Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor
by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller · English · Gutenberg #44819 · 484,889 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor
Author: Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATHLEEN'S DIAMONDS; OR, SHE LOVED A HANDSOME ACTOR ***
KATHLEEN'S DIAMONDS
OR
SHE LOVED A HANDSOME ACTOR
_By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller_
HART SERIES No. 45
COPYRIGHT 1895 BY GEORGE MUNRO
(Printed in the United States of America)
Published by
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
"Alas! Why Did She Do It?" 5
CHAPTER II.
After Sixteen Years 7
CHAPTER III.
"This Prince Karl--This Ralph Chainey--is My Rescuer at Newport
Last Summer," Whispered the Romantic Girl 11
CHAPTER IV.
"I Distinctly Forbid You to Know this Actor," said Mrs. Carew 15
CHAPTER V.
Mrs. Carew is Mysteriously Absent 19
CHAPTER VI.
Kathleen's Defiance 23
CHAPTER VII.
"Mrs. Carew is Going to Make You Marry Her Son," said the Maid 27
CHAPTER VIII.
"Please Buy My Diamond Necklace," said Kathleen 33
CHAPTER IX.
Murdered! 37
CHAPTER X.
At Dead of Night 40
CHAPTER XI.
The Fatal Telegram 45
CHAPTER XII.
"Kathleen, I Swear that I Will Avenge Your Murder!" 50
CHAPTER XIII.
Another Mystery 53
CHAPTER XIV.
A Strange Fate 57
CHAPTER XV.
Poor Daisy Lynn 63
CHAPTER XVI.
Kathleen's Desperation and Her Escape 70
CHAPTER XVII.
"Will You be My Own Sweet Wife, Kathleen?" 74
CHAPTER XVIII.
Kathleen's Disappearance 79
CHAPTER XIX.
"Ralph Chainey is a Married Man!" 83
CHAPTER XX.
Kathleen Makes a Startling Discovery 88
CHAPTER XXI.
Was Ralph Chainey a Villain? 91
CHAPTER XXII.
Rescued 93
CHAPTER XXIII.
"Papa, Darling, It is I, Your Little Kathleen!" 97
CHAPTER XXIV.
Turned Out Into the Storm 102
CHAPTER XXV.
Teddy Darrell Again 105
CHAPTER XXVI.
"I Would Lay Down My Life to Serve You!" said Teddy 107
CHAPTER XXVII.
Alpine's Renewed Hopes 111
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Teddy Darrell's Plans 115
CHAPTER XXIX.
Fedora's Escape 119
CHAPTER XXX.
"My Darling Girl, I'm as Fond of You as Ever!" 122
CHAPTER XXXI.
Kathleen's Weary Waiting 126
CHAPTER XXXII.
"We Have Met--We Have Loved--We Have Parted!" 128
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Ralph Chainey's Anger 133
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Alpine Sows the Seed of Jealousy 135
CHAPTER XXXV.
Alpine's Falsehood 138
CHAPTER XXXVI.
A Cruel Stab 142
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Ralph Chainey is Driven to Desperation, and Turns on His Foe 146
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
"I Have Come for My Diamonds," Kathleen said to the Jeweler 148
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Kathleen Before Her Father's Portrait 153
CHAPTER XL.
A New-found Relative 157
CHAPTER XLI.
Ralph's Letter 160
CHAPTER XLII.
"You Shall Not Marry Ralph Chainey!" Uncle Ben Cried Violently 162
CHAPTER XLIII.
The Old Housekeeper's Story 167
CHAPTER XLIV.
Grandmother Franklyn 171
CHAPTER XLV.
Ivan Receives a Check in His Career 175
CHAPTER XLVI.
"I Have Betrayed Myself. You Know My Heart Now." 177
CHAPTER XLVII.
A Terrible Crime 181
CHAPTER XLVIII.
"Kathleen Has Mysteriously Disappeared." 184
CHAPTER XLIX.
The Franklyns at Last! 188
CHAPTER L.
"She Was My Mother." 192
CHAPTER LI.
A Cousin for a Lover 195
CHAPTER LII.
The Search for Kathleen 198
CHAPTER LIII.
"Oh, Sir, Have Pity on Me!" prayed Daisy Lynn 200
CHAPTER LIV.
"Is This Your Niece?" 205
CHAPTER LV.
Kathleen and Daisy Meet at Last 207
CHAPTER LVI.
"So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World." 210
CHAPTER LVII.
Mrs. Carew Triumphs in Her Sweet Revenge Upon Kathleen 212
CHAPTER LVIII.
"I Will Never Humble Myself to You Again." 214
CHAPTER LIX.
Oh, Ralph Chainey, Wake! 217
CHAPTER LX.
"My Love Shall Call Him Back from the Grave!" 220
CHAPTER LXI.
She Loved Much 223
CHAPTER LXII.
"God Bless Brave, Bonny Kathleen Carew!" 225
CHAPTER LXIII.
Within Prison Bars 227
CHAPTER LXIV.
"Your Father is George Harrison, the Convict!" 231
CHAPTER LXV.
A Startling Dénouement 234
CHAPTER LXVI.
"I Will Go to the Old Haunted Mill," said Kathleen Bravely 239
CHAPTER LXVII.
Teddy's Love Letters 242
CHAPTER LXVIII.
In Mortal Peril 244
CHAPTER LXIX.
"I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen." 252
KATHLEEN'S DIAMONDS
OR
SHE LOVED A HANDSOME ACTOR
CHAPTER I.
"ALAS! WHY DID SHE DO IT?"
What is the matter? Oh, nothing--a girl
Is found here in suicide rest.
Romantic? Of course; here's a rich, dark curl
On the beautiful, blue-veined breast.
AMELIA V. PURDY.
Incredible, you say?
Alas, it was too true!
She was dead by her own hand, the beautiful child-wife of Vincent
Carew, the millionaire--dead in her youth and beauty, leaving behind
her all that life held for a worshipped wife and loving mother; for
upstairs at this moment in the silken nursery her child, the baby
Kathleen, barely six months old, lay sweetly sleeping, watched by an
attentive French _bonne_, while in the darkened parlor below, the
girlish mother, not yet eighteen, lay pale and beautiful in her coffin,
with white flowers blooming on the pulseless breast, hiding the crimson
stain where the slight jeweled dagger from her hair had sheathed itself
in her tortured heart.
She was so young, so ignorant, or surely she would have held back her
suicidal hand--she would have taken pity on her child, the dark-eyed
little heiress she was leaving motherless in the wide, wide world
that, whatever else it may give us, can not make up for the loss of the
best thing life has to offer--a mother's love!
It is always a terrible misfortune to a young girl to be motherless,
and it was going to be the tragedy of Kathleen Carew's life that she
had no mother. The dagger-thrust that let out the life-blood of unhappy
Zaidee Carew turned the whole course of her daughter's life aside into
different channels.
But that lay in the future. _Now_ all Boston wondered over the tragic
death of Vincent Carew's wife, and people asked each other in dismay:
"Why did she do it?"
No one could answer that question.
The world thought that the young wife was perfectly happy.
And why not? Surely she had good cause.
Vincent Carew, the rich bachelor, who was a power in politics, and
aspired to be governor of his state, had married Zaidee Franklyn out of
a poverty-stricken home, lifting her at a bound to rank and fortune,
and all for love of her fair face.
He had snapped his white fingers in the face of the world that called
his marriage a _mésalliance_, and carried everything by storm. For his
sake, society--cultured Boston society--had received his wife, the
lovely young Southern girl, with her shy ways and neglected education,
and for a time all went well.
So no one could answer the question why did she kill herself, but
that was because Vincent Carew was too proud to admit the ubiquitous
reporter inside his aristocratic portals. If one of these curious
mortals had secured admittance to the house and questioned the
servants, they would have told him what they suspected and discussed
in whispers among themselves--that madame was madly jealous of the
teacher her husband had employed to finish her very imperfect education.
"She is a snake in the grass, that pretty widow, and she makes my
mistress unhappy," said the housekeeper, the first month that Mrs.
Belmont came, and her opinion was adopted by all the other servants.
They all hated the stately young widow in her black garments, and when
the grewsome tragedy of Mrs. Carew's death darkened the sunlight in
that luxurious home, they whispered to each other that it was Mrs.
Belmont who had worked their mistress such bitter woe that she could
not bear her life.
If indeed she had schemed for anything like this, Mrs. Belmont had
succeeded in her designs. Zaidee Carew, with her own dimpled, white
hand, had cut the Gordian knot of life, and in a few more days a
stately funeral _cortège_ moved away from Vincent Carew's doors to the
cemetery where his dead wife, in all her youthful beauty, was laid to
rest beneath the grass and flowers.
CHAPTER II.
AFTER SIXTEEN YEARS.
An exquisite face--patrician in style;
Note the lashes, how black, and their sweep--
The arch of the brows, and the proud lip's smile,
The flash of the eyes dark and deep.
Away from the forehead in waves the hair
Flows with the glisten of bronze;
Glorious in volume, the frame from where
The face of an houri dawns.
AMELIA V. PURDY.
"I never saw such a forgetful girl as you, Kathleen Carew. Here you sit
dreaming, instead of dressing for 'Prince Karl' to-night. Are you going
to the theater, then, or not?"
"Of course I am going, Alpine. I did not know it was so late. What, you
are dressed already? How sweet you look! That blue crêpe de Chine is
awfully becoming to you. Well, then, please ring the bell for my maid,
won't you? I'll be ready in ten minutes."
"You'd better. Mamma will be furious if you keep her waiting," Alpine
Belmont answered, crossly, as she touched the bell.
Then she looked back curiously at the graceful, indolent figure in
the easy-chair, leaning back with white hands clasped on top of the
bronze-gold head.
"Kathleen, what were you thinking about so intently when I came in? I
had to speak twice before you heard me."
Kathleen raised her dark, passionate, Oriental eyes to the speaker's
face, and, blushing vivid crimson, answered, dreamily:
"Alpine, I was thinking of that handsome young man who saved my life at
Newport last summer. I was wondering who he was, and if we should ever
see him again."
"It isn't likely we ever will," answered Alpine Belmont, carelessly.
"I don't suppose he's in our set at all--some poor clerk spending all
his winter's savings on a short summer outing, very likely. I wouldn't
be thinking about him, like a romantic school-girl, if I were you,
Kathleen. He didn't care about you, or he would have made himself known
to you before this," and, with a low, taunting laugh, Alpine Belmont
left the room just as Susette, the maid, came in.
"You'll have to do my hair in a hurry, Susie. There's no time for
prinking," laughed her mistress; and while the maid brushed out the
magnificent, rippling tresses, Kathleen relapsed into thoughts of the
unknown hero whose handsome image haunted her thoughts.
"Is it true, as Alpine says, that he did not care for me? It is
strange he did not stay to inquire who I was, after I came so near
drowning. If he was a poor young clerk, as Alpine believes, perhaps he
was too proud to reveal himself, thinking I would scorn him because I
was an heiress. Ah, how little he knew Kathleen Carew's heart!"
Her thoughts ran thrillingly on:
"Oh, how handsome he was when I first saw him in the water, that day
at Newport! He kept watching me, and I could not help looking back.
He seemed to draw my eyes. I know I wanted him to like me, for I
wondered if my bathing suit was becoming, and I felt glad my hair was
down, because I had been told it looked pretty that way, all wet and
curling over my shoulders. His brown eyes said as plain as words that
he admired me. Other men did, too, I know, but this time it seemed to
thrill me with a new pleasure. As I splashed about like a mermaid in
the waves, I kept thinking of him, wondering who he was, and hoping he
would be at the ball that night. I wanted him to see how well I looked
in my white lace and pearls. Then all at once came that treacherous
undertow that swept me from my feet, down, down, down, under the heavy
waves. Oh, how horrible it was! I thought I would be drowned, and my
last thought was----"
"What gown, Miss Kathleen?" asked the maid.
"Anything, Susette. It don't matter how I look to-night. You can't
decide? Oh, well, that new white cloth with the pink ostrich feather
trimming, and diamonds. Alpine is wearing pearls and a blue gown, and
we don't want to be dressed alike."
While Susette fastened the exquisite gown and clasped the diamonds, her
thoughts ran on:
"He rescued me, the handsome, brave fellow, and as soon as he laid me,
limp, but faintly conscious, upon the sands, he walked hastily away,
and no one at Newport ever saw him again. Neither could any one ever
find out who he was, although I'm afraid mamma did not try very hard.
But he was certainly very modest. He did not want us to make a hero
of him. Heigho, I do wish I knew his name--I do wish I could see him
again! Alpine says I am foolish and romantic, and that I fell in love
with him because he saved my life. Indeed, I think it was before--yes,
at the very moment I first met his beautiful brown eyes gazing so
eagerly into mine. A quick electric thrill seemed to dart through me,
and----"
"Kathleen, aren't you ready yet?" asked Alpine, entering. "The carriage
has been waiting ever so long, and mamma is getting furious over your
delay."
"I'm ready," Kathleen answered, composedly, without hurrying the least
bit. She drew her white opera-cloak leisurely about her ivory-white
shoulders, and followed her step-sister down-stairs to where Vincent
Carew's second wife, once the widow Belmont, poor Zaidee's governess,
was waiting in impotent wrath at the detention.
"The first act will be quite over before we get there, and it will be
entirely your fault, for Alpine and I have been ready for an hour," she
fretted as they entered the carriage.
CHAPTER III.
"THIS PRINCE KARL--THIS RALPH CHAINEY--IS MY RESCUER AT NEWPORT LAST
SUMMER," WHISPERED THE ROMANTIC GIRL.
This is the way of it, wide world over,
One is beloved, and one is the lover,
One gives and the other receives.
E. W. W.
The first act had indeed begun when Mrs. Carew with her two daughters
entered their box at the theater; but absorbing as was the interest
in the popular play, "Prince Karl," many heads were turned to gaze
admiringly at the trio of fair ones, for the matron, although fifty
years old, looked much younger, and her stately charms were set off to
advantage by black velvet and jet, with ruby ornaments on her neck and
arms. Her silvery-white hair was arranged very becomingly, and Alpine
felt quite proud of her mother's _distingué_ appearance.
Alpine Belmont herself was a milk-white blonde, a trifle below
the medium height, and with a rather too decided inclination to
_embonpoint_. But the plumpness and dimples were rather fascinating,
now in the heyday of youth--she was barely twenty--and with passable
features, pale straw-gold hair, and forget-me-not blue eyes, Alpine
passed as a belle and beauty.
But Kathleen Carew--Kathleen, with her slender, perfect figure just
above medium height, and her vivid face as fresh as a flower, with
her great, starry, passionate, Oriental eyes, veiled by thick curling
lashes black as starless midnight, in such strong contrast to the
rich bronze-gold of the rippling hair that crowned her queenly little
head--Kathleen Carew was truly
"The Rose that all were praising."
"The house is crowded," Mrs. Carew observed in a gratified tone, as
she swept the brilliant horse-shoe with her lorgnette.
"Oh, of course. They say Ralph Chainey is a splendid actor," returned
Alpine, as she threw back her blue-and-white cloak to give the crowd
the benefit of her plump white arms and shoulders.
"Does Ralph Chainey play Prince Karl?" inquired Kathleen, with languid
interest; and, forgetting to listen for the answer, turned her
attention to the stage where the actors were strutting their brief day.
The play went on, and Kathleen, rousing with a start out of her languid
mood, watched it with eager eyes.
Everybody knows the clever, fascinating play "Prince Karl." Mansfield
has made it immortal in his rôle of the courier.
This new actor, whose name had brought out the fashionable world
of cultured Boston, was no whit behind Mansfield in his clever
impersonations. He was young, and had flashed upon the dramatic world
two years before with the brightness of a star. Time was adding fresh
laurels to his name, and Boston, critical as it was, did not hesitate
to add its plaudits, for, be it known, Ralph Washburn Chainey was a
Bostonian "to the manor born."
"Oh, it is splendid! And is he not perfectly magnificent?" exclaimed
Alpine Belmont, turning eagerly to Kathleen, as the curtain fell upon
the first act.
Then she started with surprise, for Kathleen was leaning back in her
chair, breathing heavily, her face very pale, her eyes half veiled by
the drooping lids.
"Kathleen, what is the matter? Are you going to sleep, or are you ill,
or--_what_?" she demanded, in a high whisper.
Kathleen caught Alpine's hand and drew it against her side.
"Oh, Alpine, feel my heart how it beats!" she whispered. "I have had
such a shock! Did you not recognize him, too?"
"I don't know what you are talking about, Kathleen."
"Don't you? Oh, Alpine, I have found _him_ out at last--my hero!"
whispered the romantic girl.
"Kathleen, you're dreaming!"
"I'm not. I knew him in a minute, and he recognized me, too. I saw it
in his glance when his eyes met mine. He started, then I smiled--I
could not help it, I was so glad."
Mrs. Carew had been listening to catch the whispered conversation. A
heavy frown darkened her face. She leaned forward and muttered, harshly:
"Kathleen, you must be crazy!"
The girl shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, and took no other
notice of the speech.
But Alpine's curiosity was awakened, and she whispered, eagerly:
"Where is he, then? Point him out to me."
"I can not. He has gone off. Wait till he returns," answered Kathleen,
sitting up straight in her chair again. The color was coming back into
her face again, her eyes flashed radiantly. Mrs. Carew regarded her
with suppressed displeasure.
Some gentlemen acquaintances came into the box, and the subject of
Kathleen's discovery was dropped. They chatted gayly until the time for
the curtain to rise, then returned to their seats.
The curtain rose upon the second act of the play, and Alpine was so
interested that she leaned eagerly forward, quite forgetting, in
her keen admiration of Prince Karl, her step-sister's interesting
disclosure just now.
But suddenly Kathleen's taper fingers closed in a gentle pinch upon her
plump arm.
"Look--now--don't you recognize him?" she murmured, triumphantly.
"Who? Where? Oh, for goodness' sake, Kathleen, don't bother me now! I
don't want to lose a word of glorious Prince Karl!"
"But, Alpine, it is _he_, Prince Karl--my hero!"
"Good heavens, Kathleen! do you really mean it?"
"Yes, I do, Alpine. This Prince Karl--this Ralph Chainey--is my rescuer
at Newport last summer. Watch him, Alpine, and perhaps you will catch
him looking at us a little consciously, as I did just now."
"I see the likeness _now_!" answered Alpine, in a tone of suppressed
dismay, whose import Kathleen could not understand. She said no more
to her step-sister, but sat through the remainder of the play in a
blissful dream.
The beautiful young heiress was intensely romantic, and for long months
her fancy had been haunted by the image of the handsome young man who
had saved her life. To find him again in the handsome young actor whose
name was on every lip thrilled her with delight. He had recognized
her, too, and the memory of his startled glance, so quickly withdrawn,
thrilled her with keen delight, although he did not permit her to meet
his eyes again.
Kathleen felt a little triumph, too, over Alpine, who had declared that
her hero was doubtless a mere nobody--perhaps a clerk in a country
store, than which position Alpine's contemptuous ideas could not
descend lower.
Alpine was watching him now with such eager interest that Kathleen
smiled and thought:
"I believe Alpine has fallen in love with him, herself. But she need
not; he is mine, mine, mine!"
She was claiming him already in her thoughts, forgetting that she had
never even spoken to the handsome stranger to whom she owed such a debt
of gratitude. It seemed to her that she was as dear to him as he was
to her, and she almost expected to see him waiting to hand her to her
carriage when they left the theater.
But no; the faint, fluttering hope was soon extinguished. Other
admirers were waiting obsequiously, eager for the honor of touching the
small gloved hand of the beautiful belle, but when the curtain dropped
on Prince Karl bowing to the applauding audience, Kathleen saw him no
more that night.
When Mrs. Carew dismissed her maid that night she sent an imperative
summons to her step-daughter to come to her room, and received in
return a polite request to be excused. Kathleen was tired, and meant to
retire immediately.
CHAPTER IV.
"I DISTINCTLY FORBID YOU TO KNOW THIS ACTOR," SAID MRS. CAREW.
Love is a pearl of purest hue,
But stormy waves are round it;
And dearly may a woman rue
The hour when first she found it.
L. E. L.
Despite the message, Mrs. Carew, who went at once to Kathleen's room
in a rage at her impertinence, found the young girl still in her
ball-dress and jewels, sitting dreamily in an easy-chair, having
dismissed Susette to arrange her bath. She yawned sleepily at her
step-mother's entrance.
"I sent you word to wait till to-morrow," she said, petulantly.
"I did not choose to wait, Miss Impertinence!" and as Kathleen opened
wide her big black eyes in a sort of contemptuous amazement, Mrs. Carew
continued, angrily: "Alpine has told me how silly you were over that
actor; how you love him, and long to get acquainted with him. Do you
not know that it is very bold and coarse for a young girl to even think
of a man that way until he has given some sign of liking for her? But
Alpine declares that this man has never even noticed you."
"Alpine is a sneaking tell-tale, and you are a cruel woman!" Kathleen
answered, indignantly. "And, madame, if I am ignorant, as you charge,
of the proper feeling to observe toward men, who is to blame for that?
Why did you not train me as carefully as you did your daughter Alpine?
You took my poor dead mother's place before I was two years old. Why
did you not do your duty by her orphan child?"
"How dare you speak to me like this?" demanded the angry woman. "Be
silent, and listen to my commands!"
