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."