"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.