Her fingers itched to slap the cheek that dimpled with insolent
amusement, but she clinched her hand and went on:
"Your father left you in my care when he went abroad for his health,
and you shall obey my commands while he is gone. If you dare defy me,
I shall lock you in your room, on bread and water, till you beg my
pardon."
There was no answer. Kathleen looked her indignation, that was all.
"I distinctly forbid," said Mrs. Carew, "any further nonsense over this
actor. Good heavens! an _actor_! What would your haughty father say?"
contemptuously. "I will not take you to the theater again while he
plays here. You disgraced yourself to-night, making eyes at him on the
stage, and there shall be no more of it. I shall not permit him to make
your acquaintance, even if he seeks to do so, which is very doubtful,
as"--scornfully--"the infatuation seems to be all on one side."
Kathleen writhed with mortification, but she did not permit her foe to
see how cruelly she was wounded. She held her queenly little head erect
with that silent smile of maddening amusement on her scarlet lips.
Years of wrong and injustice had made her scorn this woman who filled
her dead mother's place so unworthily, and she made few efforts to
conceal her feelings.
"I forbid any acquaintance with this Ralph Chainey--this actor. Do you
understand me, Kathleen?" repeated her step-mother.
"I have heard you," answered the young girl, with a mutinous pout of
her full lip.
"You will obey me?" a little anxiously, for Kathleen had never been so
aggressively rebellious as to-night.
At the question, Kathleen rose to her feet and stood up like a young
lioness at bay.
"I will _not_ obey you, madame!" she replied.
"What?" almost shrieked Mrs. Carew.
"I will not obey you!" she repeated, with flashing eyes. "I will not
run after Mr. Chainey, as you pretend so falsely that I am doing, and I
will make no unmaidenly overtures toward his acquaintance, but if the
proper opportunity offers for me to know and thank him for saving my
life, I shall surely avail myself of it!"
They stood glaring at each other, the girl roused into furious
rebellion, the woman speechless with fury, her steel-blue eyes seeming
to emit electric sparks from her deathly white face, so intense was her
fierce wrath. Controlling herself with an effort, she turned to leave
the room, and, pausing on the threshold, hissed back one significant
sentence at the defiant girl:
"Forewarned is forearmed!"
"I do not fear you!" Kathleen answered; but Mrs. Carew never looked
back.
"What will she do? What can she do? She will never dare lock me in my
room, as she threatened!" Kathleen murmured, uneasily, and then her
overstrained nerves gave way. She threw herself on the bed and sobbed
aloud, in nervous abandonment to her outraged feelings.
God help that poor, motherless girl! She knew that the events of that
night would only make her life harder than it had been before under the
roof that her step-mother ruled with an iron hand.
The beautiful young heiress did not have a happy life, in spite of all
the good gifts with which fate had so richly dowered her at her birth.
Her step-mother had always hated her, and never relaxed her efforts to
harden her father's heart against his only child. Perhaps she hated
Kathleen the more because Heaven had denied any children to her second
marriage, and she knew that to this girl would go the bulk of her
father's great wealth.
Mrs. Carew had two children by her first marriage--a son, now
twenty-three, called Ivan, and the girl Alpine. Her favorite scheme
was to marry the hated Kathleen to this son, so that he might share
her rich inheritance. Failing in this, she meant, if it lay in the
power of a human devil to compass it, to have Kathleen disgraced and
disinherited, so that she and her children might enjoy the whole of the
great Carew fortune.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. CAREW IS MYSTERIOUSLY ABSENT.
Alas, that clouds should ever steal
O'er Love's delicious sky--
That ever Love's sweet lip should feel
Aught but the gentlest sigh.
L. E. L.
Mrs. Carew did not appear at breakfast the next morning and Alpine,
with a reproachful glance at Kathleen, said that mamma was sick. She
had been so worried last night that she could not sleep, and this
morning she had such a terrible headache that she must lie abed all day.
Kathleen did not look either repentant or sorry. She simply said that
in that case she would not practice her music this morning, and went
off to her own little studio, where she painted a while with great
ardor, then threw down her brush, and rang for Susette to bring up the
morning papers.
Susette lingered a minute after she had put down the newspapers.
"Miss Kathleen, I don't think it will disturb Mrs. Carew the least bit
if you practice your music," she said, significantly.
"But her head aches, Susette."
"No, it don't miss; she's not in the house, so there! She went away
early--very early, in her traveling-dress, the Lord knows where; for
James told me so on the sly." (James was the butler, and Susette's
sweetheart.)
Kathleen looked a little startled as she said:
"You must be mistaken. Ellen has been with her mistress all day. I
tapped at the door a while ago to ask how she was, and she reported
Mrs. Carew as very low."
"They are all deceiving you, Miss Kathleen, but what for I don't know,
only I'm sure and certain she ain't in this house," protested Susette,
stoutly.
"Very well, Susette. Her absence has no more interest for me than her
presence," Kathleen answered, indifferently, as she opened _The Globe_
and read the encomiums on Ralph Chainey's acting that filled a critical
half column.
Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed with pleasure.
"He plays 'Prince Karl' again to-night. Oh if I only could go again!"
she thought, regretfully; then, throwing down the paper, she decided
she would go and practice her music, since Mrs. Carew was not ill, as
Alpine pretended.
She had played but a few bars when Alpine entered with reproachful eyes.
"Have you no feeling, Kathleen? You will kill mamma!"
"Since mamma went away this morning early and has not yet returned,
there's no danger," Kathleen answered, coolly.
"It is false! Who told you so?"
"No matter how I found it out. I'm in possession of the mysterious
fact."
"It's that prying Susette, I know! I shall advise mamma to dismiss her
immediately."
"You'd better not, Alpine. Susette knows some of your _secrets_!"
Kathleen answered, with a provoking laugh.
"I have no secrets!" snapped Alpine; but she left the room discomfited.
Kathleen practiced and read until the late luncheon, where she was
surprised to find herself alone.
"Where is Miss Belmont, James?" she asked.
"Miss Belmont went out for a walk," he answered, respectfully.
While Kathleen was making up her mind to go for a walk, too, some
callers were announced. She received the matron and her two gay young
daughters, entertained them herself, with an apology for the absence
of the other members of the family, and saw them depart with a sigh of
relief.
"I will go for my walk now," she decided, but turning from the piano,
she saw an open note lying on the floor. Her own name attracted her,
and picking it up, she read, under date of that morning:
"DEAR ALPINE AND KATHLEEN--Mamma wishes you to join us at an informal
three-o'clock lunch to-day, to meet a distinguished guest. Brother
George was at college with Prince Karl--Ralph Chainey, you know--and
he is coming here to lunch with us to-day. Do come, girls! He's so
handsome and talented I want you both to know him. There will be
several others, too, but we want you especially. I want him to see our
beautiful Kathleen."
The note bore the name of Helen Fox, one of their intimate girl
friends, and Kathleen realized in a minute that she had been tricked by
crafty Alpine, who had gone to the luncheon alone to meet Ralph Chainey.
A futile sob of bitter disappointment rose in the girl's throat, and
crushing the note in her hand, she walked to the window, gazing blankly
out into the handsome street through burning tears.
A light laugh startled her. There was Alpine Belmont, in elegant
attire, walking toward the gate with a tall, handsome, _distingué_
young man. Lifting his hat with a smile, he left the young lady there,
and walked away with a hasty backward glance at the window that
showed him a lovely, woful face staring in undisguised wonder at the
spectacle of Ralph Chainey walking home with deceitful Alpine Belmont.
"Alpine, you wicked girl, how could you treat me so unfairly?" she
demanded, shaking with passion.
Alpine flung herself into a chair, flushed, laughing, insolent.
"You told mamma last night that I was a sneaking tell-tale, didn't you?
Well, then, I paid you off, that's all! Besides, mamma does not allow
you to know Ralph Chainey--a pity for you, my poor Kathleen, for he's
the most fascinating young man I ever met. I made myself very agreeable
to him, and I think he fell in love with me. You see yourself he walked
home with me from Helen's luncheon. Would you like to know what I told
him about you, my charming Kathleen?"
"No!" the girl answered, hotly.
"I don't believe you--you're dying to hear. Well, it was this: I said
you did not recognize him in the least last night till I told you it
was the man that saved you at Newport. Then I said you would not come
to meet him at the luncheon to-day, because you said it would be such a
bore having to thank him. Ha, ha! You'd like to murder me, I know!"
CHAPTER VI.
KATHLEEN'S DEFIANCE.
She went her way with a strong step and slow--
Her pressed lip arched, and her clear eye undimmed,
As if it were a diamond--and her form held proudly up.
N. P. WILLIS.
Helen Fox was one of those sweet, pretty, amiable girls that everybody
loves. Her rosy lips were always wreathed in smiles, and the very
glance of her roguish blue eyes invited confidence. She was the most
popular girl in her set, and the intimate friend of Kathleen Carew and
Alpine Belmont.
Warm-hearted Helen had been sadly disappointed because Kathleen had not
come to the luncheon, and the excuse that Alpine offered--namely, that
her step-sister could not tear herself away from a new novel--seemed
too shallow to entertain.
"I'm really mad with Kathleen, the lazy thing!" she said, frankly, to
Ralph Chainey, who smiled, but made no comment. He was thinking about
what Miss Belmont had told him just now. It rankled in his mind.
"I am anxious for you to meet her, she is such a beauty!" continued
Helen, enthusiastically.
He gave some flattering answer that made her dimple and blush, but she
answered, with a careless glance around:
"Oh, yes, we girls are well enough; but wait till you see my bonny
Kathleen. Such lips, such hair, such eyes!"
Ralph Chainey laughed.
"You needn't be so sarcastic, Mr. Chainey. You haven't seen our beauty
yet."
"I saw her last night at the theater."
"Oh, so you did. I forgot that. Well, isn't she charming?"
The handsome actor replied with a quotation:
"'Perfectly beautiful, faultily faultless.'"
"She is all that," Helen Fox replied; but she looked at him with
puzzled eyes, and thought within herself that he was somehow piqued at
Kathleen Carew. But why, since the two had never met?
Suddenly the reason presented itself to her mind.
"The great vain thing! He is piqued because the beauty didn't come to
the luncheon. He is offended because she did not seem anxious to meet
him."
And she was secretly amused at the young actor's palpable vanity,
regarding it as a good joke, little dreaming of the seed that Alpine
Belmont had been sowing in his mind.
Many envious glances followed Alpine, a little later, when she bore
Ralph Chainey off in triumph as her escort home; but Helen was pleased,
for she thought:
"If Alpine asks him into the house he will get acquainted with
Kathleen, and then he will find out how lovable she is."
But when George Fox, who had also walked home with a young lady on
Commonwealth Avenue, returned home he reported that Ralph Chainey had
left Miss Belmont at the door.
Suddenly Helen remembered sundry small matters that were not at all to
Alpine's credit.
"That girl is tricky, I know," she said to herself. "Perhaps she did
not ask Mr. Chainey to go in. Perhaps she kept Kathleen from coming
here to-day. She has been known to do shabby things to cut other girls
out of their lovers. Not that Ralph Chainey is Kathleen's lover _yet_,
but he ought to be. They are just suited to each other, both are so
splendid. It may be that Alpine intends to catch him herself before her
sister gets a chance." Helen laughed a sage little laugh to herself,
and added: "I'll ask mamma to let us call at Mrs. Carew's and take
Kathleen with us to the theater to-night."
* * * * *
"Oh, Alpine! where is Kathleen? George and mamma are waiting out here
in the carriage. We have just one seat left, and we stopped to ask
Kathleen to go with us to the theater."
"Mamma is out, Helen, and she would not like it if Kathleen went
without leave."
"But mamma is with us, Alpine. She would chaperon Kathleen."
"She can not possibly go," began Alpine, in a high tone of authority;
but at that moment a light swish of silken draperies came through the
hall, and a sweet voice said, clearly:
"Kathleen _can_ go, Helen, and she _will_ go, too, if you will wait
till she gets on her things."
And Alpine beheld her step-sister, cool, calm, defiant, rustle up to
Helen Fox and kiss that piquant, silk-robed damsel.
"Come upstairs with me, Helen, dear, while I dress," she said,
radiantly, trying to draw her toward the stairway, for this colloquy
had taken place in the hall.
Alpine followed them upstairs out of reach of the servants' ears, and
then she said, sharply:
"You need not get ready, Kathleen, for I shall assume mamma's authority
in her absence, and forbid your going."
"Oh, Alpine, where is the harm?" pleaded Helen.
"Mamma has forbidden her to go to the theater any more this week,
because she caught her making eyes at an actor on the stage last
night," Alpine answered, maliciously.
"It is false!" answered the young girl, stung to madness by Alpine's
wickedness. Turning to Helen, she said, proudly: "I accept your
invitation, Helen, and will accompany you to the theater, in spite of a
hundred Alpine Belmonts! I am no slave to be domineered over in this
manner, and Alpine had better go and leave me alone before she arouses
me any further."
"Very well, miss; take your own way and defy _me_; but mamma will make
you repent it, be sure of that," snapped Alpine, withdrawing.
"Oh, Kathleen, I didn't know I was going to raise such a breeze!
Perhaps you had better not go if Mrs. Carew objects," Helen said,
uneasily.
Kathleen turned on her a face crimson with angry passion.
"I'd go if she killed me for it!" she cried, with an imperious stamp
of her dainty foot. "Who is that woman to forbid my going to places of
amusement, like other girls?" She rang the bell violently for Susette,
and added: "Say nothing before my maid, Helen; but on our way to the
theater I'll tell you how wickedly Alpine treated me this afternoon."
Presently Alpine, peeping through her door, saw the two girls going
away, Helen a little uneasy looking, the other proud, defiant,
beautiful as a dream.
"She will meet Ralph Chainey, after all," Alpine muttered, in a fury.
* * * * *
It was midnight when Mrs. Fox's carriage stopped again at the Carew
mansion, and George handed Kathleen out and rang the bell for her at
her own door.
The windows were closed, and not the faintest gleam of light shone
through them. George waited a few moments, then rang the bell again.
"Every one must be asleep, they are so long coming," said Kathleen,
shivering in the cold night air.
They rang again furiously; but there was no response. The locked door,
the dark, forbidding windows seemed to frown on their frantic efforts
to arouse the house.
Mrs. Fox put her head out of the carriage window and said:
"Kathleen, you had better come home with us to-night, my dear. I don't
think you will be able to rouse any one there; and you will catch cold
waiting in the cool night air."
CHAPTER VII.
"MRS. CAREW IS GOING TO MAKE YOU MARRY HER SON," SAID THE MAID.
I've thought of thee--I've thought of thee,
Through change that teaches to forget;
Thy face looks up from every sea,
In every star thine eyes are set.
N. P. WILLIS.
Kathleen was annoyed by her failure to get into the house, but she
did not attach any particular significance to it. She supposed that
Alpine, out of spite, had caused the servants to lock up and go to bed;
that was all. She went home willingly enough with her kind friends,
intending to return the next morning.
And when she laid her beautiful head on the pillow that night, it was
to dream of soft brown eyes that had looked thrillingly into hers,
and of a warm white hand that had clasped hers, oh! so closely, when
he said good-night; for Ralph Chainey, the actor--or Prince Karl, as
Kathleen called him in her thoughts--had come into Mrs. Fox's box twice
between the acts, and had been presented to the beautiful heiress whose
life he had saved last summer, and from whose presence he had gone away
_incognito_.
Prince Karl had been on his dignity at first. He had remembered what
Alpine Belmont had told him that afternoon.
He believed that beautiful Kathleen was cold, proud and ungrateful.
So, after bowing over her little hand when George Fox presented them,
he turned his attention to the vivacious Helen, and scarcely looked at
the radiant creature close to her side.
Kathleen bit her red lips and remained silent. She understood Ralph
Chainey's mood, and knew that she had to thank Alpine for his
indifference.
Her sweet lips quivered with a repressed sob, and her dark eyes
swam in moisture that threatened to fall in blinding tears. It was
hard--cruelly hard to have him believe her proud and ungrateful, and to
see him resent it in this cavalier fashion.
He bowed himself out presently, and then Helen Fox turned to her,
eagerly.
"How did you like him, Kathleen? Isn't he just splendid?" she
exclaimed. Then she saw how grave and quiet the young girl looked,
and remembered what Kathleen had told her in the carriage. "Oh! I
forgot; he did not really pass one word with you. He was piqued and
stiff over what Alpine told him," she cried, and added, consolingly:
"Never mind; he'll come round. He admires you very much--I saw that in
his eyes--and, of course, he is secretly very much interested in you,
having saved your life! It is very romantic, Kathleen, and I shouldn't
wonder if it's a match."
"Don't, Helen!" answered the girl, somewhat incoherently.
But Helen laughed gayly, and when the next act was over and the
actor came again for a few minutes, he found her whispering very
mysteriously to her mother. She nodded at him, and went on confiding
something to her mother's ear.
George Fox had gone out, so there was no one to speak to but
Kathleen--trembling Kathleen--who blushed warmly when he came to her
side, and murmured, tremulously:
"I want to thank you for--for last summer. It was so good of you, so
noble, to risk your life for a--a stranger."
"Pray do not speak of it; it was nothing. I ran no risk; I am a good
swimmer," he replied, a little stiffly.
But Kathleen went on, in that tremulous voice:
"I--I have always remembered you with gratitude--always longed to see
you again, that I might thank you from my heart for your goodness.
Papa, too, wanted to see you. Why did you go away so suddenly?"
Where was the arrogance, the indifference on which Alpine had
expatiated? The sweet lips trembled; there was dew on the curling black
lashes that shaded the splendid, luring black eyes. When Ralph Chainey
had gazed into them a moment, he turned away his head like one dazzled
by too much sunlight.
"Why did you go away so suddenly?" she repeated; and then he said:
"It was because I am an actor, Miss Carew. If I had stayed to receive
your thanks, and disclosed my identity, the story would have got into
the newspapers, and people would have said I did it to get some free
advertising. Your name would have gone all over the country as the
heroine of the rescue. You would not have liked the publicity, perhaps;
and so I hurried away."
"It was very good of you to think of that," she answered, simply;
then added hastily, for the minutes were passing, and she knew he must
soon return to the stage again: "Mr. Chainey, Alpine told me what she
had told you this afternoon. It was--was--a joke on her part. I _did_
recognize you last night as soon as I saw you. I told her who you were.
She was jesting, believe me for I--I could not--be so ungrateful as to
forget your face so soon."
It was time for him to go. He rose and held out his hand.
"Thank you," he said, in his deep, sweet voice, pressing her hand
warmly. His magnetic brown eyes gazed deep into hers, and he murmured,
inaudibly to the others: "It was the happiest moment I ever knew when I
saved your life!"
Then he was gone. From the stage she met his eyes twice fixed on her,
as if he could not resist the temptation of looking. When George Fox
put them all into their carriage, he came out, still in his stage
costume, to say good-night. He held her hand just a moment longer than
Helen's, and he whispered:
"I hope we shall meet again."
His eyes, his words, his thrilling hand-clasp, haunted the motherless
girl that night in the mystical land of dreams.
She arose early, after a rather restless night, and her first thought
was that she had no morning-dress.
"I am taller than Helen, so I can not wear one of hers; neither can
I wear the low-necked costume I wore to the theater last night," she
murmured, in perplexity.
Her musings were cut short by a tap at the door. Susette, her maid,
entered with a large bundle.
"Good-morning, Miss Kathleen. I've brought your walking-dress for you
to come home," she said, undoing the paper and displaying a black silk
costume.
"Oh! how good of you, Susette! I was just thinking I would have to ask
Mrs. Fox to send around for it."
"Mrs. Carew sent me," said Susette, pursing her lips.
"So she has returned?" asked Kathleen, resting her charming head on
her elbow and looking down at the maid, who had seated herself on an
ottoman close to the bed.
"She came home near midnight last night, Miss Kathleen."
"Near midnight? Why, then, some one must have been awake when I came
home, Susette! Why did no one answer the bell?"
"The madame's orders," Susette replied, significantly.
The great dark eyes of Kathleen dilated in wonder.
"But why----" she began, and the maid interrupted:
"Miss Kathleen, I did some eavesdropping on your account last night,
and if you'll not think the worse of me for it, I'll tell you Mrs.
Carew's plans."
The woman was rather intelligent and quite well educated for one in her
position. She had been in Kathleen's service five years, and loved her
young mistress dearly. Her devotion to her interests had won her a warm
place in Kathleen's heart.
"Go on," she said, and Susette continued:
"When madame went away yesterday it was somewhere into the country
where there's a boarding-school, where you are to be sent to-day."
"Susette!"
"It's the gospel truth, miss! They packed your trunk last night, all
ready for you to start. That's why they wouldn't let you in. You were
not to know anything."
"To--send--me--back--to--school!" exclaimed the young girl in such
amazement that the words came with difficulty from her lips. Her eyes
flashed with anger. "I will not go! She can not force me!" she declared.
"She intends to _make_ you go. I heard her tell Miss Belmont so," said
the maid, looking very sad, for she knew that Mrs. Carew's will was law.
Kathleen's face grew scarlet with passion, and there was a dangerous
light in her eyes, but she did not answer. Springing from the couch,
she allowed Susette to attire her in her black silk.
"I thought maybe if I told you beforehand that maybe you could think of
some way to outwit her," said the maid.
