished the housekeeper to tell Mrs. Carew the whole cause of her leaving."

"My God!" groaned the old man at Kathleen's side; but the girl hurried on, with blazing eyes.

"The housekeeper, after the fashion of most servants, was too ready to believe a tale of scandal, and to excite a sensation. She did not think of doubting Mrs. Belmont then, although grave doubts assailed her after the tragedy. Well, with her heart on fire with sympathy for her wronged mistress, she did not think for a moment of sparing her the whole cruel truth. She blurted it all out in burning words, and advised the outraged wife to forsake her monster of a husband and return to her own relatives. Within the hour mamma was found dead."

CHAPTER XLIV.

GRANDMOTHER FRANKLYN.

Kathleen's awed voice died away in a hushed sob, and in the grand parlor car there was a dead silence, broken only by the clatter of the car-wheels as they rushed over the glistening steel rails.

Old Benjamin Carew crouched silently in his seat, with clinched hands and half-averted face, but Kathleen could see that he was pale as death, and beads of dew stood on his forehead and around his pain-drawn lips.

"How dearly he must have loved his sister-in-law—my unhappy young mother!" she thought, tenderly; and just then his hand moved and sought hers, clasping it fondly, but with a grasp as cold as ice.

"Oh, Uncle Ben, I ought not to have told you this distressing story!" she exclaimed, remorsefully. "I am so glad to think that I never told papa the story I had from the dying housekeeper. It would have been so cruel for him to know that the woman he had loved and trusted had plotted away the life of my mother."

"Hush, child! you drive me mad! This is too cruel!" groaned the old man.

He leaned his gray head forward on the seat, and sobs, all the fiercer for being suppressed, shook his slight frame. Kathleen wept, too, and altogether it was a sorrowful journey they had to the home from which Vincent Carew had carried Zaidee, his fair young bride, to meet so dark a fate. They talked but little, for a heavy cloud of trouble hung over their spirits and shadowed the future, and the young girl at length became conscious of a strange dread of arriving at the end of the journey so long ardently desired. She ascribed it to sudden timidity at meeting strangers. She did not dream it was a warning presentiment.

She was glad that the cars went straight through Lincoln Station without changing. She could not bear to be reminded of that terrible night when the talon-like fingers of her unknown assailant had closed stranglingly about her white throat, and of all the sorrows that had followed after. The girl, so young and tender, shuddered as with an ague chill, wondering how she had lived through it all.

"And poor Daisy Lynn! poor Daisy Lynn! what ever became of that unhappy girl?" she wondered, pitifully, and her thoughts wandered to the girl's sad love story. "How sorrowful it is to go mad for love!" she sighed. "And yet, how sad it is to lose one's love and remain sane and conscious in the midst of all the cruel pain. Oh, God! am I fated to lose Ralph, my own true lover? How shall I bear to give my hand to another man while I love Ralph so dearly?" And when the train ran into the station at Richmond she was weeping bitter, burning tears for her love, Ralph, from whom she was so cruelly parted. "Oh, the pity of it that I did not believe in him that day that I sent him away from me in scorn, when he was already so sorrowful! Oh, Ralph, my darling! I did not think then that I should ever be suing for your forgiveness for my cruel words; but now—now I could fall at your feet for pity and pardon!" sobbed the unhappy young girl; and there came to her a memory of some verses she had read in the poems of Mittie Point Davis—sweet, sad verses from a loving heart:

"Richmond!" shouted the conductor, and Kathleen roused with a start from her sad musings, and drew her heavy wraps about her, for the opening of the car door had let in a blast of inclement air. It was late in the afternoon—almost twilight—and a long carriage ride was before them; for the Franklyns had written that they lived on the suburbs of Richmond, but would send a carriage to meet Kathleen.

Sure enough, a close carriage was in waiting, the driver an old darky who seemed surprised and even displeased that he had two passengers instead of one.

"Mistis was only 'specting a lady," he observed.

