"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 foe
As 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 heart
Just where it was before?
"'Go, go, and come no more!
Go leave me with thy tears,
The only gift of thine
That 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 flirtation
By 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.