Read Ebook: Kathleen's Diamonds; or She Loved a Handsome Actor by Miller Alex McVeigh Mrs

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Ebook has 2360 lines and 228740 words, and 48 pages

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!"

"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."

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 He had recognized her, too, and the memory of his startled glance, so quickly withdrawn, thrilled her with keen delight, although he did not permit her to meet his eyes again.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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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."

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