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

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 planTo 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 foeAs 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 heartJust where it was before?"'Go, go, and come no more!Go leave me with thy tears,The only gift of thineThat 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 flirtationBy 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 in the least believe her. He thought that all young girls were sure to love some day, and almost certain to marry. He determined to keep on hoping and trying to win this peerless beauty.

Kathleen guessed what his thoughts were, and it made her very uneasy.

"If I remain here with his cousin he will expect me to marry him," she thought. "I can not do it, for I do not love him. I must go away again;" and that very day she wrote to her mother's relatives in Richmond—the ones to whom she was going when overtaken by such an awful fate at Lincoln Station.

Kathleen was so weak that it tired her now even to write a letter, and the pen dragged wearily before she finished the recital of her sorrows, and pleaded with these unknown kin to let her come to them just for a little while—until she was strong enough to go out into the wide, cruel world and earn her own living with those weak, white hands.

CHAPTER XXXI.

KATHLEEN'S WEARY WAITING

Oh! you tangled my life in your hair;'Twas a silken and golden snare,But so gentle the bondage my soul did imploreThe right to continue your slave evermore.Miles O'Reilly.

Teddy Darrell sent up a doctor to see Kathleen, and he was startled when he found that the young girl was suffering from arsenical poisoning.

"It is quite well that you sent for me, because if this had gone any further, she might have died. But I will go at once to work to remove the effects of the poison from her system," Doctor Spicer said, gravely.

Mrs. Stone was shocked, but she readily comprehended that the woman Fedora had placed the deadly drug in Kathleen's food, intending to compass her death by slow degrees. What mystified her was the woman's motive.

Kathleen, while confiding the rest of her harrowing story to these kind friends, Teddy Darrell and his cousin, had withheld the story of Ralph Chainey's connection with her trouble. She could not bring herself to mention his name. Something in her heart pleaded mutely for the culprit. What if the woman had lied to her? What if she had been lured from Ralph by a cunning ruse? Her brain reeled sometimes with this suspicion, and she felt that she should go mad with the miserable uncertainty of it all. Where was Ralph? Oh, if she could only see him—find out the real truth!

So she did not tell her friends anything about Ralph, and Mrs. Stone had no clew to the mystery of this attempt on her life.

"She does not dream of it, and perhaps it will be as well not to tell her, she has already suffered so much through her unknown foes," thought the kind lady.

Several weeks passed, and Kathleen began to grow stronger and better under the physician's treatment, but in all this time no reply to her letter to her Southern relatives had been received. Neither had the fact of Kathleen's return to Boston ever transpired among her former friends in the city.

Mrs. Carew was the only one who knew that Kathleen really lived, and it was to her interest to keep it a secret.

Teddy Darrell remained silent on the subject, because the natural selfishness of a lover made him wish to keep away all other lovers until he had had his own chance

"To win or lose it all."

Mrs. Stone's quiet and retired life helped to keep Kathleen's presence in her house unknown. She was a rising authoress, devoted to her children and her pen. She had first commenced to write after her husband's death as a solace to her loneliness and grief. Success had made literature her life work, and she devoted herself to it, going but little into society and receiving few friends.

Kathleen began to look better, but she chafed bitterly in secret over the strange silence of her relatives.

Why would they not write her a few lines, even if they did not want her with them? Did they care nothing, then, for the unhappy child of their poor dead Zaidee? She had written to them so frankly, so appealingly, tried to open her whole heart to them, but there came no response.

And dearly as she loved her good friend, Mrs. Stone, Kathleen chafed at her enforced dependence on her kindness. She saw so plainly through her little matchmaking scheme, and she was so touched by Teddy's devotion, silent and unobtrusive since that day when he had spoken out so impulsively, but still patent to all observers.