"This is my uncle, who came along to take care of me," Kathleen answered, with assumed cheerfulness, for her heart was beating with a strange suspense and dread. The old negro put her trunk up, and they entered the carriage, and set out on a long ride that did not end until night had wrapped its sable pall of gloom around the earth.

"Oh, uncle, how glad I am that you came with me! I should have felt so frightened all alone!" whispered the girl, nestling close to her relative's side.

He answered only by a silent pressure of her little hand. He had been strangely moody and silent ever since she had told him the story of her mother's tragic death.

The dark, gloomy exterior of the old brick house standing alone in thick, shrubberied grounds was not inviting, but presently the front door opened and a gleam of light stole forth. In its ray there appeared a witch-like old woman huddled in a gray blanket shawl, who stood shivering in the hall while they alighted.

"Howdy, granddaughter? Glad to see you!" She gave Kathleen a cold peck on the cheek and peered curiously at her companion. "Who's this? I warn't expecting anybody but you, my dear. Oh, your uncle! Howdy-do, sir? Walk right in, both of you, to the parlor. Folks all out at a party but me. You'll see them in the morning."

She ushered them into a prim, old-fashioned sitting-room that did not show much pretension to the wealth the Franklyns had written they were possessed of; but Kathleen was so glad of the great glowing fire that she ran to it and held her numb fingers to the blaze, with scarcely a glance at her surroundings. Uncle Ben followed her with a strange sinking at the heart.

His impressions of Mrs. Franklyn—Kathleen's grandmother—were not favorable, it seemed.

She was unprepossessing in her looks and manners, and she certainly regarded him in the light of an interloper. She had not extended to him the warm welcome that Northern people are led to believe is characteristic of Southern hospitality.

Mrs. Franklyn pulled out a little table on which was arranged a tempting little supper.

"I kept oysters and coffee warm for you," she said beamingly. "Now lay off your things, both of you, and eat before they get cold, won't you?"

"I am so tired—my head aches—I don't think I can swallow a mouthful!" pleaded Kathleen, on the point of hysterical tears.

Oh; why had she come? She was alarmed, somehow, and she wondered why her heart had failed to go out warmly to this new-found relative, as she had expected. Instead, she experienced fear and repulsion.

But the old woman was not to be denied. She almost forced her reluctant guests to swallow some of the food, and then she bundled them off to their rooms with an alacrity that savored of anxiety to be rid of their company.

"You must be dead tired and wanting to rest, and I'm free to confess that it's long past my usual bed-time," she declared.

"Good-night, Uncle Ben. I hope you will rest well," Kathleen said, kissing the old man with quivering lips. Then they parted, each to their separate rooms.

But there was no rest for Uncle Ben; his pillow was one of thorns, and he rose and paced the floor at midnight, restless and unhappy.

"My heart is on fire! Oh, God, I can not bear this pain! Let me go out into the cold, dark streets and walk it off!" he muttered, restlessly, and hurried into his clothes. "I suppose I can easily slip out of this old, ramshackle house without arousing any one," he thought as he proceeded to open the door.

But he recoiled with a start, for the door was locked on the outside! He was a prisoner in this strange house!

CHAPTER XLV.

IVAN RECEIVES A CHECK IN HIS CAREER.

When Kathleen and her uncle had left the house on Commonwealth Avenue, Mrs. Carew turned to Ivan with angry eyes.

"Is it true? Have you got that girl's diamonds?" she inquired.

"Of course he has. You can read it in his guilty face!" chimed in Alpine, contemptuously.

Ivan glared back at them with defiant eyes.

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked, insolently.

"You must return them. There will be a terrible scandal if you do not," replied his mother.

"I have sold them and spent the money," he returned with inimitable coolness.

"Good heavens! what will you do?" she cried; and to her indignation he laughed out aloud as he said:

"You and Alpine will have to make up the four thousand between you, and pay Kathleen!"

"I will not!" came in a burst of rage from Alpine's lips, and her mother echoed it.

