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!"