"WE HAVE MET--WE HAVE LOVED--WE HAVE PARTED!"
Farewell, farewell! for aye, farewell,
Yet must I end as I began,
I love you, love you, love but you.
JOAQUIN MILLER.
Kathleen gave up all hope of ever hearing from her Southern relatives.
"They do not care for me, and I must not expect anything of them,"
she sighed, and the thought came to her that now she had been at Mrs.
Stone's six weeks, and grown well and strong again, she must seek a
situation as a teacher and support herself.
"I suppose I could teach little children, and I must try to find some
place. It is unfair to my kind friend for me to remain here longer,"
she sighed, and stole softly down to the library for a morning paper to
consult the advertisements.
As the girl glided softly across the floor a low murmur of voices
reached her through the falling curtains from the adjoining parlor.
The girl gave a violent start, and sunk tremblingly into the nearest
chair.
She was pale as death, and her heart beat violently against her side.
What was it? What had startled the young girl so much?
The sound of a voice had pierced her heart like a sword-thrust.
It was Ralph Chainey's voice, so deep, so sweet, so mellow, that, once
heard, it could never be forgotten, especially by one who loved him so
despairingly as did our poor Kathleen.
He was speaking to Mrs. Stone, and for one wild moment Kathleen
believed that he had traced her here, that he had come to inquire for
her. Surely then he could not be guilty, or conscience would have kept
him away.
She strained her ears to catch every tone of that deep, sweet voice,
and then she heard him speaking to Mrs. Stone of her literary work. He
had been so struck with the force of one of her books that he wanted
her to dramatize it for him, or write him a new play.
All unaware of Kathleen's nearness to him, the young actor had come
here to this house, seemingly led by the subtle hand of Fate.
Kathleen glided to the falling curtains, and, drawing one ever so
lightly apart, gazed with eager, yearning eyes into the room.
Her hungry eyes feasted on the sight of her false lover as he sat in
full view, opposite Mrs. Stone, in a large velvet arm-chair.
Never, it seemed to bonny Kathleen, had she seen him look so grandly
handsome, not even in his spirited impersonation of Prince Karl, in
which he had so thrilled her girlish heart.
But Ralph Chainey was pale, and in his splendid, thoughtful brown eyes
lay the haunting shadow of a cruel pain. He was tortured by his failure
to find lost Kathleen.
But the conventional smile that played over his handsome face as he
talked to the gifted woman before him deceived Kathleen. It seemed to
her that he was well and happy, that he had forgotten that she ever
lived--the girl he had pretended to love so dearly.
"I have the plot of a new story upstairs in my study, and I believe it
is just the thing you want, Mr. Chainey," said Mrs. Stone, vivaciously.
She rose, and added: "I will go and get it, but if I am some little
time away, please go into the library, and amuse yourself with a
book. I must confess that I am very careless, and often misplace my
manuscripts."
Mrs. Stone vanished through the door, and Ralph Chainey, who was so
unhappy that he dreaded nothing so much as his own sad thoughts,
immediately turned toward the library.
Kathleen gave a gasp of surprise and terror, and turned to fly.
She was too late. Even as her hand fell from the curtain Ralph Chainey
swept it aside and entered. The strangely parted lovers were face to
face.
For a moment the young man was only conscious that Mrs. Stone's library
was occupied by a beautiful young girl.
But the moan that burst uncontrollably from Kathleen's white lips made
him glance more closely at the young girl's face, and then he saw that
it was his missing love.
A cry of joyful astonishment broke from him, and he sprung forward,
crying, eagerly:
"Kathleen, my darling!"
His arms closed about her; he pressed her closely to his throbbing
breast.
Kathleen's eyes closed, and her golden head sunk heavily on her lover's
breast.
She had almost fainted with the shock of seeing him so suddenly,
combined with the exquisite rapture and pain of his fond embrace.
But even while he showered kisses on her fair face and closed eyes,
memory and reason began to assert themselves. She struggled faintly in
his clasp, and he perceived that she was trying to free herself.
Instantly he opened his arms and allowed her to go free, for Ralph
Chainey was one of the proudest of men, and would not force his
caresses on any one.
But he said eagerly, although with a slight tone of reproach in his
voice:
"Kathleen, my dearest, how came you here, and why was it that I found
you gone that night when I returned to the station?"
The color flushed hotly into her pale face, but she stood apart,
looking at him with burning eyes, and not uttering one word.
"Kathleen, why do you look at me so strangely?" exclaimed her lover, in
reproachful wonder. "Has your heart changed toward me? Did you repent
your promise to marry me that night, and run away, or did your enemies
find you, as you feared they would? Tell me the truth, my darling."
But still she did not speak. In truth, she could not. There was a
hysteric constriction in her throat that held it tight as with iron
bands. She gazed with unwilling fascination into the large, pleading,
brown eyes of her lover, her young heart throbbing wildly in her breast.
"Kathleen, what have I done that you will not even speak to me?" he
asked, piteously, and all her heart thrilled at the words; her will was
hardly strong enough to restrain her from springing into his arms. His
glance, deep, reproachful, loving, and magnetic, all in one, held her
like a charm:
"It shot down her soul's deep heaven
Like a meteor trailing fire."
A long, long, troubled sigh breathed over the girl's sweet lips, and
with a great effort of her will she drooped her eyelids so that they
could not encounter his gaze.
"For I dare not, or--I should _risk_ everything for his dear love," she
thought, wildly.
She mystified him so by her strange behavior that he forgot his pride,
and again advanced toward her side.
"Kathleen, my love, my darling, speak to me, if only one word!" he
cried, yearningly, passionately.
And finding her voice at last, she faltered to him, in a despairing
tone:
"Did you ever--ever--know--a woman named--Fedora?"
"My God!" cried Ralph Chainey.
He flung up one hand to his brow and reeled backward from her side like
one wounded to the death.
"So it is true?" Kathleen cried, in a hollow voice full of bitter
anguish.
Ralph Chainey looked at her with sad eyes from which all the brightness
had strangely faded.
"Who has told you?" he asked, in a dull voice.
"She told me herself," Kathleen answered, and shot him an indignant
glance, pride coming to her rescue. There could no longer be any doubt
of his guilt. His looks confessed it.
But he faltered in a dazed voice:
"That is impossible! She is dead!"
"You can not deceive me like that, Ralph Chainey!" cried Kathleen, in
tempestuous anger. Her eyes flashed lightning on her recreant lover,
and she continued, bitterly: "Your wife came to me that night in the
station and told me all. She--she took me away."
"What was she like?" demanded the young man, hoarsely. He seemed dazed
by sudden misery.
"She was a beautiful blonde with a haughty manner," answered Kathleen;
and he groaned as if there could be no longer any hope.
"I have been duped, deceived! I believed that Fedora was dead long
ago," he said, angrily. Then his voice grew softer. "Kathleen, will you
let me explain it all?" he pleaded, humbly.
But in the heart of the beautiful, passionate young girl there had
suddenly leaped into life the devouring flame of jealousy--jealousy and
hate for the woman who had thrust her rival into the pit of a black
despair. And he had deceived her. It seemed to her she must go mad with
her wrongs. In this moment she hated her lover.
She turned on him with a tigerish glare in her splendid eyes.
"I will hear nothing!" she said, bitterly. "You will never have the
chance to deceive me again!" and she rushed angrily from the room.