"I will not!"

The son leaned back indolently in his chair, not a whit moved by their anger. They always had come round to his demands. They would have to do it now.

"Would you bring disgrace on yourselves by having me sent to prison to save a paltry four thousand dollars?" he demanded, with the air of one who is master of the situation.

They glared at him aghast. The two women loved money passionately. It made them almost frantic the way that Ivan squandered it.

"You two are rolling in wealth," he continued, "and yet you begrudge a poor devil of a son and brother a few thousand to get him out of a penitentiary scrape."

The listeners shuddered. Next to money, they loved good repute, and it was the dread of their lives that the dissolute Ivan would bring disgrace upon them. And here it was staring them in the face. The penitentiary, ugh!

"We have spent at least fifteen thousand dollars on you since we came into this fortune!" groaned Alpine.

"And what you ever did with so much money, in so short a time, I can not imagine," added Mrs. Carew.

"Fast living and cards," laconically replied the villain.

They looked at each other, the two badgered women, and one thought was in the mind of each. Ivan was shameless, defiant. He would never alter his evil courses and if he went on like this, and they had to supply him with money, he would bankrupt them in the end. Disgrace would come to them sooner or later through this black sheep.

Alpine turned to him and asked curiously:

"How did you find out that Kathleen had left her diamonds at the jewelers?"

He started and whitened at the suddenness of the question, but answered, doggedly:

"That is my own secret, and I do not choose to disclose it."

"Neither do I choose to help you out of the scrape you have brought on yourself. Not a dollar will I give you!" retorted Alpine, stung to defiance and rebellion by his matchless assurance.

He did not believe her, and smiled as he answered:

"Oh, yes, you will, for your own sake, my dear sister. Perhaps you think I don't see through your little game; but I do. You're trying to marry Ralph Chainey, the great actor, although he does not care a pin for you. However, you are crafty enough to hook him, I'll be bound—only, he certainly would not look at you again if Kathleen sent your only brother to prison for stealing her diamonds."

Her blue eyes blazed on him with the steely glare of a bitter hate; but she said, almost as if begging him to do better:

"But, Ivan, if we helped you out of this, you would be into some new scrape directly."

"Very likely," he replied, taking insolent pleasure in torturing her, not dreaming she would really turn at bay.

But Alpine was reckless, desperate—ready to give up the fierce contest with an untoward fate. A revengeful longing to punish Ivan for his misdeeds, even at the bitterest cost to herself, assailed her and drove everything else out of her mind. Her eyes flashed, her face grew ashen, and, turning to her mother, she said, in a low, tense voice:

"You see how it is, mamma. If we help him out of this, it will be something else directly. How can we bear the strain for years? Do what we will, he will beggar and disgrace us sooner or later. Why not let the end come now? Let—Kathleen send him to prison for his crime, and we—we—can live it down as best we may."

Every word fell like a drop of ice on the ingrate's heart. Did she mean it? Would they desert him at last, these two?

He was frightened, and yet incredulous. He had heard and read and believed that there was no limit to the love and forgiveness of a mother's and sister's heart.

But he had gone too far in his insolent assurance, and, to his terror and amazement, his hour of reckoning had come at last.

He did not take into account the fact that he did not have a good woman for a mother. His excesses had turned her heart against him, and to his horror she sided with Alpine, angrily discarding him.

"I wash my hands of you," she said, bitterly. "Kathleen may send you to prison if she will. Alpine and I can go abroad. The affair will soon blow over, and people will forget it by the time we come home from Europe."

He dropped his insouciance, and descended to pleading, but it was of no avail. He saw a black fate lowering over him from which there seemed no escape.

In the darkest moment a clever idea came to him.

"If I could only escape to Europe, the whole affair would be over, for I would never come back; but, alas! I have not the means to pay my passage across the ocean," he said, despondently.

Mrs. Carew caught eagerly at the offered bait.

"If you will go and never return, I will furnish you the means," she said.