"And I will--I _will_! I will never be sent to school again!" cried the
girl, in something almost like terror. She clasped her little hands
and sighed: "Oh, why did papa ever go away and leave me here in that
woman's power? She was always cruel to me, but she did not dare so much
while he was here. Oh, I wish he would come home to his poor Kathleen!"
Bitter burning tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on her heaving
bosom. It was so hard to be ruled by this coarse woman, who envied and
hated her in the same breath.
"She is going to make you marry her son, too. She told her daughter
that she was determined to bring that about, so he might share your
fortune," Susette remarked at this juncture.
CHAPTER VIII.
"PLEASE BUY MY DIAMOND NECKLACE," SAID KATHLEEN.
I've no mother, now I'm weeping--
She has left me here alone;
She beneath the sod is sleeping,
Now there is no joy at home.
_Old Song_.
Before Kathleen could reply, the door opened softly and Helen Fox came
in with two letters in her hand. Kissing Kathleen good morning, she
exclaimed:
"What do you think? The postman has just brought me a proposal!"
"From Loyal Graham?" queried her friend.
Helen blushed up to her eyes, but answered, gayly:
"No, indeed--from Teddy Darrell."
Kathleen arched her black eyebrows in surprise.
"Teddy Darrell! Why, he proposed to _me_ last week," she said.
"And did he ask you to keep it a _secret_?" asked Helen, consulting her
letter, her blue eyes dancing with fun.
"Yes, he did, now that I recall it. Oh, my! I'm sorry I mentioned it;
but you took me by surprise."
"There's no harm done, my dear, and you need not look so
conscience-stricken. Bless you, I don't mean to keep it a secret,
although he prays me here to do so. Why, Teddy Darrell is the worst
flirt in Boston, and proposes to a new girl every week, always trying
to keep the new love a secret from the old one."
"But does no one ever accept him, Helen?"
"Perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure I sha'n't, and I'm just dying to tell
the girls. Why, only last week we were comparing notes over him, and
out of seven girls in the crowd he had asked five to marry him. Maud
Sylvester said I'd be the next one on his list, and you see I am."
"But how can he fall in love so often?" queried Kathleen, laughing.
"He's very susceptible, I suppose, or maybe it's all in fun. You know
some young men like to be engaged to several girls at once, so they
can boast of their conquests, and maybe he's one of them. Well, I must
lacerate his poor heart by a refusal," with a mock sigh.
"Who will be his next victim?" asked Kathleen.
"Either Maud Sylvester or Katie Wells. One is an actress, the other a
novelist. He is wild over both fraternities."
"How amusing!" laughed her friend. "But your other letter, Helen? Is it
another proposal?"
"No; this is an invitation to attend a flower show."
"From Loyal Graham?"
"Ye-es," Helen answered, a little consciously. "But, Kathleen, how pale
you are! Did you not sleep well?"
"No; I was restless," answered the girl.
She debated within herself whether she ought to tell Helen of the news
Susette had brought. She concluded that she would not just yet.
"Come, we will go down to breakfast, dear," Helen said, drawing an arm
through Kathleen's to lead her away.
"Susette, you need not go back yet. I shall want you after a while,"
said Kathleen, and the maid remained very willingly.
Down-stairs Kathleen smiled, talked, ate, and drank in a mechanical
fashion. She was busy revolving schemes for escaping her threatening
fate.
Kathleen had not been home from school more than six months. The idea
of returning to it, and leaving the social whirl, that as yet was so
new and charming, was not to be tolerated.
"And just as I had met Ralph Chainey, too," she said to herself, in
keen dismay.
Her mind was on a rack of torture. She was afraid that open rebellion
would not avail. Her foe was keen and subtle. She would employ strategy
to compass her ends.
"I ought to meet her with her own weapons," she thought; and all at
once she began to wonder if she could not quietly get away and go South
to her dead mother's relatives, there to remain until the return of her
father should make her safe from persecution.
Two hours later Kathleen bade her friends good-morning, and walked away
with Susette, as they supposed, toward her home. Little did Helen Fox,
as she gazed with loving eyes after her beautiful form, dream of the
tragic doom hanging over Kathleen Carew.
"Susette, I am not going home with you," she said.
The maid looked inquiringly into the beautiful young face, and Kathleen
added, determinedly:
"I am going straight to the station, where I shall take the train and
go South to my mother's relatives, to remain until papa gets back to
free me from that woman's tyranny."
"Oh, Miss Kathleen! do you think that will be for the best?" inquired
Susette, timorously.
"Of course it will, Susette; for they will be kind to me for my dead
mother's sake."
"And you will have me to pet you and care for you?" said the
affectionate maid.
"I can not take you with me, Susette; for it might get you into
trouble, you good soul, and I don't want to do that. I can take care of
myself, never fear. No, you are to go straight back home and say that
I sent you, and will follow presently."
Susette began to sob dismally, and Kathleen had to draw her aside into
a pretty little park where they seated themselves, and talked softly
for some time. Then Kathleen arose, and pressed her sweet rosy lips to
the woman's wet cheeks.
"Now good-bye for a few weeks only, Susette, dear; for as soon as
papa returns I'll be back. If Mrs. Carew turns you out, go to Helen
Fox and ask her to give you employment while I am away. She will do
it for my sake, I know. And I'll write to you at Helen's as soon as I
get to Richmond. How fortunate that I have my diamonds with me, for
I can go to the jeweler's and sell enough to carry me on my journey.
Oh, Susette, don't sob so, please, dear! Good-bye; God bless you!" She
signaled a passing cab, gave the order: "Golden & Glitter's, Tremont
Street," and was driven swiftly away.
It was a bright, cool morning in April, and Tremont Street was thronged
with shoppers and business people as she stepped out of the cab in
front of the jeweler's elegant shop.
Bidding the cab wait, the young girl drew down her lace veil and
entered without noticing, in her preoccupation, the tall, blonde young
man, with a small satchel in his hand, who was intently gazing into the
jeweler's window with a covetous gleam in his pale, dull-blue eyes.
But the young man's eyes turned aside from the contemplation of the
treasures displayed within the heavy plate-glass window and fastened on
the beautiful young girl with her patrician air and elegant costume.
"Kathleen, as I live!" he exclaimed, with a violent start, and followed
her stealthily into the shop.
The elegant place was thronged with shoppers, and he mingled with them,
keeping close to Kathleen, although unobserved by the object of his
espionage.
"I wish I had the money that lucky girl is going to spend!" he
muttered, enviously, to himself.
Kathleen went immediately to the desk of Mr. Golden, the senior partner
of the firm. Drawing a small black case from her pocket, she opened it,
displaying a very pretty diamond necklace.
"Mr. Golden, of course you remember when papa bought this necklace here
for me," she said, timidly. "He paid five thousand dollars for it, you
know. Well, papa is away"--with a catch in her breath--"and--I--I need
some money very much. Will you do me the favor of buying this back for
whatever you will give me?"
The kindly white-haired gentleman, drew a check toward him and began to
write rapidly.
"Will a thousand dollars do you, my dear young lady? Because you can
take that, and leave the necklace as security for the loan. You can
redeem it when your father gets back," he said, beaming genially upon
her, for the Carews were among his best customers.
CHAPTER IX.
MURDERED!
As I came through the Valley of Despair--
As I came through the valley, on my sight,
More awful than the darkness of the night,
Shone glimpses of a past that had been fair.
E. W. W.
When Kathleen had thanked Mr. Golden for his ready kindness, and
gratefully accepted the check, she hastened to the bank, on the next
block, and had it cashed in some large and a few bills of smaller
denomination. She had left Cabby waiting for her in front of the
jewelers, telling him that as soon as she returned from the bank she
wanted him to drive her to the station, to take the first train for the
South.
Accordingly, she returned in a few minutes and sprung into the cab,
little dreaming that she was watched and followed by the tall, blonde
young man who had recognized her when she had alighted at Golden &
Glitter's, and followed her into the store.
He had secured a cab for himself, and was following fast upon her track.
"Now, what is up with the heiress? Must be an elopement. Egad! Alpine
told me she was in love with a handsome actor, and that the _mater_
was going to take her back to school to save her for me. Deuce take
her! I don't want her, only for the money she'll get from old Carew.
I was always afraid of those snapping black eyes of hers. I'd rather
have that little blue-eyed New York ballet dancer of mine, in spite of
her extravagance. A thousand dollars--a cool thousand! That's what the
little minx wants me to give her now, or----But I won't think of that;
it makes me savage. A thousand dollars! That's what Kathleen Carew has
in her purse this moment, besides the diamond on her finger, and her
ear-rings--real diamonds inside the little gold balls she wears snapped
over them in daytime. I wish I had 'em for my little duck! Wouldn't she
be sweet with great sparklers in her pink ears! And to think that the
_mater_ refused me the check I begged her for this morning, and she
rolling in old Carew's money, while her only son could not keep up any
style at all only for gambling!" ran the tenor of his thoughts, as he
pursued hapless Kathleen to the station, making up his mind that she
was about to elope, and grimly determining that she should purchase
his silence with her money and jewels. "And cheap getting off like
that, when I might take her back to mother and keep her for myself.
Egad! maybe the actor will pay me something on his own account; d--n
the lucky rascal!" he muttered.
To his amazement, no person met Kathleen at the station. She bought her
ticket alone, and entered the parlor car of the vestibule train going
South.
"To Richmond, hey? Running away alone, and to those poor relations of
hers, I'll be bound. No chance, then, of getting any of her boodle
for my dearie. She will need it all, for they say the Franklyns, her
mother's relations, are poor as Job's turkey hen. Well, I'll follow,
and we'll see if anything turns up to my advantage;" and, buying a
ticket as far as Philadelphia, he entered the train, after first
disguising himself by taking from his hand satchel and putting on a
dark wig and dark, heavy whiskers.
The train rushed on and on through the land; but Kathleen, sobbing
under her veil, took no heed of time. Day passed, and it was far into
the night. The train rushed into a lonely woodland station, snorted and
stopped, while the conductor shouted:
"Passengers for the South change cars here!"
Kathleen and a single gentleman seemed the only Southern passengers.
They groped their way out into the darkness of the starless night.
The other train was waiting on the other side of a small wooden
depot. Kathleen, confused by the strangeness and darkness, staggered
shiveringly forward on the muddy path, alone, and frightened at the
solitude.
A stealthy step behind her, two throttling hands at her throat
smothering her startled cry. She was thrown violently down, the jewels
wrenched from her hands and ears, the purse from her dress; then the
black-hearted murderer fled toward the waiting train, leaving his
victim for dead upon the ground.
CHAPTER X.
AT DEAD OF NIGHT.
I gaze on her frozen face,
Her mystical, sightless eyes.
And now--even now--her grace
The power of death defies.
W. J. BENNERS, JR.
Kathleen lay still and white under the starless sky, like one dead, and
there was no one to come to her rescue, for the telegraph operator,
busy at his instrument, dreamed not of her proximity, and at this hour
of the night there were no loiterers about in the village. Swiftly and
silently had the fiend escaped, and it was most probable that day would
dawn ere any one would discover the beautiful girl lying out there in
the rear of the depot upon the damp, muddy ground, dead and cold.
But to return to Boston, which our heroine had so unceremoniously
quitted.
Her last thought as the train steamed away with her was of Ralph
Chainey, the handsome actor, who had looked so tenderly into her eyes,
and who had whispered as he held her hand at parting: "I hope we shall
meet again."
Her tears had started at the memory.
"It is all over," she sighed. "He will be gone away from Boston before
I go back, and I shall never see him again."
But at that very moment events were shaping themselves in Ralph
Chainey's life so as to bring him to her side again.
In his room at the Thorndike Hotel he was reading a telegram that said:
"Come at once. Fedora is ill--perhaps dying."
His handsome face grew grave and troubled. Throwing down the telegram,
he sought his manager.
"Every engagement for this week must be canceled. I must go South on
the first train."
"But, my dear Mr. Chainey, the loss will amount to thousands of
dollars," expostulated the reluctant manager.
"No matter; let the loss be mine. A--some one--is--ill--dying. I must
go."
"I am very sorry. We were having a splendid success here," sighed the
manager; but his regrets did not deter the young man from going.
Two hours after Kathleen had left Boston, he drove up to the same
station where she had taken the train for the South, and entered
another one going in the same direction.
Meanwhile, Susette sauntered back to Beacon Street with the message
Kathleen had dictated--she would be at home later on.
Mrs. Carew was indignant. She had been planning to take Kathleen away
by the noon train. Her trunk, already strapped and corded, stood in the
hall.
Susette received a severe scolding for leaving her young mistress, but
she did not seem much affected by it.
"She is my mistress, and I should not dare to disobey her orders," she
replied, and walked out of the room.
"What shall you do now?" asked Alpine, curiously.
"I must wait and take her on a later train."
Ringing a bell, she sent her own maid to Commonwealth Avenue, to bring
home her tardy step-daughter.
Ellen returned with the news that Kathleen had left Mrs. Fox's several
hours ago.
"And with Susette, too," said the elderly maid, sourly; for she
cherished a secret grudge against Kathleen's maid, who was younger than
herself, better looking, and had insnared the affections of James, the
butler.
Susette was recalled. On being questioned, she readily admitted that
Kathleen had started home with her, but sent her on ahead, promising to
follow.
While the angry step-mother stormed and raved over Kathleen's
willfulness, awaiting her return in impotent anger, the young girl was
flying fast from her tyranny, and nearer to the fate that loomed darkly
in the near future.
* * * * *
The flying train sped on through the night with Ralph Chainey. He had
thrown himself down dressed upon his berth, for the porter had told him
that he would have to change cars at midnight.
He was restless and troubled. No sleep visited his eyes. In spite of
himself, his thought turned back to Boston--to Kathleen Carew. She
haunted him with her musical voice and luring eyes. At last a deep
groan forced itself through his lips.
"I would to Heaven we had never met!" he exclaimed, in a tone of deep
despair.
Pushing back the light curtain, he looked out into the night. It had
grown cold and bleak. A light patter of mingled rain and snow was
beating against the window.
"How dreary!" the young man murmured, with a shudder; and added, in a
sort of awe: "Dying! can that be true?"
The porter, who was very attentive--the result of a liberal tip--came
and put his head between the curtains.
"We change cars at the next station, Mr. Chainey, and that's but a few
miles away. You'd better be getting ready."
Ralph came into the little reception-room, and the man assisted him
into his overcoat. A few minutes more, and the train was slowing up at
the lonely station.
"You're the only person getting off, sir. Good-night, sir; a pleasant
journey!"
The porter handed out Ralph's valise, and he stepped down into the
darkness, while the train went its way.
"But where the dickens is the other one?" soliloquized the young man,
standing still a moment, the light snow pelting his face, while he
peered into the darkness for the locomotive's head-light. "It must be
behind that little depot. Here goes for a tour of investigation!" and
with his valise in hand, he strode forward in the darkness, hardly
knowing where he went, and wondering at the scarcity of railway
officials and light.
"The train can't be here. It is probably late," he thought, and then
his foot tripped, and he fell headlong over a body lying in his path.
A shudder of nameless horror shook the young man as he scrambled to an
erect position, muttering:
"Good heavens! a woman, I know, from the silken garments. Now, what is
she doing out here on the ground in this Cimmerian darkness, with the
snow coming down in a fury?" He raised his voice and shouted loudly:
"Halloo, halloo!"
The closed door of the depot, with its one blinking lighted window,
opened, and then the form of a man appeared in the opening.
"Who is it, and what's the matter?" he exclaimed, shortly.
"Bring a lantern out here. I've found a woman dead in the snow!" was
the startling answer.
Ralph had knelt down and felt the face and hands of the motionless
woman. They were cold as ice, and he realized that she was dead.
"Horrible!" he murmured, and while he waited for the man to come with
the lantern little thrills of awe ran through him. The flesh he had
touched was firm and young, the hair was soft and curly, the garments
silken. Who was she, and why was she out here under the night sky, cold
and dead?
The depot agent came hurrying out through the driving snow, and flashed
the light of his lantern full into their faces, for Ralph was still
kneeling down by the motionless form.
"Who are you, and what is the row?" he inquired, curiously, but Ralph
did not reply.
He was gazing in terror at the silent face with its closed eyes that
lay so pale and still before him, wet with the falling snow, the
bronze curls tangled on the forehead, drops of blood congealed on the
exquisitely-formed ears; and, oh, horror! the white throat and chin had
dark crimson finger-marks upon them. The small velvet hat had fallen
off, the dress pocket was turned inside out, one hand had the glove
torn off, and was wounded where a ring had been wrenched from it.
"Oh, Heaven!" groaned Ralph Chainey, in a low voice of shuddering
horror, and the man exclaimed:
"Why, this looks like robbery and murder! See, her pocket has been
turned inside out, a ring has been torn from her finger--a diamond,
very likely--and her ears are bleeding where her ear-rings have been
torn out! Look at the red marks on her throat! Good Lord; she has
certainly been choked and robbed by some devil in human shape! Mister,
who are you, and where did you come from, and how did you find her?"
Ralph Chainey, whose face had grown as white as the dead one before
him, did not reply save by a second groan of unutterable horror. He was
wringing his hands in dismay, and the expression of his eyes was one
of bitterest anguish. Not until the man shook him by the shoulder, and
plied him over and over with questions, did he reply, telling him in
disjointed sentences the simple truth of how he came there, and adding:
"If I am not mistaken, she is Miss Carew, a young Boston lady, whom I
met there only last night. How she came here, what is the mystery of
this, I can not understand."
CHAPTER XI.
THE FATAL TELEGRAM.
"The young village maid, when with flowers she dresses
Her dark, flowing hair for some festival day,
Will think of thy face till, neglecting her tresses,
She mournfully turns from the mirror away."
"Poor thing! she must have been a beauty," the railway employé said, as
he contemplated Kathleen's cold and beautiful face. "Come, let us carry
her into the house and get a doctor. Maybe she ain't really dead, only
swooned," he continued, hopefully; and between them they bore her in,
and laid her on a bench made soft with their overcoats.
Then the man ran to his instrument, which was ticking busily away, and
directly said:
"Your train is several hours late, sir; so if you'll stay here, I'll
run and fetch a doctor."
He flashed out at the door, and in the illy-lighted, shabby little
waiting-room Ralph Chainey was alone with beautiful dead Kathleen, so
cruelly murdered.
He knelt down by her side in an agony of dumb despair. He gazed through
blinding tears upon the sweet white face; he took her cold, white hand
and kissed the wound upon it, and then he whispered, as if she could
hear him:
"Beautiful Kathleen! you will never know now how dearly I have loved
you since first I saw your face! You are dead--dead! and soon the dark
earth will cover you away forever from the sight of men. Ah! if only
those dead lips could unclose long enough to tell me the name of your
dastardly murderer, I would pursue him to the ends of the earth, but
that I would bring him to punishment!"
He bent his head until his pale lips touched the rigid ones of the
dead girl. They were icy cold, but the soft curls of bright hair that
lightly brushed his forehead, how soft, how silken, how alive, they
felt! But she was dead--this girl who had blushed last night beneath
his glance, whose voice had been so sweet and low when she spoke to him.
"Ah, Fate is a cruel lord,
A tyrant at best his rule;
And we learn by sin and sword
While here in his rigid school.
Ah, me. I left her with hopes beguiled,
We parted, and Fate looked on and smiled."
The shock and horror of the occasion began to overcome him, strong man
as he was; and his head reeled; consciousness forsook him. He fell in
a crouching position upon the floor, where he lay until the doctor
entered, followed by his gentle, girlish wife.
"Oh, the dear, sweet, pretty creature! what an awful way for her to
meet such a fate! The murderer ought to be burned at the stake!"
exclaimed the young wife, sorrowfully, and her tears fell fast on
Kathleen's face.
Doctor Churchman examined the girl's throat carefully, and said, with a
deep sigh:
"Poor thing, she is quite dead! There is nothing I can do for her but
to carry her over to our house and take care of the body until her
friends come."
A deep groan startled him, and Ralph Chainey staggered dizzily to his
feet.
"Ah, sir! so you have recognized this young woman, Dickson tells me.
Well, please dictate a telegraph message to her friends at once,"
Doctor Churchman said to him, gently, for the despairing look on the
young man's face touched him with sympathy.
"He must have been in love with the murdered girl," he said to himself.
Ralph went into the little office and sent a message off to Mrs.
Carew's address:
"I have found Kathleen Carew here dead under very mysterious
circumstances. Please come immediately, as I am compelled to leave."
By one of those strange rulings of fate that so startle us at times, a
mistake was made at the Boston office in taking the message, and when
received by Mrs. Carew the telegram ran thus:
"I have married Kathleen Carew, and nothing can change it. Please God
in Heaven, I am comforted to know it."
Mrs. Carew raved with anger, and the very next day the Boston papers
published, as a sensational item, Miss Carew's elopement and marriage
to the handsome actor, who charmed all women's hearts out of their
keeping--Ralph Washburn Chainey.
Mrs. Carew's active malice could invent but one sting for the heart of
her step-daughter at so short a notice. She cabled at once to Vincent
Carew in London a garbled account of Kathleen's elopement with an
actor, one of the lowest and most unprincipled professionals who had
ever disgraced the stage.
Vincent Carew had just been buying his ticket to return to America.
His health was restored, and his heart ached for a sight of his bonny
Kathleen, his beloved daughter.