"I swear it," he replied, and left the house presently, the money in his pocket, an evil, sneering smile on his thin lips.

Meanwhile, Jones had said to Miss Belmont:

"Mr. Chainey has been waiting in the drawing-room some time to see you."

"You should have told me sooner," she exclaimed, flashing at the prospect of seeing Ralph.

"I did not like to interrupt you, miss," he replied, respectfully, but Alpine did not wait to hear his apology; she hurriedly sought the man she loved.

CHAPTER XLVI.

"I HAVE BETRAYED MYSELF. YOU KNOW MY HEART NOW."

Ralph had been waiting many minutes for Miss Belmont, but he had forgotten the lapse of time in his agitation over the meeting with Kathleen, and he rose with almost a start to meet the beautiful blonde, who hurried to him with both hands extended in rapturous greeting.

"So glad," she murmured, with the loveliest upward glance, that was quite lost on Ralph, for he did not notice it, but exclaimed:

"I had quite a surprise coming in just now. I met Miss Carew. So she has repented and come home?"

"Yes, and no—it was only a formal call. Kathleen is so proud she will not come back to us, even for the short time before her marriage," answered Alpine.

She sighed, and he echoed it; but it was of Kathleen he was thinking—bonny Kathleen. Alpine guessed it, and bit her lips, then plunged into an animated account of Uncle Ben Carew, making him appear in the most ridiculous light.

"He was an impostor, of course. Mamma is quite sure that my step-father never had a brother," she said.

"But Kathleen believed in him?" he asked.

"Yes. Was it not strange she should let herself be deceived by such a designing schemer? She carried him off as her guest at Mrs. Stone's."

He was silent, wondering if Kathleen had made a mistake, and suddenly Alpine said, sweetly:

"Now please put Kathleen out of your mind and think of no one but me while you are here. Am I not your friend, and haven't I some claim on you?"

Something in her tone startled him. He glanced hurriedly into her face and read as in a book all her love and longing. Her eyes met his and held them as if fascinated. While he gazed she started forward and caught his hand in hers, murmuring, hysterically:

"I have betrayed myself. You know my heart now. Oh, Ralph! forgive me that I could not hide my love for you! Forgive me, and try to love me a little in return."

"Good heavens!" cried the young man, aghast, withdrawing his hand hurriedly from her grasp and looking at her in consternation.

But Alpine, already excited and unnerved by the scene with her brother, could not draw back now, having betrayed her secret. She cried out, pleadingly:

"Do not turn from me so angrily. Is it a crime to love you—to wish for your love?"

She recalled him to the fact that he was acting rudely, that he ought not to let this unhappy girl see the disgust with which she had inspired him by her avowal of love.

It was most embarrassing. He longed to get away, for he did not know what to say. He was utterly abashed, and obeying a sudden impulse, sprung to his feet and turned to the door.

"Miss Belmont, I—I hope you will—excuse me, but I have—have just remembered something—er—er—important—a rehearsal. Will you pardon my haste? Good-bye," he stammered, like a bashful school-boy, and instantly fled the scene, leaving Alpine to fling herself upon a sofa in a burst of hysterical tears.

"Oh, why did I betray my bitter secret! I was mad—mad! and now I have driven him from my side forever by my imprudence!" she sobbed in the wildest abandon.

As she lay there sobbing, her hatred and jealousy of her beautiful step-sister grew stronger than ever. It was for love of Kathleen that Ralph Chainey had turned from her when she had humbled herself to him and sued for his love.

Some touching verses rang in sad melody through her brain.

She dashed the tears from her eyes and sat up, the picture of shame and despair.

"I could have been a better woman if he had been kind to me—if he would but have promised to try to love me!" she muttered, angrily. "But how fast he hurried away, as if he despised me. How I wish I could hate him in return—hate him as I hate his dark-eyed love! It is for her he scorns me. Oh, God! for vengeance on them both!"

CHAPTER XLVII.

A TERRIBLE CRIME.