Close against his heart lay her picture, and her last sweet, loving
letter, in which she implored him to come home to his unhappy child.
She did not mention her step-mother's unkindness, but a vague suspicion
stirred within him and prompted his speedy return.
His ticket was bought, his luggage, with so many beautiful gifts for
Kathleen stored in it, was sent down to the steamer. He smiled as he
thought of the surprise in store for his "home folks."
Upon this complacent mood came the malicious cablegram from his irate
wife.
The revulsion from his pleasant mood to keen wrath was terrible.
Vincent Carew had a dislike to actors in general, of which no one
understood the origin.
The thought of his bonny Kathleen married to one of this abhorred class
drove the proud man beside himself with shame and rage. For an hour he
raged and stormed about his room until he was on the verge of apoplexy.
Having exhausted the first fury of his anger, he flung himself into a
cab and was driven in haste to a lawyer's office.
His last act on leaving England was to execute his last will and
testament, in which he angrily disinherited Kathleen, his only
child. Leaving the document with the lawyer for safe keeping, with
instructions to forward it to America in case of his loss at sea, the
angry man was driven down to the steamer, and embarked for home--the
home that would be so lonely now without the light of Kathleen's
starry, dark eyes.
Did he repent his harsh and hasty deed, that haughty man, as he
paced the steamer's deck those long moonlight nights thinking of
his dead wife--lovely, childish Zaidee--and the daughter she had
left him--willful, spirited Kathleen? Did he shudder with fear as he
remembered that should anything happen to him at sea, the cruel will
that disinherited the young girl would be irrevocable? Or did he gloat
over the prospect of her sufferings with her impecunious husband? No
one knew, for in his bitter trouble and humiliation he stood proudly
aloof from all, cultivating no one's friendship, seemingly absorbed in
his own thoughts, until _that_ night--that night of awful storm and
darkness--when fatal disaster overtook the good ship _Urania_, and she
was burned at sea, her fate sending a thrill of horror through the
heart of the world when the tidings became known with Vincent Carew's
name among the lost.
CHAPTER XII.
"KATHLEEN, I SWEAR THAT I WILL AVENGE YOUR MURDER!"
My idol is dead--my queen!
I stand by her frozen clay,
And bitterly wail, "Kathleen,
Come back to my heart, I pray!"
But only the moaning storm winds sigh,
"Come back, come back!" as they hurry by.
W. J. BENNERS, JR.
Gentle, womanly hands prepared lovely, hapless Kathleen for the grave,
and she was laid upon a white bier in Doctor Churchman's pretty parlor.
Very pale and beautiful she looked, and as Ralph Chainey bent over her
for one farewell look, she did not seem like one dead, but just asleep.
It even seemed as though the white flowers on her breast moved softly,
as with a gentle breath; but when he hastened to hold a mirror over her
lips, it remained clear, without any moisture. He laid it down with a
bitter groan.
His delayed train would arrive in a few moments and he was compelled to
leave the dead girl's side for a death-bed. He must leave Kathleen here
with these kind, sympathetic people; but he would return as soon as
he could; for there must be an inquest, at which he must be the chief
witness.
He wondered how her relatives would take it--her stately step-mother,
her pretty step-sister, who had told him such unblushing falsehoods
about Kathleen.
"Helen Fox will be sorry, I know, for she loved Kathleen dearly," he
murmured aloud. Tears fell from his beautiful brown eyes upon the
angelic face, and he went on talking to the girl in a low monotone,
almost forgetting that she could not hear him, or perhaps fancying that
her gentle spirit hovered near: "My darling, you will never know how
dearly I loved you, nor how I shall mourn you all my life long! Once I
saved your life and oh! why did not Heaven give me that joy again? Why
did I come too late to-night?" With a groan, he laid his hand softly
on the one that clasped the white flowers on her breast, and added:
"Kathleen, I swear that I will avenge your murder, if it takes me all
my life to do it and costs me all my fortune!"
He bent and pressed his lips on her white brow and her soft curls, took
a white rosebud from under her pulseless hand and placed it in his
breast, then he was gone. Presently, when the excited villagers began
filing in to look at the murdered girl, they saw a tear-drop that had
fallen from his eyes glittering like a pearl on the bosom of her black
silk dress.
The little community was wild with horror and excitement at the finding
of the murdered girl in their midst, and when it became known that she
had been recognized as a great Boston heiress, the _furore_ became
even greater. The telegraph wires flashed the news from town to city,
and the newspapers that one day had chronicled the news of Kathleen's
elopement, printed twenty-four hours afterward in flaring head-lines
the awful story of her robbery and murder.
Even Mrs. Carew, wicked as she was, paled to the lips as she read it,
and Alpine fainted outright. Weak, selfish, cruel as the girl was, she
had cared for Kathleen more than she knew. The girl's charms had won
upon her, in spite of herself.
"Good heavens! that actor, he has robbed and murdered her, the fiend!"
Mrs. Carew cried, violently. "He is even worse than I thought!"
"I do not believe it, mamma. There is some mistake--there must be.
Ralph Chainey was a gentleman, and rich in his own right," Alpine
answered, speaking the truth for once.
Like every one else, she admired the young actor, and though his
preference for Kathleen had angered her, she was not prepared to do
him the flagrant injustice of believing him as wicked as her mother
asserted.
There was a moment's silence; then Mrs. Carew exclaimed, with a
startled air:
"Good heavens, Alpine! think what this means to us! Kathleen dead, the
whole Carew fortune is ours!"
Alpine had the grace to be ashamed.
"How can you think of that _now_?" she exclaimed, reproachfully. "I--I
had rather know that--that Kathleen was alive than have the wealth of
the Vanderbilts!"
Then she burst into tears and left the room in a hurry.
Mrs. Carew looked after her aghast.
"I did not think she would take it so hard, but then I always suspected
her at times of a sneaking fondness for that black-eyed witch," she
mused. "Well, I don't mind. It will look better in society, a little
real grief on Alpine's part. As for me, I'm glad she's out of the way,
and the Carew wealth assured to me and mine."
She gave a low laugh of satisfaction, but her hands were shaking with
excitement, and her heart fluttered strangely. She was recalling the
coincidence of Kathleen's and her mother's deaths--both at nearly the
same age--sixteen--and both by violent means.
The maid came so suddenly into the room that it gave her a violent
shock. She started and looked around angrily.
"Why do you enter the room so rudely, without knocking, Ellen?"
"I beg pardon, madame. I knocked, but you did not hear, so I made bold
to enter, because Miss Belmont sent me in a hurry."
"Well?"
"She desires to know if I shall get your things ready to go after Miss
Carew's body?"
The woman spoke in an unmoved tone. Her mistress had taught her to hate
the fair young heiress.
"She means to go?" interrogated Mrs. Carew.
"She is getting ready, madame, and told me you were going."
"Yes, of course, Ellen. In the absence of my husband and son, it is my
harrowing duty." Mrs. Carew put her handkerchief to her dry eyes and
sighed: "Make haste, Ellen."
CHAPTER XIII.
ANOTHER MYSTERY.
"Ah, you or I must look
Into the other's coffin, far or near,
And read, as in a book,
Words we made bitter here,
Some time!"
There was a little flutter of excitement at Doctor Churchman's pretty
cottage.
The Carews had at last arrived, after being vainly looked for for more
than two days, and their aristocratic airs and their stylish maid
created quite a sensation.
Kathleen was waiting for them in the little parlor--Kathleen with shut
eyes and pallid lips and folded, waxen hands--so unlike the brilliant
beauty they remembered, with this awful calm upon her face.
They gazed upon her, and Mrs. Carew's lips twitched nervously, while
Alpine wept genuine tears, remembering remorsefully how kind Kathleen
had been, and how illy she had repaid her goodness.
Ralph had not come yet, but a telegram from Richmond had arrived
announcing that he would come early in the morning when arrangements
had been made to hold an inquest.
Mrs. Churchman placed rooms at the service of the ladies and they
retired early, pleading fatigue, but really to talk over all that they
had heard.
They had inquired as to the strange telegram that had been received,
and learned the true contents of it. They knew now that it was of
Kathleen's death, not her marriage, they had been informed.
"She must have arrived here on an earlier train than Mr. Chainey,
so she was evidently running away from home," said Mrs. Carew, and
she added: "I think that wicked Susette eavesdropped and blabbed my
intentions to her mistress."
"It is very likely," said Alpine, dejectedly. She was sitting with her
pale cheek in her hand, thinking of the dead girl down-stairs whom she
had been taught to hate and envy. The latter had come easy enough,
the former was a lesson not so easily learned. She wished now, in her
sudden accession of remorse, that she had let herself love winsome
Kathleen, whom it was so hard to hate.
An exquisite casket had been ordered, in which Kathleen was now resting
easily like one asleep. Although she had been two days dead, there was
no sign of change about her. Beautiful and fair as a flawless pearl lay
Kathleen in her last sleep.
"Immediately after the inquest to-morrow, we will remove the body to
Boston for burial," Mrs. Carew had said in her haughty manner to Doctor
Churchman.
As the night advanced, the whole family retired to rest. It was not
deemed necessary to sit up with the corpse. She was left alone in the
open coffin, the lid being placed on a table. Not until after the
inquest would it be fastened down on the murdered girl.
Alpine Belmont tossed restlessly upon her couch by the side of her
sleeping mother. She could not rest, this girl whose conscience had at
last awakened. She was haunted by the ghosts of her evil deeds--the
cruelties she had shown her little step-sister.
"If she had not run away, she would not have come to this; but we drove
her to it--it was my mother's sin and mine," she thought, fearfully,
for the crimson marks on Kathleen's throat, the wounds on her ears and
fingers had thrilled her with horror.
She was not usually romantic, this girl, but Kathleen's horrible fate
had terribly unnerved her. A strange impulse came to her to go down
alone to the parlor, to stand by that open coffin, and beg Kathleen to
forgive her all the wicked past.
"She will hear me, for the spiritualists tell us that the souls of
the dead remain at first near their unburied bodies," she thought,
superstitiously; and, obeying her impulse, rose, slipped on a
dressing-gown, and drawn by an awful and irresistible yearning, sought
the presence of the dead.
It was but a few moments more before the whole household was aroused by
piercing shrieks. They rushed to the parlor and found Alpine screaming
beside an _empty coffin_!
Kathleen Carew had disappeared as mysteriously as if her body had
followed her soul to Heaven.
The gray light of dawn was stealing in through the windows, and by that
light they saw some withered roses lying on the floor. Last night they
had lain on Kathleen's breast. The hall door stood wide open, and a
terrible suspicion came into Doctor Churchman's mind.
The beautiful corpse had been stolen by unscrupulous parties, either
for the purpose of a ransom from rich relations or for the horrible
uses of a medical college.
"I could not sleep, so I came down here to look at her again, and she
was gone," sobbed Alpine, in hysterical dismay.
Searchers were organized in haste, but no clew was found, and when
Ralph Chainey came it was to be confronted with this mysterious case.
He almost went wild with agony; he employed the cleverest detectives
unavailingly. Mrs. Carew grew tired of the search, gave it up, and went
back to Boston, congratulating herself in secret that she would not be
at the expense and trouble of a funeral for her hated step-daughter.
Following fast upon this event came the news of the _Urania's_ loss at
sea, being burned to the water's edge, with all on board.
Soon after a cablegram from a London lawyer made the widow acquainted
with the fact of her husband's recent will, under whose provisions all
Vincent Carew's wealth was divided between his wife and her daughter,
disinheriting Kathleen for her disobedience, and making no mention of
his prodigal step-son, whom he had cordially despised.
Alpine was delighted with her good fortune, and her mercurial
temperament began to recover itself from the shock it had sustained in
Kathleen's loss.
CHAPTER XIV.
A STRANGE FATE.
I never thought that I should see thine eyelids shut in death,
Thy bright brow cold, thy spirit quenched that glowed and bloomed
beneath.
SUMNER LINCOLN FAIRFIELD.
Poor Kathleen! she had passed through a strange and terrible experience.
On that night when she had been so suddenly choked and robbed by an
unseen foe, the young girl had swooned from terror.
That quick relapse into unconsciousness had saved her life.
Thinking her dead, the murderer had relaxed his hold on her throat, and
throwing her roughly from him, escaped with his booty in time to board
the other train.
Kathleen, by one of those strange psychological conditions sometimes
induced by severe mental strain or shock, passed from her swoon into a
state of coma or trance. Through the two nights and one day in which
she lay thus, her senses seemed to be preternaturally acute, although
her bodily faculties were bound in iron bands of inaction.
What was her agony during the two hours when she lay alone in the murky
darkness and the snow and rain--what her joy when the voice of her
beloved penetrated her senses!
Saved, saved! And by _him_! How she longed to speak--to utter aloud her
joy and relief; but she could not voice her gladness--she could only
lie passive and inert, and hear him proclaim her dead in a voice of the
bitterest despair.
Oh, the blended rapture and agony of those hours! To lie still like a
stone, mute, moveless, and hear _his_ voice breathing his love for
her, feel his kisses on her cold face and hands!
She longed with a terrible yearning to move, to stir beneath his touch,
to cry out to him that she was alive, that she loved him even as he
loved her; but her body seemed to be as entirely dead as her soul was
alive--alive and in agony.
She knew that strangers came and went; that they talked of her as
dead; that they spoke of her beauty in pitying admiration; that they
shuddered at the red finger-marks on her throat, the wounds on her
hands and ears where her jewels had been torn away. She felt tears fall
often on her cold white face; she heard them talk of an inquest on the
morrow, and wonder if her relations from Boston would soon arrive.
Then came the moment when Ralph Chainey had to tear himself away
from her. She heard gentle Mrs. Churchman talking to him about her,
and saying that she was not changed in the least--she was a very
natural-looking corpse.
It seemed to the girl as if her heart leaped wildly enough to stir the
flowers on her breast at that awful word.
A corpse!
That was what they called her--when she was so full of agonized
life! Why could they not see that she was not dead? They said she
was unchanged. Why did they not suspect the truth, that she was in a
trance, not dead?
Then the doctor's wife went out and left Ralph Chainey alone with
the lovely corpse. Then it was he kissed her brow and hands, and
his tears fell on her face. She heard him utter words of love and
of farewell. She knew that he took a flower from under her hand
and went away, and then she realized that the man she loved better
than any one else in the world had gone away and left her to her
fate. No one else would greatly care if she were dead or living.
Perhaps--they--would--bury--her--alive!
At this stage of thought Kathleen seemed to die indeed. Her acute
consciousness of everything became mercifully suspended; she did not
know who came or went; she did not know when she was placed in the
elegant casket, with its silver plate bearing her name; she did not
know when the two women, her step-mother and step-sister, came and
looked at her in her pallid, silent beauty. All was a merciful blank.
Then the lamp was turned down to a weak glimmer, and they left her
alone until the morrow. Mrs. Carew went upstairs to be with her secret,
silent exultation, Alpine with her keen, stinging remorse.
The hours crept on toward midnight, and if any one had been there to
notice, they would have seen a marked change on the face of the girl in
the coffin.
The complexion had lost its deadly pallor and become more life-like in
its hue. The breast was faintly heaving, the beautiful veil of long,
curling black lashes was fluttering faintly against the cheeks.
Suddenly the black lashes rolled upward; a pair of large, glorious
dark eyes were revealed. In them was for a moment the blankness of one
rousing from a deep sleep.
Then Kathleen weakly lifted her hands, and as they dropped at her
sides they touched the cold, metallic edges of the casket. A low,
inarticulate cry came from her lips, and she rose upright, staring
about her with bewildered eyes.
She comprehended that she was about to be buried alive. Nothing
returned to her yet of the past--everything merged itself into one
startling consciousness of utter horror, and with a blind instinct of
fear struggling in her dazed mind, Kathleen climbed down out of the
casket, that stood on long trestles, and escaped from the house.
Doctor Churchman was attending a patient in the neighborhood, and the
front hall door was unlocked. Kathleen tore it open with a shaking
hand and ran out into the street. A white flood of moonlight shone
down upon the sleeping town, but no one noticed the black clad figure,
bareheaded, with white flowers falling from its breast, running along
with terror-winged feet toward the open highway, until out of sight of
the glimmering white houses.
Just as Kathleen emerged into the open country, she saw lights flashing
in the gloom, and several men who seemed to be searching for something
or some one. She shrunk back in alarm, but she was too late. They had
seen her, and came toward her with eager shouts and made her a prisoner.
"It is she!" exclaimed one. "See, she answers the description
exactly--young, pretty, dark eyes, light hair, and a black silk dress!"
"I do not know you. What do you want with me?" wailed Kathleen,
wringing her little white hands piteously.
But they did not answer her. They dragged her away from the spot and
placed her in a waiting carriage. Then they drove away, and one of them
said, significantly:
"She is so exhausted by her long tramp that she will not be violent,
and we shall get her back to the asylum without any trouble."
Kathleen did not notice what they said. She was so dazed and frightened
by her troubles that her memory was almost gone. She put her white
hands to her brow and tried to recall her wandering thoughts, to
remember her name, and why she was here. But she could not do
it--everything was cloudy and vague. With a helpless, fluttering sigh,
she resigned herself to her strange fate, and crouched shiveringly into
the corner of the carriage that lumbered along the country road a good
seven miles before it came to a standstill before a large, gloomy,
prison-like building.
It was a lunatic asylum, and hapless Kathleen had rushed upon a strange
fate.
A handsome young woman, who had gone mad over the treachery of a false
lover, was being conveyed to the asylum, and had cunningly eluded
her keepers and escaped into the woods. A reward was offered for her
apprehension, and a large number of men had formed themselves into
searching parties. As none of them had seen her, and she answered
perfectly to the description, one of these parties had taken Kathleen
into custody. At the asylum it was the same way. No one had seen her,
so the captive was accepted without any doubts as to her identity, her
hatless condition and dazed manners keeping up the illusion of her
insanity. The men received their reward and went away, never doubting
that they had found the right girl.
Kathleen was put to bed in a small cell by a kind but illiterate
attendant, and, still dazed and dumb with horror, sunk into a deep
sleep. Food had been offered her, and she had eaten a very little,
then pushed it away with a repellant gesture. After that, she was left
alone, and slept wearily for long hours, awaking refreshed and in her
right mind.
She could remember everything now--her flight from home, her journey
that had been interrupted by her terrible experience of robbery and
attempted murder. Then the long trance, her terrified revival in
her coffin, and the frenzied flight into the darkness of the chilly
night. All flashed over her mind in the first, walking moment, and she
wondered why those strange men had captured and brought her here to
this strange place.
"And what a miserable little room and bed; not one quarter as good as
Susette's," she murmured, with a glance of disdain around her at the
tiny cell.
Alas! she soon became aware of the painful fact that she was an inmate
of an asylum for the insane, was believed to be insane herself, and was
called by the name of Daisy Lynn.
In vain did Kathleen eagerly assure the attendants, and every one
else that would listen to her tale of woe, that there was a dreadful
mistake--that she was not the girl they thought her, but Kathleen
Carew, of Boston.
They listened to her with significant smiles, and said to each other:
"In her wanderings she has heard about that poor murdered girl, and now
assumes her identity."
CHAPTER XV.
POOR DAISY LYNN.
Do not ask me why I love him!
Love's cause is to love unknown;
Faithless as the past has proved him,
Once his heart appeared mine own.
LETITIA E. LANDON.
Spring, summer, and autumn glided past, and still Kathleen Carew
remained an inmate of the asylum. At first she had been frantic over
her strange fate, and her wild entreaties for freedom had been set
down to real lunacy. The stupid attendant paid no heed to her ravings,
and only laughed when she claimed to be Kathleen Carew, the beautiful
young girl whose murder at Lincoln Station had so stirred up the whole
country.
They were stupid, and did not read the papers, or they might have seen
the strange story of her disappearance--might have suspected that she
was speaking the truth.
So the weary months went on, and when Kathleen, after her first wild
ravings against her fate, had given up at last to a sort of sullen
despair, something happened in her favor.
The matron, startled and alarmed by the appearance of the young girl,
felt her heart stirred to pity, and wrote to her friends:
"Miss Lynn is no longer a raving maniac, as at first. She has become
silent and melancholy, and looks so worn and ill that I fear she is
slowly dying of a broken heart. I think you ought to take her home
again, and see what home associations will do toward prolonging her
life. She will never be troublesome or violent again; the physician
assures me of that. Indeed, the state she has fallen into is one that
often precedes speedy death, and the poor child ought to have home
comforts and petting, now that she is so very near the end."
The matron, who had always pitied and admired the beautiful, unhappy
young girl, watched over her tenderly while she waited for the answer
to come to this merciful letter. She was startled at the delicacy of
the young girl's form, that had been so graceful and rounded when she
first came, and the pallor of her face and hands. The great Oriental
dark eyes had become wild and startled, like those of a haunted fawn,
and her voice when she spoke was low and tremulous, and had the sound
of tears in its music.
When the matron gazed at this sweet and lovely young girl she marveled
that any man's heart could have been cold and harsh enough to turn
against such charms and leave that young heart to die of despair, or
madden with its cruel wrongs.
"She is beautiful and refined enough for a king's bride," the matron
said, with an angry thought of the monster in man's likeness who had
brought the young girl to this pass.
She waited eagerly for a letter to come from Miss Watts, the girl's
aunt, hoping and praying that she would take her away, and not leave
her to die at the asylum.
Tears came into her kind old eyes as she thought of herself robing this
beautiful form for the grave, and folding those waxen white hands on
the weary breast for the last long sleep.
She did not tell Kathleen she had written to her aunt to take her away,
because she feared the effect of a disappointment. She waited silently,
and at last the letter came. Miss Watts was an old woman--a soured
old maid, who had not much patience with love and lovers, and who had
been much disgusted with her niece for losing her senses over a man's
perfidy. She was blind, and her pretty niece had been eyes and hands to
her before her trouble. Now she had to depend on servants entirely,
and she was crosser than ever. She grumbled very much at the idea of
her niece's return.
"A nice place this will be--me blind and Daisy insane," she grumbled;
but the thought of the young girl's fading so fast in the asylum
touched her, and she had her maid to write that the girl might come
home if they were quite, quite sure she was harmless and would not make
any trouble.
So Mrs. Hoover, the kind-hearted matron, came herself to bring Kathleen
home to her aunt, for she wanted to explain to the old lady the young
girl's strange fancy that she was not Daisy Lynn at all, but Kathleen
Carew, a beautiful young Boston heiress, who had been mysteriously
murdered in the vicinity of the asylum, and of whom the poor lunatic
had chanced to hear in her wanderings.
So Kathleen came into her new home an utter stranger, but was received
as belonging to it. The servants were new, and the old lady was blind.
She could not see the face of her niece, and she attributed the strange
tone of her voice to her illness. She passed her long, delicate fingers
carefully over Kathleen's face, and exclaimed in surprise at its
delicacy of outline.
Kathleen overwhelmed Mrs. Hoover with kisses and thanks, and called her
her benefactress for securing her release from the asylum.
"I should have died or gone mad in reality if I had been kept there
much longer; but now I shall go away from here and find my friends,"
she said, hopefully.
Mrs. Hoover looked very much alarmed at this declaration.
"My dear, if I had thought you would run away, I would not have
brought you here," she exclaimed, uneasily.
"But, dear madame, I have no claim on this old lady here, and I must
think of my poor father, who has returned from Europe ere this, I know,
and is mourning me as dead," obstinately answered the pale young girl,
whose heart throbbed wildly at the thought of returning to her home and
friends.
The good old matron seized the wasted little white hand of the girl,
and patted it tenderly in hers, as she said, remonstratingly:
"Now, listen to me, Daisy, dear: If you run away from home your aunt
will have you followed and brought back to the asylum, and you know you
would not like that, would you?"
"I would rather die," sobbed the poor girl, trembling like an aspen
leaf.
"Then take my advice, and don't do anything rash, dear child. Now
here's a good idea: Stay quietly here, and write to your friends to
come to you here," said the matron, who thought that this would pacify
Kathleen a while.
"But I wrote to them from the asylum. I wrote and wrote and wrote--all
in vain," sighed the girl.
"Perhaps your folks were out of town. I would try again," soothed the
matron, who knew that none of those pathetic letters had ever gone
outside the asylum.
"I will write again," said Kathleen, patiently, for the matron's hints
had sorely frightened her. She did not want to run away and be captured
and taken back to her terrible prison. She resolved to write again;
then, if no answer came, she must dare her fate. Let her but get
safely home and all would be explained, and her pursuers would have to
go away baffled.
"How angry papa will be when he finds out what horrors his little girl
has endured," she thought, with burning tears.
So Mrs. Hoover went away, sadly believing that she should never see
the poor, sweet child again; she looked so wan and pallid, as if she
already had "one foot in the grave."
Then Kathleen, who was left to herself almost all the time, went back
to poor Daisy Lynn's room, and began to write to all her friends. By
night she had quite a pile of letters to post.
She had written to her father, to Helen Fox, to Alpine Belmont, to
several of her girl friends, to Ralph Chainey, and even to Teddy
Darrell, who had loved her and asked her to marry him. Despite his
flirting propensities, Teddy was a prime favorite with every one
because of his warm heart and good nature. If any one asked Teddy
Darrell to do a favor, he would "go through fire and water" to
accomplish it. Helen Fox was accustomed to say, laughingly, that Teddy
Darrell would try to flirt with a broom-stick if he only saw a woman's
dress on it; but beyond this weakness, which the girls easily forgave,
he was a thoroughly good fellow, with a good figure, handsome face,
and a pair of dark eyes that always laughed their owner into your good
graces.
"Some of them will get my letters, surely, and come for me," she
thought, as she started out to post her letters.
Her aunt sent a servant to post them and ordered her back.
"Reba will always do your errands for you," she said; and Kathleen had
to relinquish them reluctantly to the maid.
Reba had her instructions, and while Kathleen watched her from the
window, she cleverly pushed some scraps of papers into the letter-box
on the corner, and carried the letters back to Miss Watts, who locked
them into her private desk.
"It is strange what a fad she has taken into her head!" she thought,
carelessly.
Kathleen waited with burning impatience for the answers to come to
her letters. She counted the hours it would take for them to go from
Philadelphia to Boston.
Meanwhile, almost unconsciously to herself, she began to take an
interest in the absent girl whose place she had taken in the asylum,
and in this small, neat home, so different from the splendor to which
she had always been accustomed.
The little room she occupied, although not luxurious and grand like
her own in her father's mansion on Commonwealth Avenue, was a perfect
bower of maidenly innocence and sweet, loving fancies. The windows were
curtained with white lace looped with rosy ribbons; the brass bedstead
had a white lace canopy; the toilet-table, the lounge, the low chairs,
all repeated the pretty fashion of white lace and rose-pink ribbons,
and the floor was covered with a light-hued carpet strewn with ferns.
Pretty little pictures adorned the mantel and the walls, and the
daintiest kind of a dressing-case was displayed on the toilet-table.
In the drawers were girlish trifles, such as young girls gather about
them, and there was, too, a pretty little diary, at which Kathleen
glanced with tender interest, wondering what was written on those
pages, penned by the hand of a fair young girl, who had gone mad for
love.
"But it would not be right to read it," she said at first, and would
not touch it, until her loneliness, added to her interest in poor,
missing Daisy Lynn, decided her that it would be no harm to read the
diary.
She opened it, and a man's photograph fell out into her hands. She
gazed at it with eager curiosity, exclaiming:
"This must be the false wretch that drove poor Daisy Lynn to madness!"
Suddenly the girl's face, already so pale and wan, whitened to an ashen
hue, her great dark eyes dilated in a sort of horror, and she flung the
photograph far from her into a distant corner, exclaiming, indignantly:
"Ivan Belmont, my step-mother's hateful son, whom she wanted me to
marry, so that I might endow him with a fortune."
It was some time before she could command her nerves sufficiently
to read Daisy Lynn's diary, and then her tears fell freely, for the
story of the young girl's love was all written there, gay and joyous
at first, then sad and plaintive, then drifting into deep despair,
followed by the disjointed ravings of a mind distraught.
"Oh, how sweet, and then how sad!" exclaimed Kathleen. "Love comes to
all young girls with the same symptoms, I suppose, for I felt just as
she wrote in the first after meeting Ralph Chainey--so gay, so glad, so
joyous. The sky seemed brighter, the flowers sweeter, the whole world
was a new place. There is nothing in the world as sweet as love."
CHAPTER XVI.
KATHLEEN'S DESPERATION AND HER ESCAPE.
"And then she sang a song
That made the tear-drops start;
She sang of home, sweet home,
The song that reached my heart."
_Popular Song_.
Kathleen sighed restlessly as she turned the pages with her little
white hands.
"Love is sweet, but, oh, how sad it is, too!" she sighed. "Oh, how
cruel it is to love and be beloved again, yet be severed from one's
love by so strange and cruel a fate as mine."
She read aloud, in a soft, murmuring voice, like sweetest music, some
verses from Daisy Lynn's book:
"It is the spirit's bitterest pain
To love and be beloved again,
And yet between a gulf that ever
The hearts that burn to meet must sever!"
* * * * *
"With me the hope of life is gone,
The sun of joy is set;
One wish my heart still dwells upon,
The wish it could forget!
I would forget that look, that tone,
My heart has all too dearly known.
But who could ever yet efface
From memory love's enduring trace?
All may revolt, all my complain,
But who is there may break the chain?"
"Poor Daisy Lynn! how could she love Ivan Belmont like that?" exclaimed
Kathleen, in disgust, forgetting that he _was_ a rather handsome man,
and that tastes differ. A longing to see what Daisy Lynn looked like
came over her, and she searched the room in vain for her picture.
Then she went down and asked Miss Watts if she might see her niece's
photograph.
The old blind lady looked up with gentle displeasure.
"Daisy, child, have you no memory of the past?" she exclaimed. "You
know very well that in all your life I have never allowed you to have
your picture taken!"
"But why not?" asked Kathleen, in wonder.
"Because it is a sin," replied the old lady, who was rigidly religious.
"Have you forgotten," she continued, "the second commandment that you
used to read every Lord's day at Sabbath-school?" and she repeated,
solemnly:
"'Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor the likeness
of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the
waters under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship
them.'"
Kathleen stared in amazement at this liberal interpretation of the
Scriptures, and retired regretting that she could not have the sad
pleasure of gazing on the features of the unfortunate girl in whose
fate her own was so strangely bound up.
"Poor, poor Daisy Lynn! I wonder what became of her when she escaped
her keeper and wandered abroad that cold, dark night?" she mused; and
she thought that the girl must be dead and at rest from her sorrows.
A long week of waiting elapsed, but no answer came to Kathleen's
letters.
Kathleen grew desperate with suspense and trouble. She could no longer
while away the dreary winter days by reading poor Daisy Lynn's novels,
or playing sad melodies on her pretty little piano. She began to pace
up and down the little room for long hours, revolving plans for escape
from Miss Watts.
The three servants whom the old lady employed guarded the young girl,
by the order of their mistress, as jealously as if she had been a
convict in a penitentiary. All the doors were locked and guarded by
burglar chains. She had appealed to their mercy in vain; and she was
empty-handed and had nothing with which to bribe them. They had been
told she was melancholy mad, and saw no reason to doubt the story. Her
sad, white face, her beautiful dark eyes, in which the tears so often
gathered, and her mournful little songs, all lent color to the charge.
Desperate emergencies require desperate remedies. Kathleen decided, in
spite of Mrs. Hoover's warnings, to run away.
She had no money; but that did not deter her from her purpose. She
would beg in the street for money to go to Boston before she would
remain here any longer, she told herself, with a burst of tears.
Her old fear of her step-mother had died out in the conviction that
her father had, of course, returned home ere now, and that, under his
protection, no harm could befall his beloved child.
From the curtained alcove where Daisy Lynn's soft, white sheets and
blankets and counterpanes were stored on shelves, Kathleen brought the
sheets and tore them into strips, working on them every night until she
had succeeded in making a strong plaited rope with which to let herself
down from the window.
"Heaven help me--dear Heaven help me!" she prayed all the while; and
one dark night toward midnight she fastened the rope to the shutter
hinge and let herself safely down to the street.
Stunned by the velocity of her descent, and with bleeding hands
rasped by the rough rope, Kathleen fell upon the ground and lay there
pantingly a few moments.
"Free at last, thank Heaven--free!" she murmured, gladly, and wrapping
her long circular cloak around her, and drawing the warm hood close
about her beautiful face, she ran breathlessly along, flashed around a
corner, and had left her prison behind her, fleeing, as she hoped, to
home and happiness.
It was growing late, and in the quiet city of Philadelphia there were
few pedestrians abroad, and those mostly men. In any other city of that
size Kathleen, with her beautiful face, would have been insulted over
and over, but the Quaker City of Brotherly Love had in it a smaller
ruffianly element than the others. When she stopped and appealed to
those she met she invariably received a coin instead of a leer; but
they were so small--so small, and, oh, it would take so much money to
get to Boston!
She had stopped a policeman on his beat and asked him timidly how much
money it would take to get to Boston.
"Oh, as much as twenty dollars, I guess!" he replied; and at his
curious stare she thanked him and ran away, pausing under a street lamp
to count her money.
"Only two dollars and twenty cents! I shall never, never get enough!"
she sighed, and then she gave a shriek. A thief had snatched the money
from her little white hand and run down a side street.
Kathleen started to run after him, but there was no policeman in sight,
and the thief had quite disappeared. She ran till her limbs trembled
with weariness, and suddenly emerged into Walnut Street. People were
coming out of the Walnut Street Theater, and crowding the pavement.
She saw a handsome man handing a fair young girl to her carriage, and
the sight awoke memories of the past when she, Kathleen Carew, heiress
then to a million, now a beggar in the streets, had been handed to her
carriage by Ralph Chainey, the handsome young actor, who had whispered
in her ear:
"I hope we shall meet again."
A dry sob rose in her throat, but she choked it back, and advancing
till she was in the midst of the throng, paused suddenly, and began to
sing in a low but thrilling voice that favorite old song, "Home, Sweet
Home," at the same time holding out her tiny white hand for largess.
It was a desperate deed, but poor Kathleen was a desperate girl, and
knew little more of the evil of the world than a little baby. She was
so eager to get money to go home, and she thought that out of this
great crowd there might be many who would pay her for singing the
simple little song that everybody loved so well--"Home, Sweet Home--The
Song That Reached My Heart."
CHAPTER XVII.
"WILL YOU BE MY OWN SWEET WIFE, KATHLEEN?"
"Love thee? So well, so tenderly,
Thou'rt loved, adored by me,
Fame, fortune, wealth, and happiness
Are worthless without thee!"
Kathleen had a sweet and bird-like voice, that had held crowded
drawing-rooms entranced in the happier days that now seemed so far away.
As that exquisite voice--timid at first, and faltering, but gradually
gaining strength and volume--rose upon the night air the young girl was
at once surrounded by a wondering and admiring throng.
Her desperate courage began to give way as she saw herself hemmed in by
the crowd, and the impulse seized her to fly; but she beat it bravely
back, for already silver coins began to rain into the small, white,
outstretched hand that seemed so ridiculously dainty and aristocratic
for a street beggar.
"Jove! what a regular beauty!" one man whispered to another, as he
gazed eagerly into the sweet, flower-like face.
She heard him, and her voice shook with indignation, but she kept on,
holding fast meanwhile to her earnings, determined that no bold thief
should capture them this time.
Suddenly she became aware that the crowd's attention was being diverted
from her, and resolved to escape at this auspicious moment.
The fact was that the popular actor, Ralph Chainey, who had just
carried staid Philadelphia by storm in his popular impersonation of
Prince Karl, was just leaving the theater for his hotel, and almost
every one turned away from the beautiful singer for a glimpse of the
tall, dark, handsome young fellow, with his swinging stride, as he came
among them.
He, on his part, had been standing back a little, arrested, like the
others, by that sweet, sad, thrilling song. As it neared the end, he
pressed forward to make a generous contribution to pay for his share in
the rare entertainment.
The crowd fell back and made way for him, and Kathleen, dreaming not of
the nearness of the lover who haunted all her thoughts, started to fly.
Ralph Chainey had not yet seen her face, but he hurried in pursuit of
the slight cloaked figure, generously anxious that she should not lose
the money he was going to bestow on her for the song.
The crowd began to disperse, and Kathleen, unconscious of pursuit, ran
half a square, then slackened her pace. So it was that Ralph Chainey
caught up with her, and laid a strong, detaining hand upon her arm.
With a low moan of terror Kathleen raised her beautiful, frightened
dark eyes to the face of her assailant.
For a moment they gazed, spell-bound, into each other's eyes.
To both it seemed like the shock of a life-time--that sudden
_rencontre_; and to the man it was more startling then to the girl, for
he had long sorrowed over the fate of Kathleen Carew, believing her
dead.
Yet here stood this slight girl whose voice had so thrilled him a few
minutes ago gazing at him with Kathleen Carew's eyes, looking out of
Kathleen Carew's face.
Was she ghost or human?
Was she a phantom of his brain, this slight, pale girl?
He had thought of her so often, he had mourned her so passionately,
that perhaps his brain was distraught--perhaps the vision was the
figment of a mind diseased.
But suddenly the moan died away on the sweet, red lips; the hunted look
faded from the somber dark eyes and was succeeded by a look of joy as
she faltered:
"Ralph Chainey!"
His hand had slipped from her arm in the first shock of recognition.
Now he hastily put it back and pressed it to see if it was real flesh
and blood or only a phantom woman. He muttered, hoarsely:
"Kathleen Carew, are you ghost or human?"
Kathleen's dark-eyes laughed radiantly into his.
"I am human, Mr. Chainey, as I think you ought to realize from the way
you're pinching my arm," she returned, with pretty archness.
All in a moment she had changed from a sad, persecuted young girl,
begging her way in the dark street, to a very queen of love and
happiness.
Looking into his luminous brown eyes, all her sorrow seemed to flee
away, and the sunlit sky of love seemed glowing over her head, instead
of dark, wintery skies.
Her archness, her smiles, and the warm, human touch of her wrist,
recalled him from his ghostly fears, and he said, faintly, but eagerly:
"I can hardly believe my senses, Kathleen. You--alive--after all these
months, when I sorrowed for you dead! Where have you been?"
Her face paled, and she looked apprehensively over her shoulder.
"I--I--can not tell you here!" she faltered. "I might be missed and
followed. If--if--you would only take me to the depot, and send me home
to Boston to papa, I will be so grateful. I--I--think I have enough
money to pay my way."
Ralph Chainey signaled a passing cab, and lifted the young girl gently
into it.
"Drive slowly about the streets for an hour until further orders," he
said to the driver, as he sprung in and took his seat by Kathleen. "Oh,
what happiness this is to find you alive, Kathleen!" he exclaimed,
searching for her little hand, and holding it warmly clasped in his.
She nestled slightly toward him, and he thrilled with happiness at the
confiding motion.
"You will send me home to papa?" she repeated, sweetly.
Then he said:
"It will be several hours before the next train for Boston leaves,
Kathleen, so you can tell me all about yourself while we ride about and
beguile the time of waiting. Or, would you prefer to go to a hotel and
rest, and have some refreshments?"
"I am not hungry nor tired, and prefer to ride about with you this
way," answered the girl, with naïve simplicity; and he drew a sigh of
relief.
He was young, but more worldly wise than Kathleen. He preferred not
to take her to a hotel until she had some claim on him, to silence
carping tongues. But first he must know the secret of her mysterious
whereabouts ever since the night when he had kissed and wept over her
beautiful dead face, and gone away on a mission that brooked no delay.
But for a few minutes he was silent from sheer happiness. Alive, his
beautiful Kathleen, whom he had adored in secret, but never told of his
love! What happiness, when he and happiness had so long been strangers!
Her tremulous voice broke the silence:
"Do you understand it all--that I was in a trance that night when you
bade me farewell and went away?"
"My God! a trance? Yes, you _did_ look natural. Mrs. Churchman remarked
upon it before she left me alone with you."
"I heard what she said," Kathleen answered, shuddering, and Ralph
Chainey put his arm about her and drew her closer, murmuring:
"Did you hear what I said, too, my bonnie Kathleen?"
"Yes," she answered, trembling in a sort of ecstasy and feeling warm
blushes redden her cheeks as she whispered:
"You kissed me--you wept over me--you--said--said--that you loved me!"
"And you, sweet Kathleen? Were you vexed at me for my presumption?"
questioned the young man, drawing her closer with a fond but reverent
arm.
"No; oh, no!" faltered the girl, shyly, yet blissfully.
"And you will let me tell you the same thing over, darling Kathleen,
that I worship you, and you will promise me, dear, to be my own sweet
wife? Yes, is it not, my own one? There, do not draw away from me in
fear. One kiss, my own love, my beautiful treasure, given back to me
from the grave itself!"
Then one kiss became a dozen. He pressed her close to his heart, and
she rested there with a blissful sigh, happy in this haven of rest.
Presently:
"Now, darling, you may tell me all your story; then I have a startling
proposition to make to you," he said.
From what she had said to him about taking her home to her father, he
perceived that she was entirely ignorant of all that had transpired
since her supposed death.
She was mercifully ignorant of her father's loss at sea, and the will
made in London just before he sailed, disinheriting his only daughter,
and giving her portion of his wealth to Alpine Belmont.
Poor little Kathleen, who believed that she had still a loving father
and was the heiress to all his wealth, was in reality orphaned and
penniless--a beggar in reality.
But Ralph Chainey, in the greatness of his noble heart, decided to
spare her the pain of knowing all this yet, and he could see but one
way out of the difficulty--one very agreeable to himself, and not
unkind to the lovely waif so strangely thrown on his protecting care.
He knew well that the selfish Belmonts would refuse to care for the
homeless girl, would deny her identity, refuse to admit her claims on
them. He determined to propose an immediate marriage to Kathleen, by
which her future could be made secure.
CHAPTER XVIII.
KATHLEEN'S DISAPPEARANCE.
"Ay, call her on the barren moor,
And call her on the hill;
'Tis nothing but the heron's cry,
And plover's answer shrill."
Kathleen told her lover, between sobs and tears, while she rested close
in the shelter of his loving arms, all her sad story.
Ralph Chainey listened with bated breath, his eyes dim with moisture,
to the story of Kathleen's persecutions.
"What stupid people they must have been at the asylum not to listen to
your strange story! I will have them indicted for unlawfully detaining
you!" he exclaimed indignantly.
"Never mind that, as they can never find me again," she replied,
happily.
"They could not take you if they did," he answered; and then he
unfolded to her, gently and tenderly, his wish to make her his wife
at once, and asked her if she would consent. "It is the most proper
thing for us to marry at once," he said. "Unfortunately, we can not
be married in Philadelphia without a license, which, as it is near
midnight now, I could not procure until to-morrow. But we can take
a train within the hour for Washington, and be married, without the
necessity of a license, by the first minister we can wake up there. Do
you think you can agree to this, darling?"
She hesitated; she said, anxiously:
"Had we not better go straight to Boston and ask papa's leave? Perhaps
he would not like it if we were married without his consent."
Why did he not tell her the truth--that there was no use in going to
Boston; that her father was dead and she had no home there; that her
step-mother and her selfish daughter had inherited the Carew millions?
He could not bear to inflict this shock upon her so soon. She had
suffered so much already, poor little darling! that he would save her
this added blow for a little while. He could fancy how hard she would
take it, to come back to the world, fatherless, penniless, homeless.
Let him make her his wife first, and she would have love, wealth, and
position almost equal to what she had lost. Then he would have the
right to comfort her with his devotion.
So he began to urge his suit with all a lover's devotion, picturing to
her the possibility of her father's refusal.
"You are so young, dear Kathleen, he might want us to wait years and
years, and there are so many things that might come between our love,"
he urged, anxiously.
She shuddered and thought of Alpine Belmont's cruelty. The remembrance
decided her; she consented to his wish.
They were driven to the station to take the train for Washington.
"In about three hours we shall be there, and then you shall soon be my
little wife," he whispered, joyfully.
They learned that the train was more than an hour late. They went into
the reception-room to wait.
Then it suddenly occurred to him that the members of his company at the
hotel would be so alarmed at his non-appearance that night that they
would think he had been foully dealt with, and raise a great hue and
cry.
He hastened to explain these facts to his lovely, girlish _fiancée_.
"Do you think you would mind staying alone here, long enough for me to
go and excuse myself to them?" he inquired, tenderly.
Her throat ached with the impulse to sob out to him that she was
frightened--that she did not wish for him to leave her there alone.
But she was ashamed of her weakness; she would not confess it to her
bright, handsome lover.
In a low, tremulous voice, and with a sad little smile on her quivering
red lips, she bade him go.
"It is only for a little while, my own little love!" he whispered; but
her heart sunk heavily with fear and dread. He found her a secluded
seat in a dim corner. "You can sit here quietly and unobserved until
I return," he said, and stole a parting kiss from the sweet red lips
that smiled at him with such pathetic love.
Then he was gone, and she no longer tried to check her bursting sobs.
Leaning far back in the corner, her little cobwebby handkerchief was
soon drenched with her raining tears.
She told herself that he would soon return and laugh at her for being
such a great baby, but she could not help it. A terrible presentiment
of coming evil weighed down her spirits.
* * * * *
Ralph Chainey entered a cab and was driven rapidly to his hotel. He
explained that business of great importance called him in haste to
Washington, but that he would return the next day in time for the
evening performance, "Beau Brummel."
Then he drove as fast as possible back to the depot, where his little
darling, as he called her in his fond thoughts, was impatiently
awaiting his return.
"My little darling, so soon to be my adored wife," he murmured, as he
hurried eagerly into the waiting-room, where the second great shock of
his life awaited him.
Kathleen Carew was gone!
He stared with dazed eyes at the empty seat where he had left his
beautiful young sweetheart less than an hour ago.
She was gone!
Then commenced a frantic search that lasted so long that by and by the
train that was to have taken the pair to Washington thundered into the
station and away again, while he still pursued his unavailing quest.
CHAPTER XIX.
"RALPH CHAINEY IS A MARRIED MAN!"
"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot on sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never."
When Ralph Chainey had led Kathleen into the waiting-room of the depot
he had been so absorbed in her that he failed to notice any one around
him.
So he did not observe a pretty and showily-dressed blonde beauty
who was walking restlessly up and down the room, evidently bent on
attracting attention to herself and her dress by these maneuvers.
When Ralph entered with Kathleen, the young woman gave him a curious
glance that speedily changed to one of dismay.
Then she shrunk back hurriedly into the shadow and watched the pair
with bright, steel-blue eyes that glittered with the light of hate.
"A love affair," she muttered, angrily, and noted keenly every movement
of the two. She saw how they looked at each other with the light of
love in their beautiful eyes. She stole nearer and overheard their
words; she saw their kiss, their tender parting.
Her white hands clinched themselves tightly, her face paled beneath its
rouge, and she muttered indistinctly to herself--muttered words of hate
and menace.
When Ralph Chainey had left Kathleen alone the stranger boldly
approached the weeping girl.
Standing before Kathleen, she touched her on the shoulder, and when
Kathleen shrunk back and lifted her white face in piteous fear and
entreaty, the stranger almost started at its wonderful beauty.
"Ralph Chainey is deceiving you," was the startling sentence that fell
on Kathleen's ear.
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed in bewilderment; but the blonde beauty went on:
"He has promised to marry you, but he does not mean it, you poor,
pretty child. It is only a plot to betray you."
"You speak falsely," Kathleen managed to stammer in a choking voice,
her dark eyes flashing indignantly.
"You do not want to believe it, I know, but I can prove to you that I
speak the truth. Ralph Chainey is a married man. _I am his wife!_"
Kathleen grew as pale as she had been in her coffin that terrible
night; her dark eyes stared as if fascinated into the pretty painted
face of the woman. She could not speak; her head seemed to be going
round and round; her poor heart throbbed as if it would break.
"Perhaps you have heard that actors are wicked people," continued the
pretty stranger. "It is true of the whole class, and most especially of
this Ralph Chainey. He is always seeking for a new love, and leaving
some other woman to break her heart for love of him. Although I am
his wife, he tired of me months ago, and left me to starve or die of
a broken heart, he cared not which, so that he was well rid of me. My
kind parents took me home, and since then I have watched his career in
amazement and despair. Many and many a fair and innocent young girl I
have saved from his clutches."
"Oh, Heaven! must I believe this?" came in a low, sobbing under-tone
from Kathleen's pale lips.
"You are the youngest and fairest of them all and it would break my
heart to see you fall into Ralph Chainey's power," continued the
blonde, anxiously. "Be warned in time, my poor girl. Fly from this spot
and go home to your friends."
"I have no friends in this city, and my home is in far-off Boston,"
sobbed Kathleen, clasping her little hands in despair.
"Then come home with me, and stay all night, and you can go on to
Boston to-morrow morning early," was the quick reply.
She waited for an answer, but none came. Kathleen's head had drooped on
her breast. A fatal unconsciousness had stolen over her, and the hour
of her enemy's triumph was at hand.
The blonde beauty laughed low and maliciously, as she realized how
deeply her words had struck their poisoned arrows into the young girl's
heart.
Coolly signaling a stranger who had hurriedly entered the almost
deserted waiting-room, she said:
"My friend has fainted from grief at receiving a telegram containing
news of the death of her lover. Will you assist me to carry her out to
my carriage before she revives? I know she will go into hysterics as
soon as she recovers, and that would be so embarrassing in this public
place."
The gentleman, a slight-built, genial-faced man of about thirty years,
courteously acceded to her request, and gazed with deep compassion at
the beautiful face of the unconscious girl he was carrying in his arms.
"What a lovely creature! and so young--scarcely more than a child; yet
she had a lover, and he is dead," he thought, pityingly, as he placed
her in the carriage.
"I thank you for your kindness," said the blonde beauty, with a
dazzling smile. The carriage door closed upon her after she had
said "Home" to the driver, and then Samuel Hall, the kind-hearted,
smiling-faced young man, stood under the gas-light, gazing after them
with dazed blue eyes.
"Quite an adventure, Sammy, was it not, eh?" he muttered, talking
naïvely to himself. Perhaps his arms thrilled yet with the pressure of
the beautiful form that had lain heavily in them a minute ago. His mild
blue eyes looked soft and dreamy.
"How lovely she was!" he mused. "So lovely and so sorrow-stricken! The
other one was handsome, too, in her way, but not like the younger.
Grand, rich people, I suppose," he ended with a sigh; for, having
once known "better days," our friend "Sammy" did not very much enjoy
his position as a hard-working clerk in one of Philadelphia's immense
dry-goods emporiums.
He went home to his lonely room in a great, rambling boarding-house,
and though he was not usually impressionable, his mind kept running on
his little adventure. He said to himself that it was because he was so
sorry for the beautiful young girl who had fainted when she received
the telegram that her lover was dead.
"I wonder what their names were?" he mused, curiously. "The blonde I
did not quite like. There was something theatrical and made-up about
her. She did not in the least resemble the fainting one, so they could
not be sisters."
Still musing on his little adventure, he retired. Sleep came to him,
made restless by uncanny dreams.
It seemed to the young man that he was standing on the verge of a
precipice, looking down into a dark gulf where a turbulent river rushed
along in foam and fury. Struggling in the gloomy waves was the young
girl he had carried fainting to her carriage, and her white face was
upturned to him; her great, piteous dark eyes were fixed on his with
unutterable reproach. Tossing her white arms up toward him, she cried,
bitterly:
"_You_ helped that wicked woman to destroy me!"
Then she sunk beneath the waves, and they closed forever over her white
face and shining hair.
Sammy Hall awoke in anguish, his forehead beaded with perspiration.
"Oh, what a strange, weird dream! How vivid it is still in my mind!
What does it mean? Is it a warning? That can not be, however, for I was
doing her a kindness, not an injury, and my heart ached with sympathy
for her sorrow."
He could think of nothing else next day, and at noon, when a heavy
storm came up and kept customers from crowding into Haines & Co.'s
great store, he told the bright, pretty young salesladies about it,
dream and all.
They listened to him with the liveliest interest; their eyes grew dim
with pity for the beautiful young girl whose heart had broken for the
death of her lover.
"But it was so strange for her to reproach me in that dream!" he said,
in a troubled voice--"so strange! Because, you see, I was only kind to
her, and did nothing wrong."
"Mr. Hall, I have a theory to explain your dream," cried Tessie Mays, a
romantic young girl; and every one turned to her with interest as she
went on: "The blonde was a bad, wicked creature who frightened that
pretty, innocent young thing into a faint, and then carried her off to
some wretched fate--'the spider and the fly,' you know."
"It is very likely, indeed!" chorused all those romantic young girls,
and Sammy Hall's heart sunk like a stone in his breast.
He brooded over that night's adventure, and in his sleep that strange
dream kept recurring. He feared that Tessie Mays was right. The blonde
woman was a wicked creature who had made him a tool to help her in her
nefarious plans.
Two days later, as he was going along Ninth Street to dinner, he came
suddenly face to face with the blonde, made up carefully and gaudily
attired. He stopped in front of her and stammered:
"Oh! ah! miss--madame--excuse me; but how is that unhappy young girl?"
"Why, you must be crazy! I don't know you. I don't know what you mean.
Get out of my way!"
She pushed him roughly aside, and had disappeared before he recovered
from his surprise.
CHAPTER XX.
KATHLEEN MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY.
"Who that feels what Love is here--
All its falsehood, all its pain--
Would, for even Elysium's sphere,
Risk the fatal dream again?"
When Kathleen Carew recovered consciousness she found herself on a bed
in a shabby garret bed-room, with the eyes of the blonde beauty looking
into hers.
"So you are come to at last? I began to think you were dead, child.
Here! smell this, and you'll soon be better," she exclaimed,
vivaciously, as she held a bottle of camphor under Kathleen's nose.
Kathleen pushed it away like a petulant child.
"What am I doing here?" she sobbed, in a frightened voice.
"This is my home, you know. I offered to bring you here to save you
from Ralph Chainey, that wicked actor. Oh, my! what a scene there was
after you fainted. He came back, and I can tell you, he was frightened
at finding _me_ there. I told him he must go away, that I had told you
all, and you hated him. He tried to brazen it all out at first, but
presently he was humble enough, and I made him carry you out and put
you in my carriage. Then he went away, vowing he would get you into his
power some day."
Kathleen shuddered from head to foot, and cried, appealingly:
"Oh, madame, is he really your husband? For the sake of Heaven, do not
tell me an untruth, for it is more bitter than death to lose faith in
one's lover!"
"Alas! if it is so hard to lose faith in a lover, how much worse to be
deceived by a husband?" cried the blonde, pathetically.
She dashed her white hand across her dry eyes, and Kathleen caught the
glitter of a diamond ring flashing like a little sun. In her small,
pink ears there were magnificent diamonds, too, and Kathleen began to
watch them with fascinated eyes.
"What a beautiful diamond ring! Won't you let me try it on, please?"
she asked, humbly.
The blonde, flattered by the admiration for her ring, slipped it off
with some difficulty, and allowed Kathleen to take it in her fingers.
She held it up and gazed inside the gold circle, reading aloud:
"'Kathleen Carew!'"
"Why, I never knew before that a name was cut----" began the woman,
then bit her lip and checked herself, abruptly.
"Where did you get this ring?" asked Kathleen, excitedly.
"My husband gave it to me."
"And your beautiful ear-rings?"
"They, too, were gifts from my husband."
"From Ralph Chainey?"
"Of course. Didn't I tell you he was my husband? Do you want to see my
marriage certificate?" holding out her finger for the ring.
"Presently," said Kathleen, sitting erect, with a strange fire in her
eyes. "Is this," she continued, in a strange voice, "_your_ name inside
the ring?"
"Of course," airily answered the blonde.
Kathleen's slumbrous eyes began to glow with an angry light, and she
exclaimed, passionately:
"It is false! It is my own name, and the ring is mine! The ear-rings
also are mine! My father gave them to me!"
"You must be crazy, girl!" exclaimed the blonde, in honest surprise.
She snatched the ring and slipped it back on her finger.
"I tell you I am in earnest," stormed Kathleen, roused to a sudden fury
by the thought of her wrongs. "I tell you I am Kathleen Carew, and
those jewels were stolen from me by a man who choked me and left me for
dead on the ground, while he tore those gems from my bleeding hands
and ears. And you say it was your husband----" she stopped, shuddering
violently. Was she criminating Ralph Chainey?
CHAPTER XXI.
WAS RALPH CHAINEY A VILLAIN?
Roses have thorns, and love is thorny, too;
And this is love's sharp thorn that guards its flower,
That our beloved has the cruel power
To hurt us deeper than all others do.
SARAH C. WOOLSEY.
Kathleen, pale, shuddering, startled, gazed in horror at the face of
the bold, handsome creature who declared to her that these gems for
which she had been almost murdered were given to her by Ralph Chainey.
Was it true that the woman was Ralph's wife, and that he had given her
the jewels?
If so, what an awful vista of suspicion and crime opened back of these
two facts!
Could it be that Ralph Chainey was the fiend who had robbed and
murdered her that night, and then by his clever acting thrown off
suspicion from himself?
The terrible suspicion made her tremble like a leaf in the wind; and
meantime the woman, whom we will call Fedora, was gazing at her with
suspicious eyes.
"I don't know what to make of you, girl," she said, impatiently. "Come,
now; I want to hear your story from beginning to end."
Kathleen did as she was asked. She related the whole story of her life,
from the first meeting with Ralph Chainey until now.
Fedora listened with eager attention.
She was especially interested in Mrs. Belmont and her son Ivan.
"And she wanted you to marry _him_?" she said.
"Yes; but I will never do it. I hate him, and so does papa. He is a
spendthrift, and dissolute," said Kathleen, quoting words that her
father had used of his step-son.
Fedora frowned and said, hastily:
"But he is very handsome, isn't he?"
"I believe some people think so, but I don't. I guess Daisy Lynn
thought so, or she would not have gone mad for love of him;" and the
whole story of Daisy Lynn came out.
It proved very interesting indeed to the blonde, who asked many
questions, and seemed disappointed that Kathleen could not answer them
all.
When she had elicited all that Kathleen could tell, she returned to the
subject of Ralph Chainey.
"I knew he was false to me, but I did not believe he was wicked enough
to do murder," she said.
Kathleen shuddered as with a mortal chill, and said faintly:
"There must be some mistake."
The blonde gazed in silence for several minutes at the lovely face of
the hapless young girl, then asked, abruptly:
"What shall you do about it?"
"Nothing," Kathleen answered, sorrowfully; and she thought to herself
that she would give the world to blot out of her life all memory of the
man she had loved so dearly and so well; yet she knew that his memory
would haunt her all her life long, and that her heart would break
because he had proved unworthy.
She looked pleadingly at the woman before her, and exclaimed:
"Will you please take me home to my father?"
"To-morrow," answered Fedora, soothingly. She rose as she spoke. "Lie
down and sleep; it is late," she added. "To-morrow I will go home with
you and restore you to your friends."
She went out, carefully locking the door behind her.
Alone in her own room, she looked at the beautiful jewels that had cost
Kathleen so dear, and muttered:
"He did it for me--to get these for me. How he loves me! But this girl!
her life is a menace to his liberty. If I let her go home and tell what
she knows, suspicion will fall upon _him_. Why did he bungle so, if he
must do that ghastly job?" Then she laughed. "Oh, I have paid _you_
out, Ralph Chainey!"
CHAPTER XXII.
RESCUED.
"Hame, hame, hame! 'tis hame I fain wad be--
Hame, hame, hame, in my ain countree!"
Sammy Hall was bitterly sorry that he had missed getting any
information from the blonde about the beautiful girl he had seen with
her that night at the station.
The beautiful white face and closed eyes of the young girl haunted him
with strange persistency.
And after his accidental _rencontre_ on the street with the insolent
blonde he felt more apprehensive than ever.
"I wish I knew where she lived: I would find out more about her," he
thought; and fell to watching for the bright, steel-blue eyes and
golden hair every day.
He was rewarded for his efforts when one day he saw her at the trimming
counter buying some gold passementerie from Tessie Mays.
Sammy Hall waited till she had sailed out of the store, then went
across to the young salesgirl.
"It's that woman--the one that carried off the girl that night. I saw
her give you her address. What is it?" he queried, excitedly.
As much excited as himself, Tessie gave it to him, and he began to set
his wits to work to find out the mystery of that night.
To Kathleen's indignation and dismay, Fedora had kept her a close
prisoner in the shabby little garret chamber ever since that night--now
five days ago--when she had been brought there.
To quiet the complaints of the girl, Fedora told her that she dare
not let her go outside the house, because her aunt's emissaries were
searching for her everywhere, and that, if found, she would be arrested
and taken back to the asylum.
"You must remain quietly hidden here until the search blows over," she
said; and no entreaties could move her jailer's heart; there was always
a plausible excuse; but Kathleen, looking into the flippant, insolent
face, began to distrust the woman.
"She hates me--hates me because Ralph Chainey said he loved me," she
thought, uneasily; and she grew frightened in the miserable little
garret room in which she was kept a prisoner, seeing no one but Fedora,
who brought her food with her own hands--food which tasted palatable
enough, but which seemed only to sap the young girl's strength.
For with each day Kathleen grew weaker and weaker.
At first she had been wont to pace the chamber restlessly for hours.
Now her limbs grew weary; her brain seemed to reel. She rested in the
chair, then upon the bed, and her burning brain was full of the thought
of Ralph Chainey's treachery.
"I loved him so, I loved him so--yet he was wicked, false and cruel
beyond all men!" she sobbed; and the knowledge was killing to her. She
thought that now, at last, she was going mad, like poor Daisy Lynn,
over a lover's falsity.
She did not know that it was death, not madness, that was approaching;
but the food brought her by Fedora was drugged, so that in a short time
it must cause her death if she kept on taking it.
She did not dream what a terrible interest the woman had in her death,
and that she had decided that Kathleen Carew must never go out of that
house alive.
"He did it for _me_, and I must not let her go free," she decided,
grimly, and went unfalteringly about her plans for ending that sweet,
innocent young life.
Kathleen found her imprisonment here more galling than it had been in
the home of Miss Watts. There was here no pretty, dainty room filled
with a young girl's dainty books and pictures, but only squalor such as
might have surrounded an uneducated servant.
She wondered much over the house she was in, and if her jailer, the
gaudily attired blonde beauty, inhabited such a shabby apartment as she
allotted to her guests. But she was not likely to have her curiosity
gratified on this point, as Fedora always locked the door on leaving,
and there was only one window--a small one, very high up--that gave
an uninteresting outlook on the walls of other houses--poor ones, it
seemed, from their moldy bricks.
A day came when Fedora did not bring her any dinner, and the whole day
wore away dully and gloomily. It was the day when Samuel Hall saw her
shopping in the store of Granville B. Haines & Co. Kathleen did not
dream of what had happened, but Fedora had moved out of the house that
day, leaving her victim to her fate.
Kathleen ate so little of the drugged food prepared for her that she
had lived longer than the woman anticipated, so she decided to leave
her to starve to death in the unoccupied house, where she was locked
into the wretched garret.
When she gave her address to the pretty saleslady at Granville B.
Haines & Co.'s, it was in a fit of absent-mindedness that saved
Kathleen's life.
Instead of giving her new address, she gave her old one, and, as we
have seen, Samuel Hall at once secured it from Tessie Mays.
So excited was the young man, and so fearful that harm had befallen
the beautiful young girl of that night's adventure, that he actually
secured the services of a policeman, and finding the house closed and
seemingly unoccupied, the doors were broken open and a strict search
instituted.
When they had almost begun to despair of success, the beautiful victim
was found by the delighted young clerk, who at once recognized her as
the fainting girl he had placed in the carriage that night.
She fainted again when she learned that she was saved, and the
policeman and Sammy had some difficulty in restoring her to
consciousness. When they had done so, they were filled with grief and
horror at the story she had to tell.
"Oh, let me go to papa!" she begged them, pathetically, and Samuel
Hall, melted by her beauty and distress, assured her that she should
be sent at once to Boston. A closed carriage was secured, and Sammy
and the sympathetic policeman escorted her to the station, where a
first-class ticket was bought and Kathleen placed in a Pullman car.
"God forever bless you!" sobbed the young girl, weeping over Sammy's
hand, and overwhelming him with promises of what her rich father would
do to reward him for his nobility.
Then the train steamed away out of the station, and there were tears in
the eyes of both men, through which they saw dimly the pale and lovely
face, on which a little hopeful smile was budding into bloom.
The policeman made Sammy promise to keep a sharp lookout for the
perfidious blonde, and to let him know if he found her, so that she
might be arrested and punished for kidnapping the girl. Then the two
separated, the policeman returning to his regular beat, and Sammy to
the store, where he told the sympathetic young girls the story of his
knightly deliverance of Kathleen, and became quite a hero in their
admiring eyes.
But gladdest of all was our beautiful Kathleen, speeding as fast as
steam could carry her back to Boston and to papa, who must surely have
come home ere now, and who would be so glad to see his little girl.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"PAPA, DARLING, IT IS I, YOUR LITTLE KATHLEEN!"
The world says now I am dead; but, oh,
Lean down and listen. 'Tis all in vain!
Again in my heart bleeds the cruel blow;
Again I am mad with the old-time pain!
CARLOTTA PERRY.
It snowed in Boston that night when Ivan Belmont came home on his usual
mission--to extort money by begging, coaxing, threats or curses--(he
usually tried all in succession before he succeeded)--from the rich
widow, his mother, and the heiress, his sister.
And he was wont to say on these occasions that he would almost rather
_work_ for the money than to extort it from those two penurious women,
they were so close-fisted and quarrelsome.
It was quite true what he said. Money he _would_ have, but he was so
spendthrift and reckless that his mother groaned in spirit over his
excesses, and often flatly refused him a penny.
Then he would have recourse to Alpine, and he never left until he
secured it, although he invariably had to raise a storm before he
succeeded.
His periodical pirating visits grew to be deplored by the whole
household, even by the servants, who knew that the effects of his
demands were to be dreaded for days, in the increased harshness and
ill-temper of the two women they served.
To-night the contest had raged hotter than ever before and only the
threat of criminal deeds, unless his demands were met, had sufficed to
draw gold from the pockets of his relatives.
Chuckling over his success, he left the house and prepared to face the
raging storm outside on his way back to the distant city whence he had
come.
Crushing his hat down over his face, he hurried down the marble steps,
pausing at the bottom in surprise at seeing the cloaked figure of a
female in the act of ascending the steps.
The glare of a street-lamp shone full on the scene. Curiosity prompted
him to stare at the beautiful white face upraised timidly to his own.
As he did so, his own face whitened with horror, his eyes dilated, his
limbs trembled with fear.
"My God!" he muttered, hoarsely; and turning, fled from the spot in mad
haste, like one pursued by fiends.
He believed that he had seen a veritable ghost, for it was the
pale, lovely face of Kathleen Carew into which he had gazed so
wildly--Kathleen, whom he believed dead. So he fled from the spot as
wildly as his trembling limbs would permit.
Kathleen had always disliked and despised Ivan Belmont, so she only
smiled scornfully at his precipitate flight, and began to ascend the
marble steps, her heart beating with joy at the thought of meeting her
father again.
"I wonder if James will be frightened, too, and run away, thinking me a
ghost?" she murmured, with a sad little smile, as she rang the bell.
But it was not James who opened the door to her; it was a total
stranger, who stared in surprise at the sight of a beautiful,
refined-looking young girl out alone on such a stormy night.
All the old servants had been discharged after Kathleen's death,
because they had irritated Mrs. Carew by grieving after their young
mistress.
So the man looked in wonder at the strange young girl with the rich
golden hair and flashing dark eyes who stepped across the threshold as
if she belonged there, and said to him with gentle imperiousness:
"Tell your master there is a young lady to see him."
Without waiting for a reply, Kathleen brushed past the astonished
servant, entered a small reception-room on her right, and sat down to
await the entrance of her father.
She had not mentioned her name, because she wanted to take him by
surprise.
She wanted to see the joy-light flash into his handsome face when she
should throw herself into his arms and cry out, tenderly:
"Papa, darling, it is I, your little Kathleen, come home to you again!"
How glad he would be to see her again! He had always loved her so
fondly that his heart must have almost broken when they told him she
was dead.
And how glad he would be to have her back again. How his eyes would
flash when she told him how wretchedly she had been treated. He would
certainly call in the strong arm of the law to punish her persecutors.
Only she did not want them to do anything to old Mrs. Hoover, the kind
matron who had befriended her in the asylum.
She sunk down into a beautiful satin chair with a sigh of relief at
getting back to papa and home again--her beautiful home, so warm, so
luxurious, filled with the rich odor of hot-house flowers, in strong
contrast to the storm raging bleakly outside.
The man-servant, somewhat amazed at her coolness in entering the
reception-room, but supposing her to be some intimate friend of the
family, went in search of his mistress.
"A young lady is in the small reception-room asking for Mr. Belmont,"
he said.
He had naturally supposed that Kathleen meant Ivan Belmont, as he was
the only man connected with the house.
"Did you send Mr. Belmont to her?"
"He had just gone out, madame, and she did not wait for me to tell her,
but brushed past me and went into the room," he replied.
"Impertinent!" exclaimed the lady, in angry surprise. "I will go and
see what she wants," she added, rising and throwing down her novel to
go.
She was already in a towering rage, because she had been bullied by
Ivan into giving him five hundred dollars a few minutes ago, and the
idea that a woman, one of his low associates, most probably, had had
the effrontery to follow him here, added fuel to the flame of her fury.
Kathleen heard the swish of a silken robe, and the heavy curtains
parted and fell behind the tall and stately form of her handsome
step-mother.
The girl rose up--grieved that it was not her father, but so glad to
be safe at home again that she was almost glad to see again the wicked
woman who was the cause of all her trouble.
"Mamma!" she faltered, using the name she had been taught to give her
cruel step-mother, and Mrs. Carew, who had been advancing angrily
toward her, recoiled with a smothered cry and starting eyes.
Kathleen came toward her with eager, imploring hands outstretched in
greeting.
"Do not be frightened, mamma, I am not a ghost, I am human," she said,
sweetly; but Mrs. Carew, who had sunk down on her knees in mortal
terror, waved her back.
"Back, back!" she breathed, hoarsely; and Kathleen saw that she
believed herself haunted by the spirit of her dead step-daughter.
She went back to her seat and began to explain her appearance in
soothing tones:
"It was all a mistake, mamma. I was in a trance, not really dead, and
I came to myself in the coffin that night, and dazed and frightened
lest they should bury me alive, I ran away into the woods. Some people
caught me and put me into a lunatic asylum, from which I have just
escaped!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
TURNED OUT INTO THE STORM.
The poor too often turn away unheard
From hearts that shut against them with a sound
That will be heard in Heaven.
LONGFELLOW.
Mrs. Carew drew a long, sobbing breath, and struggled up to a chair,
keeping her eyes fixed fearfully on Kathleen, who went on sorrowfully:
"I can not tell you mamma, what I have suffered since I went away last
spring. The recital would be enough to melt a heart of stone. You never
loved me, I know, but you would have pitied me if you could have known
how I was suffering from the stupidity of those people, who took me for
another girl, and kept me a prisoner so many months. Thank Heaven, it
is all over now, and I am at home again. But where is papa? I want to
see him so much, and I am sure he can not be out this stormy night."
While the young girl talked, the color had been coming back to Mrs.
Carew's lips and a malevolent gleam to her blue eyes. Straightening
herself up in her chair, she looked across at the girl, realizing that
it was indeed Kathleen Carew come back from the portals of death.
She had always hated the lovely, innocent girl, and now she thought
triumphantly that Kathleen's day was past. Her father was dead, and she
was disinherited. She had no part nor lot in the home to which she had
returned.
The cruel woman looked at the lovely young suppliant, and sneered:
"You can not impose on me with your false claims. You are not Kathleen
Carew, and your resemblance to her is very slight--not strong enough to
bear out your assertion. My step-daughter is dead."
"No, no!" Kathleen cried, piteously. "I am your step-daughter, indeed
I am, mamma, and I have told you the truth. I have been so ill and
unhappy all these months, it is that which has changed my looks and
made me look so unlike the Kathleen you remember. Where is papa? He
will know me, he will be glad that I am alive!" She made a movement to
leave the room, but as suddenly Mrs. Carew barred her way.
"You lunatic! you shall not leave this room!" she hissed, savagely.
Kathleen's hot temper, held at bay so long, flamed up at once.
"I _will_ go to papa!" she uttered, angrily; and in a low but perfectly
clear voice her tormentor answered:
"Vincent Carew is _dead_!"
She saw the girl start and tremble as if she had been struck. Her sweet
face, flushed a moment ago with anger, went deathly white, and she
clutched the back of a chair for support.
"Vincent Carew is dead!" repeated the pitiless woman before her.
She heard a moan of mortal agony issue from Kathleen's pale lips,
but she continued, heartlessly: "My husband was lost at sea in the
_Urania_, that was burned to the water's edge the very week after my
step-daughter was murdered in Pennsylvania. By his will, made in London
just before he sailed, he disinherited his daughter for her intimacy
with an actor, and left his whole fortune to me and my daughter."
"It is monstrous, impossible! You are telling me a falsehood!" moaned
Kathleen, with difficulty, for her senses were leaving her under the
shock of her step-mother's words. A low gasp came from her lips, she
staggered blindly forward, then fell insensible upon the carpet.
Mrs. Carew spurned the senseless form with her foot and threw wide the
velvet _portière_, calling:
"Jones, lift this woman up and put her out into the street. And be
careful never to admit disreputable characters inside my doors again,
or you may lose your place!"
The man, who had been lingering about very near, approached with
profuse apologies and excuses.
"Carry her out into the street!" repeated his mistress, angrily.
Jones took up the light, unconscious figure in his arms and moved
toward the door, but he muttered, deprecatingly:
"She'll die out there in the snow."
"What is that to you? Creatures like _her_ ought to be dead! Do as you
are bid, or you will rue it!" stormed his mistress; and Jones, dazed
and frightened by her violence, hastened to obey her commands.
The door had hardly closed on him as he bore poor Kathleen out into the
stormy night, when Alpine Belmont, disturbed by the noise, came gliding
down the stairs, demanding the cause of the excitement.
Mrs. Carew was pale and trembling in every limb, and she answered,
reluctantly:
"It's something not fit for a young girl's ears, my dear."
"Oh, bosh! I'll find out from the servants if _you_ don't tell me,"
retorted Alpine; and then Mrs. Carew said, cunningly:
"Well, if you must know such awful things, a woman came here demanding
to see that disreputable brother of yours! You can imagine the sort of
woman, crazy with drink, that would follow _him_! So I made Jones put
her out into the street, and the whole disgraceful thing will be talked
over by the servants by to-morrow."
Alpine shivered with horror and disgust, and muttered:
"I wish Ivan was dead! He is too wicked to live! The idea of that
woman's effrontery!"
Mrs. Carew thought to herself:
"That was a good idea of mine! She believes every word. Good! for I
would not like for her to know the truth. She has been so soft over
that girl ever since her supposed death, that there's no telling what
pity would lead her to do!"
CHAPTER XXV.
TEDDY DARRELL AGAIN.
The snow lies white and the moon gives light,
I'll out to the freezing mere,
And I'll tell my mind to the friendly wind
Because I have loved her so.
INGELOW.
Mrs. Carew's servant, Jones, was a very humane and tender-hearted
man, and his heart swelled with anger as he obeyed the command of his
mistress, and bore the fainting young girl out of the splendid abode of
luxury and wealth into the cold and stormy night.
He stopped under the flaring street-lamp and looked pityingly into the
lovely white face that had fallen back against his arm.
"Why, what a pretty young thing she is--little more than a child--and
looks as innocent, too!" he soliloquized. "I'll bet my life that
if she's ever done any harm, she's been betrayed into it by that
scoundrelly Ivan Belmont that she came here to find! He ought to be
hung, so he ought!"
He glanced anxiously up and down the almost deserted avenue. The
snow lay white and deep upon the ground, and the great flakes swirled
through the air, striking him coldly in the face.
"If I put her down here on the ground she will freeze to death, poor
girl, that's certain!" he murmured, uneasily. "I just can't do such a
wicked thing--no, not even if she _is_ bad, as Mrs. Carew said. Why,
even if she was a murderess it wouldn't be right to leave her out here
to die in the cold! But, land, what be I to do with her? That's what I
want to know!"
The whinny and stamp of an impatient horse attracted his attention at
that moment. He turned his head and saw a smart cab waiting at the next
door. The driver, half asleep, sat on his box, his head sunk into the
collar of his great-coat.
A sudden temptation came to the troubled Jones, and he did not fight
against it, but rather welcomed it as an inspiration.
Walking noiselessly across the snow, Jones placed his burden inside the
cab upon the cushions, and closed the door so softly that it did not
attract the attention of the tired and sleepy driver on the box.
"God bless you and raise you up a friend this awful night, you poor
little wretch!" apostrophized Jones, as he returned from the scene and
re-entered the Carew mansion.
He had not been gone ten minutes before a servant came from the house
before which the cab was waiting and roused the sleepy cabby.
"The lady as you brought here has decided to stay all night with her
sick mother, so she told me to pay you and send you away," he said.
"All right, but I wish she had made up her mind afore she kep' me
a-waitin' here all night! I be frozen with the cold, that's what I be!"
grumbled the driver, accepting the double fee ungraciously, and driving
away at a high rate of speed, all unconscious of the silent passenger
inside.
He went rattling down to a large hotel, hoping he might get a fare for
the theater.
A tall, handsome young man came down the steps and hailed him.
"Take me to the Opera House," he said, opening the door and springing
lightly in.
"All right, sir," and away they went.
Teddy Darrell, the new fare, pulled up the collar of his long,
fur-lined overcoat about his ears, and was about to settle himself
comfortably when he received a violent shock.
He discovered that he was not alone in the cab. A slight girlish form,
shrouded in a heavy cloak, was huddled up on the opposite seat, and low
moans were issuing from its lips.
CHAPTER XXVI.
"I WOULD LAY DOWN MY LIFE TO SERVE YOU!" SAID TEDDY.
How was any one to know
That those eyes had looked just so
On a hundred other women with a glance as light and strange?
There are men who change their passions
Even oftener than their fashions
And the best of loving always, to their minds, is still to change.
JOHN T. TROWBRIDGE.
Teddy Darrell had had some adventures in his day, and was not given to
nerves, so he did not let the shock of his discovery overcome him.
The thought flashed over him that some drunken woman had crept into the
cab, unknown to the driver, and fallen into a troubled slumber.
The flaring lanterns on the outside of the cab did not afford much
light, so Teddy struck a match and held it over the face of his unknown
companion.
Then indeed he had a shock much greater than the first one.
The lighted match fell from his hand and he recoiled with a startled
cry.
"Good heavens! what a likeness!"
He sunk upon the opposite seat, actually trembling with surprise and
emotion.
In the pale and lovely face lying unconscious on the cushions the
young man had recognized a haunting likeness to one he had loved very
dearly, and whose tragic fate, six months ago, had thrilled him with
unutterable horror. Although other lovers had succeeded Kathleen in
Teddy's young, impressionable heart, he had never ceased to regret the
fact that she had rejected him.
"The sweetest, loveliest girl in all the world!" he had always thought
of bonny, dark-eyed Kathleen.
And he trembled with pain when he saw in the poor street waif, as he
believed her, the awful likeness to his lost loved one.
Kathleen, who was beginning to recover consciousness, moaned and
stirred, half lifting herself toward the young man.
He bent toward her kindly and said:
"Are you ill, madame?"
That voice! It was one from her happy past. It stirred a pulse in
Kathleen's heart, and she turned toward him wildly, her dark eyes
opening wide upon his anxious face.
The flaring lights from some place of amusement shone into the cab and
showed her his features.
"Teddy Darrell!" she murmured, in a feeble tone of amazement.
"Good heavens! you know me!" he exclaimed. "Who are _you_?"
She held out her white hands to him with an entreating gesture.
"Don't you know me? Don't you remember Kathleen Carew?" she cried,
faintly.
"Kathleen Carew is _dead_!" he answered, blankly.
"No, no; she lives! It was a mistake. I was in a trance, and I escaped
from my coffin and ran away into the woods," whispered the girl,
rapidly regaining the strength to speak.
"Good heavens! So that's what became of you!" cried Teddy Darrell. He
seized her little white hands and pressed them rapturously. "Welcome
back to life, my dear girl!" he laughed, happily, and she exclaimed:
"You know me--you believe me?"
"Of course I do," he replied, joyously. "But how came you to be here in
this cab, alone and unconscious?"
"I do not know," she answered, in a puzzled voice. "I went home, and
mamma told me my father was dead, and that he had disinherited me in
his will. Then she denied my identity, and the last thing I remember I
fell fainting on the carpet. Oh, Mr. Darrell! will you do me one favor?
Take me to my dear friend, Helen Fox."
"Helen Fox is in Europe," he replied, reluctantly.
"In Europe? Oh, good heavens! what am I to do, then? Helen is the only
friend I have to turn to in my distress!" exclaimed the young girl,
clasping her beautiful hands in the keenest despair.
Teddy Darrell looked at her reproachfully.
"You seem to forget _me_, Miss Carew. But I would lay down my life to
serve you!" he exclaimed, impetuously.
She glanced up and met his eyes. They wore the most killing expression
of devotion--and Teddy's dark eyes could be very expressive when he
chose.
Kathleen blushed vividly, and answered:
"I--I--did not know--if I might call you my friend or not. Some
men--might not like a young girl after--after----" She paused in
confusion.
"After she rejected him," finished Teddy, coolly. "Well, I hope I am
not as mean as that, Miss Carew. I shall be only too happy to be your
friend and brother if you will allow me."
"You are too good to me," she whispered, gratefully, as she held out
her little white hand to him, adding, sadly: "'A friend in need is
a friend indeed,' and I am poor in everything now, with not even a
shelter for my head."
"Don't say that," exclaimed the sympathetic young fellow, with a break
in his voice. "I am going to take you to my cousin, one of the kindest
ladies in the world, if you will allow me to do so;" and, pulling the
check-string, he gave the driver orders not to proceed to the opera
house, but to the street where his cousin lived.
Kathleen acquiesced gratefully in his decision. Her heart went out
warmly to this cordial friend, and she regretted in her heart that
she had ever laughed with Helen Fox over the young man's flirting
proclivities.
CHAPTER XXVII.
ALPINE'S RENEWED HOPES.
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams.
EDGAR ALLAN POE.
Alpine Belmont, all in a flutter of surprise and delight, was making
herself beautiful, with her maid's assistance, for the eyes of a caller
who was waiting for her in the drawing-room.
Ten minutes ago a card had been brought to her bearing the name of
"Ralph Chainey."
"He asked for Mrs. Carew first, but I told him she was out; then he
sent his card to you," said Jones.
Alpine's heart leaped with wild delight.
She was as romantically in love with the gifted and handsome young
actor as was possible to one of her vain and selfish nature.
After Kathleen's death she had cherished some hope of winning him,
but his coldness and indifference had been so marked, and his despair
over Kathleen's loss so deep, that in angry pique she had given up her
hopes, and determined to console herself with her newly acquired wealth.
The novelty of her position as a great heiress had for a time diverted
her thoughts, but of late they had returned to him again, and rested
longingly on her desire to win his heart.
So the sudden announcement of his presence filled her with joyful
anticipations.
Her maid was hurriedly summoned to array her mistress for the coming
interview.
In the servants' hall, a little later, she expressed the opinion that
the gentleman must be a very particular beau, as the lady was so hard
to please.
Meanwhile, Alpine, palpitating in a light-blue silk that set off very
becomingly her blonde beauty, was entering the drawing-room to meet her
caller.
Ralph Chainey, dark, stately, handsome, the incarnation of a romantic
young girl's idea of a lover, rose and bowed with courtly grace over
Miss Belmont's hand.
He had been searching vainly for Kathleen more than a week, and at
last it occurred to him that perhaps she had come home. He hastened to
Boston in a fever of anxiety.
Alpine could never remember afterward in what words he told his story,
it came on her so suddenly, it found her so unprepared, but presently
she knew it all--knew that Kathleen, whose death had so softened her
heart, was alive, and that but for some strange happening of fate, she
would that moment be Ralph Chainey's beloved wife.
With that knowledge, Alpine's heart grew cold as ice again; the old
jealous hate revived.
She could not speak for some moments, but sat staring with burning blue
eyes at the unhappy young man, who was pouring out his whole heart.
"Oh, Miss Belmont, think what an awful shock it was to me, losing her
in that mysterious fashion. I have scarcely eaten or slept since, I
have been so wretched, I employed detectives, but they seem to be all
at sea. They even believe that I was mistaken--that it was not Kathleen
Carew at all, but really Daisy Lynn, a lunatic. Miss Watts, from whom
she had escaped, had been found, and she declared that the girl was her
niece."
A wild hope came into Alpine's mind, and she faltered:
"I believe the detectives are right. Kathleen can not be alive.
Remember we saw her in her coffin, cold and dead."
"Not dead, for I have seen her alive!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Miss Belmont,
do not discourage me--do not turn unbelieving ears to my story, for I
swear to you that Kathleen Carew is alive to-night--alive, but given
over to some fate, perhaps, worse than death!"
Alpine's heart beat wildly as he fixed his great burning brown eyes so
sorrowfully upon her face. Oh, God! she thought, what would she not
give for Ralph Chainey to love her as he did Kathleen Carew, her hated
step-sister!
Some burning words of the Virginia poetess, Mittie Point Davis, came
into her mind:
"If your heart could throb for me,
Even for a moment's space,
With the love I feel for thee
Gazing on that glorious face;
If the passion that I feel
Found response within your breast,
Years of anguish could not steal
Memories that I had been blest.
"If those eyes so darkly glorious,
Kindled as with mine they met,
I could hold myself victorious
Even though you did forget.
I could give the lifelong passion
Of a thousand meaner souls
For one hour's brief adoration
Over thine to sway control."
Ralph Chainey did not dream what a wealth of love for him had blossomed
into full flower in the young girl's heart. Men are blind, or they
would never confide to one beautiful young girl the story of their love
for another one. Few girls are noble enough to listen without being
piqued and jealous.
Alpine Belmont's heart burned within her, and she said to herself
that she hoped he was mistaken, and that poor Kathleen was dead. She
believed it herself, and she and her mother had long ago agreed that
Kathleen's body had been stolen from the doctor's cottage for purposes
of dissection. She had shuddered at the thought of that beautiful body
being so desecrated, but Mrs. Carew had seemed quite indifferent,
and congratulated herself that she had escaped the expenses of a
fashionable funeral and a costly monument.
All the sorrow she had felt for Kathleen's death died out of Alpine's
heart as she beheld the trouble of the handsome young actor, and she
said to herself that if Kathleen could rise from the grave and stand
before her, she would be tempted to strike her dead at her feet.
While these cruel and jealous thoughts ran through Alpine's mind,
Ralph Chainey was looking at her with pathetic eyes that mutely craved
her sympathy. At last she began to understand this, and a clever idea
came to her. Why not pretend to sympathize with him in his sorrow?
It would bring them closer together, and perhaps win her some kind
thoughts from him.
Following out her thought, Alpine moved to a seat beside the young
actor, and laying her soft, ringed white hand lightly upon his, she
gave it a sympathetic pressure, and murmured:
"No words can tell you how deeply I sympathize with you in your sorrow.
I hope, for both our sakes, that your belief may prove true, and
Kathleen be restored to your heart."
Her sympathy pleased him, as she knew it would, and he answered,
eagerly:
"You loved her. I know. How could any one live in the house with her
and not be devoted to one so sweet and lovely?"
Alpine withdrew her hand and played nervously with her many rings.
"Yes. I was fond of Kathleen," she murmured. "You did well to come to
me. You have all my sympathy, and oh! how I wish I could find her and
restore her to you. Is there nothing I can do? I am rich, you know, and
if you wish it, I will employ a detective to find Kathleen;" but even
as she breathed the tender words, the wily girl knew that she would
rather employ a detective to hunt her rival down to her death.
Ralph Chainey, blind mortal that he was, looked at her gratefully,
without detecting the hollow ring in her voice.
"God bless you for your noble offer, Miss Belmont, but I can not accept
it," he replied. "I have detectives already employed. I, too, am rich,
and my whole fortune shall be devoted to finding her, if it costs that
much. All that you can do is to write to me at once if you hear from
our poor lost darling. I shall be moving from one city to another, but
I will keep you informed of my whereabouts."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Chainey, and I will write you if I have the least
bit of news!" exclaimed Alpine, with sparkling eyes, for she began to
see a prospect of getting up a correspondence with the great actor. She
would write to him often, asking if _he_ had any news, and he would be
obliged, in common courtesy, to reply.
He rose to go, and Alpine poured out eloquently her sympathy for him
and her sorrow for Kathleen.
"We both love her; it is a link between us," she said. "Try to think of
me as a sister, and remember I shall often be thinking of you in your
sorrow."
He thanked her gratefully and hurried away, after promising to call
again the first time he came to Boston.
Alpine told her mother on her return of the young man's visit, and his
startling disclosure, but Mrs. Carew pooh-poohed the whole story.
"Kathleen is certainly dead," she said. "Ralph Chainey has been imposed
on by a pretty lunatic, that's all. I thought he had more sense."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
TEDDY DARRELL'S PLANS.
"You are all that I have to live for,
All that I want to love,
All that the whole world holds for me."
Teddy Darrell kept his promise to Kathleen. He took her immediately to
the home of his cousin, a widow lady of about thirty-eight years--a
woman of good circumstances and social standing, but whose divided
devotion to two pretty children and literary pursuits caused her to
live a very retired life.
Mrs. Stone must have been very fond of her cousin Teddy, for she
accepted his story of the finding of Kathleen in good faith, and made
the young girl welcome to her luxurious home. She saw that the hapless
girl was nearly fainting with fatigue, and leaving Teddy alone in the
pretty library, carried her off to bed, after first coaxing her to take
some tea and toast.
"Bless you, my dear, your name has been a familiar one in this
household for more than a year. Teddy was so madly in love with you
once that he could talk of nothing else but Kathleen Carew whenever he
came. Even the children knew all about it!"
Kathleen blushed at receiving so much kindness from Teddy's cousin,
after having rejected _him_, so to clear herself she said:
"But he got over it directly. Helen Fox told me he proposed to her the
week afterward."
Mrs. Stone, who was warming a dainty lace-ruffled night-gown before the
fire for her guest, threw her head back and laughed heartily.
"Teddy Darrell is the worst flirt in Boston! Actually, Miss Carew, I've
known that boy to be engaged to three girls at the same time!" she
exclaimed, merrily.
"I suppose he can never be really in earnest," said the young girl.
Then Mrs. Stone replied, more seriously:
"I have never known him to be in earnest but once, and I have been his
confidante, I believe, in all of his love affairs. He has had many
fancies, but he never really loved any one but _you_, my dear girl."
Kathleen did not know what to say to this, and the lady rattled on:
"Well, Teddy is a good catch, if I do say it myself, for he is a real
good boy, and very rich. His wife, if he ever gets one, will have a
happy life; and I hope he will soon marry, for that would cure him of
his little fads."
"Fads?" observed Kathleen, inquiringly.
"Yes," replied her new friend; "he is full of them. Some time ago it
was to be an author, and I believe he wrote up whole reams of foolscap
in the six weeks while the fever lasted. He came here every day,
bringing dozens of pages of the thrilling romance over which he had
been wasting the midnight oil. Finally he sent it off to a publisher,
and a prompt rejection cooled his ardor. Now his fad is to be an actor."
"An actor?" Kathleen exclaimed.
Her thoughts flew with exquisite pain to Ralph Chainey--so beloved and
so false!
"He has been stage-struck ever since he saw Ralph Chainey act last
winter," continued the communicative hostess. "He tells me now that he
is studying to go upon the stage, but I'm sure he will fail. He will
certainly have stage-fright."
"I hope not," answered Kathleen; and then the gentle lady tucked her
kindly into bed as if she had been a little child.
"Good-night, my dear," she said, with a kiss, and then she went away,
saying she must go down-stairs and see Teddy Darrell.
He was waiting for her alone. The children who had been amusing him,
had gone off to bed, and he settled himself for a long, confidential
chat.
From his talk she soon learned that his love of a year ago for bonny
Kathleen had revived with fuller intensity than ever.
"Cousin Carrie, I'm bound to marry that girl!" he exclaimed, with
sparkling eyes.
"But she rejected you last winter, Teddy."
"I know; but everything is different now. She was a belle and heiress
then; now she is poor, and friendless but for us. When she learns that
I love her in spite of her changed position, and that I want to marry
her as soon as she will have me, she will be touched by the romance of
the affair, and--now don't laugh so, Cousin Carrie--it _is_ romantic,
is it not, my devotion?"
"Certainly," she agreed, merrily; then added: "But I'm afraid you will
find it hard to convince her of your devotion; for she told me when I
spoke of it just now that you had proposed to Helen Fox the very week
after she rejected you."
Teddy made a grimace.
"Oh, that was all fun, and I think it was very shabby in Helen telling
all the other girls about it. Of course, I only wanted the engagement
for a few weeks, then to pique her and get discarded, as I've done with
other, girls," he said, carelessly, having a very elastic conscience in
matters of love.
But he added, rather lugubriously:
"But I'm in earnest, Carrie, with Kathleen Carew. Positively, she is
the only girl I ever loved in my life--that is, real, sure enough
love--and it will break my heart if I don't get her for my wife."
"You didn't break your heart when you believed that she was dead," his
cousin reminded him, cynically.
"Oh, that's different!" he replied, vaguely. "I've set my heart on
getting her now, and I could never get over it, if I failed. Look here,
Cousin Carrie," leaning toward her, his bright, dark eyes full of
tender pleading, "help me, won't you? Speak a good word for me to her.
I'm not such a bad sort, am I?" wheedlingly. "I would make a nice young
girl a good husband, wouldn't I, now?"
"Yes, Teddy, I believe you would."
"Then help me, won't you? It's not selfish in me, is it, to want to
marry this poor girl who has been so strangely despoiled of home and
fortune, and make up to her for all her cruel loss?"
He was deeply, romantically in earnest, and Mrs. Stone could not help
admiring his nobility.
"No, Teddy, it's not selfish, for you _are_ a good match, and I'll
help you with sweet Kathleen, if I can. I used to be called a good
match-maker in other days when I went more into society, and I'll exert
my powers now for your benefit."
"Thank you over and over!" he exclaimed, fervently.
Thus in two homes in Boston plans were being made to keep Ralph Chainey
and Kathleen apart. Teddy Darrell meant to marry his old sweetheart,
if she was to be won, and Alpine Belmont was scheming to marry Ralph.
These two hearts, that had gone out so tenderly in love to each other,
seemed but footballs of fate, tossed relentlessly hither and thither.
Well might Kathleen, tossing restlessly on her soft bed, wet the pillow
with bitter, burning tears for her lost love--her false love, as she
believed.
CHAPTER XXIX.
FEDORA'S ESCAPE.
Let me see him once more, for a moment or two;
Let him tell me himself of his purpose, dear, do;
Let him gaze in these eyes while he lays out his plan
To escape me, and then he may go--if he can!
FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.
Kathleen had promised to write to Samuel Hall and let him know when
she arrived safely in Boston, and the next morning, although she felt
really weak and ill, she kept her promise.
She wrote a kind and grateful letter to the noble clerk, again
thanking him for his goodness to her, and telling him of her terrible
disappointment on reaching home.
"I can not understand it all, I am so dazed with my trouble," she
wrote. "But papa is dead--lost at sea--and the strangest thing I
ever heard of, he made a will just before he sailed for America, and
disinherited me--his only child. Think of the strangeness--the cruelty
of it. But he is dead; I must not harbor unkind thoughts of him. I am
sure some malignant influence was brought to bear. But I am homeless,
penniless, but for this friend, Mrs. Stone, with whom I am staying.
I can not now repay you the sum of money you so nobly advanced me to
return home on, but I shall never forget it, and the time may come
when I shall be able to restore it fourfold. Till then God bless you
is the prayer of your friend till death.
"KATHLEEN CAREW."
Sammy Hall was all excitement over the letter, and at the first
opportunity confided the news to his sympathetic girl friends.
Of course they talked it over at that quietest hour in the day when the
throng of shoppers are out at lunch or gone home to dinner.
Tessie Mays, who had the news direct from Sammy, retailed it all to
the eager listeners; and no one noticed a handsome, showily dressed
young woman who had entered the store and come up to Tessie's
counter--Fedora, who, having given the wrong address the other day, had
now returned to complain that she had never received her package of
gold passementerie.
Just as she was approaching the counter she heard the name of Kathleen
Carew called, and drawing back with a great start, pretended to be
examining some gorgeous brocade silk that was displayed on the end of
the counter. The pretty, animated young girls did not observe her, and
went on talking.
Fedora did not lose a word.
Pretty soon she became aware that her prey had escaped her through
the efforts of Sammy Hall, and that she was now safe in Boston with a
friend, although her father was dead and had disinherited her, and her
step-mother had denied her identity.
"It is just like a novel, isn't it?" commented one of the young girls.
"I would give anything I own for one good look at the beautiful Miss
Kathleen Carew, with the bronze-gold hair and proud dark eyes that
Sammy raves over."
"Tessie Mays, I'd think you would be jealous!" exclaimed another girl,
with a meaning laugh.
Tessie tossed her dark curly head carelessly.
"Why, Sammy Hall is not my beau! I think it was you, Dolly Wade, that
he took to church Sunday night--wasn't it?"
It was Dolly's turn to blush and bridle. She laughed.
"Oh, pshaw! Mr. Hall's only a friend of mine, and I don't think he
wants to marry you, anyhow! He is cut out for an old bachelor if ever a
man was!"
"Have you ever seen that woman again, Tessie?" asked another girl,
turning the conversation.
"What woman?"
"Why, the one that Sammy recognized and is going to arrest, if she ever
comes in here again, for kidnapping Miss Carew."
"Why, no; and it's strange, too, for she made a mistake, gave me the
address of a vacant house, and her gold passementerie came back here. I
was certain she would be back here, fussing about it; and I tell Sammy
it's lucky she made the mistake, so she will _have_ to come back here.
He has the warrant for her arrest, and she'll never get out of Haines &
Co.'s without a policeman's escort!"
"Won't she?" muttered Fedora, with a low, gurgling laugh of sarcastic
amusement. She tripped away in a hurry, in spite of her pretended
mirth, and did not breathe freely until she was out of the store and in
the cab that was waiting for her near the sidewalk.
"Whew! what a narrow escape!" she muttered. "So I have been watched and
almost trapped while I believed myself triumphant!"
An ugly look crossed the pretty blonde face, and she continued, angrily:
"I wonder who Sammy Hall can be that those girls talked about so
familiarly? He must be the man that helped me put the girl in the
carriage, and that I met afterward in the street, and snubbed so
coolly. He has taken revenge on me by ferreting out the place where I
left Kathleen Carew, and rescuing her from her fate. Heigho! I think I
had better leave for New York right away. Philadelphia will be too hot
a place to hold me for a while. If I had the money I would go to Boston
and look up my runaway bird, and Ivan at the same time. He promised to
send me three hundred dollars this week. He had better do it, for I've
got a hold on him, now, thanks to that girl's disclosure, that he can't
shake off."
CHAPTER XXX.
"MY DARLING GIRL, I'M AS FOND OF YOU AS EVER!"
Sweetheart, name the day for me,
When we two shall wedded be;
Make it ere another moon,
While the meadows are in tune.
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
"You must cheer up, dear Kathleen, and feel yourself quite at home with
me," Mrs. Stone said, affectionately, to her sorrowful young guest.
Kathleen looked at her wistfully with her sad, dark eyes.
"But I have no claim on your kindness, dear lady," she sighed.
"Why, aren't you my cousin Teddy's friend? and isn't he one of the best
boys in the world? and didn't I promise his dead mother that I would
always be kind to the boy she was leaving so lonely in the wide world?
for his father had died years before. Yes, indeed, you have a claim on
me, not alone because Teddy loves you so passionately, but for your own
dear sake--because your trouble and your helplessness make it my duty
to love and care for you," exclaimed the kind lady, feelingly.
"You are so good and kind! May Heaven reward you!" sobbed the unhappy
girl.
She leaned her beautiful curly head on Mrs. Stone's shoulder and wept
bitter, burning tears from the depths of her overcharged heart.
Poor Kathleen! She was surely the most unhappy girl in the world.
So young, so lovely, and so loving, yet pursued by a cruel, unrelenting
fate, that had wrested from her little hands all that she held dearest
in life!
Her young heart was torn with agony for the death of her beloved
father, and the thought of Ralph Chainey's sin added poignancy to her
grief.
In the long, dark watches of the sleepless nights, poor, unhappy
Kathleen lay wakeful and wretched on her pillow, thinking wildly of
her lost love--the man who had seemed like a demi-god in her eyes, so
handsome, and so gifted, and so noble, but who had been deceiving her
all along--who had a wife while he was pretending he meant to marry her.
And--but when it came to this thought Kathleen's hysterical sobs almost
choked her, and she said to herself that she would not permit herself
to believe it--the thought that it was Ralph Chainey who had robbed her
that night, and given her jewels to _that_ woman, was unendurable. That
way lay madness.
But it was no wonder that each morning, when the kind eyes of her
hostess scanned her face so anxiously, she found it paler and paler,
while the dark eyes were somber and heavy from the tears that always
lay so near them, and the sweet, red lips had always a tremulous curve,
as if from repressed sobs.
Mrs. Stone's kind heart ached for the unhappy young creature who only
wept at all her attempts at comfort.
She said to herself that she did not believe there was much chance for
Teddy Darrell, after all. The girl did not show the least interest when
she spoke of her cousin.
Her whole heart seemed to be absorbed in grief for her father's death,
and in wonder over the fact that he had been mysteriously angry with
her, and given her share of his wealth to her step-sister.
"Papa always loved me, and I never did anything to vex him, so why did
he hate me? Why did he leave his poor Kathleen alone and penniless in
the cold world?" she would sob, piteously.
Mrs. Stone had no answer ready for that oft-repeated inquiry. It was a
mystery to her, too, why Vincent Carew had done such a cruel and wicked
thing. She did not know that Mrs. Carew had brought about the whole
thing by her malicious cablegram. If she had only waited until that
strange telegram from Ralph Chainey had been explained, how different
Kathleen's fate would have been!
Ill and penniless, the dead millionaire's beautiful young daughter was
as poor and wretched as any beggar in the streets, only for this kind
friend.
"Cheer up, my dear, cheer up!" she urged, kindly; but Kathleen could
not even bring a smile to her poor, stiff lips. Teddy Darrell came
every day to inquire after her, and he was shocked at the change in
beautiful Kathleen.
"She looks awfully ill--almost as if she were going to die," he
confided to his cousin after a week, in a troubled tone.
"She _is_ ill; I'm sure of it; for she eats no more than a little bird,
and she gets weaker every day. I think I had better have the doctor up,
don't you?" she answered, anxiously.
"Yes; I'll send him when I go out," Teddy replied; and then he went
back to the young girl, who was lying back in an easy-chair, trying to
interest herself in a little book of poems he had brought her with some
flowers.
"Do you find anything pretty in it?" he asked, tenderly.
"I--I don't know. I'm afraid I've not tried," she answered, penitently,
ashamed that she could not seem happier to these kind friends who were
so good.
He took the book from her hands and began to read aloud some pretty
bits here and there, in a musical and well-modulated voice.
"Listen to this. I am sure you will agree with me that it is pretty,"
he said, and read, softly:
"'Oh, Love, so sweet at first,
So bitter in the end;
Thou canst be fiercest foe
As well as fairest friend.
"'Ay, thou art swift to slay,
Despite thy kiss and clasp,
Thy long, caressing look,
Thy subtle, thrilling grasp!
"'Yet, cruel as the grave.
Go, go, and come no more!
But canst thou set my heart
Just where it was before?
"'Go, go, and come no more!
Go leave me with thy tears,
The only gift of thine
That shall outlive the years.'"
Kathleen's face was bent on her hand. Teddy heard a smothered sob, but
he did not know with what terrible directness the words had gone to her
heart. He believed that she was heart-whole and fancy-free.
"It is too sad for you, is it not?" he exclaimed. "I will read you
something brighter:
"'They may talk of love in a cottage,
And bowers of trellised vine,
Of nature bewitchingly simple,
And milkmaids half divine.
* * * * *
"'But give me a sly flirtation
By the light of a chandelier--
With music to play in the pauses,
And nobody very near.'"
Kathleen actually gave a soft little laugh, for Teddy had read the
lines with such gusto that he plainly betrayed how much the sentiment
was to his mind.
He started, flushed, then said, with his unvarying good nature:
"Ah, how cruel! But never mind, so that I've made you feel brighter.
Have I, Kathleen?"
"You are too good to me," the girl answered, gratefully, moved by his
kindness.
"Too good! Ah, not one-half as good as I would like to be, if only
you would let me," cried the young man, ardently. "Ah, Kathleen," he
continued, impulsively, "do you remember how I used to love you--how I
begged you to be my wife? My darling girl, I'm as fond of you as ever.
Won't you try to love me? I would be the proudest boy in Christendom if
you would marry me!"
"Don't talk to me of love--please don't!" cried Kathleen, keeping her
ardent lover at bay with two entreating white hands.
"Well, I won't--at least not to-day; and I beg your pardon,
dear, if I've intruded on your grief with my selfish love. But I
thought--thought it might please you to know that there was one who
loved you even better since your reverse of fortune than before," Teddy
explained, humbly.
"You are too good to me," she repeated as before, incoherently, touched
by his devotion, and contrasting it in her mind with the treachery of
that other one so dearly loved, so deeply false.
"Then may I hope, Kathleen?"
"Oh, no, no, no! I shall never love nor marry any one!" she answered,
vehemently; but Teddy Darrell did not
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