Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor

"You'd better not, Alpine. Susette knows some of your secrets!" Kathleen answered, with a provoking laugh.

"I have no secrets!" snapped Alpine; but she left the room discomfited.

Kathleen practiced and read until the late luncheon, where she was surprised to find herself alone.

"Where is Miss Belmont, James?" she asked.

"Miss Belmont went out for a walk," he answered, respectfully.

While Kathleen was making up her mind to go for a walk, too, some callers were announced. She received the matron and her two gay young daughters, entertained them herself, with an apology for the absence of the other members of the family, and saw them depart with a sigh of relief.

"I will go for my walk now," she decided, but turning from the piano, she saw an open note lying on the floor. Her own name attracted her, and picking it up, she read, under date of that morning:

"Dear Alpine and Kathleen—Mamma wishes you to join us at an informal three-o'clock lunch to-day, to meet a distinguished guest. Brother George was at college with Prince Karl—Ralph Chainey, you know—and he is coming here to lunch with us to-day. Do come, girls! He's so handsome and talented I want you both to know him. There will be several others, too, but we want you especially. I want him to see our beautiful Kathleen."

The note bore the name of Helen Fox, one of their intimate girl friends, and Kathleen realized in a minute that she had been tricked by crafty Alpine, who had gone to the luncheon alone to meet Ralph Chainey.

A futile sob of bitter disappointment rose in the girl's throat, and crushing the note in her hand, she walked to the window, gazing blankly out into the handsome street through burning tears.

A light laugh startled her. There was Alpine Belmont, in elegant attire, walking toward the gate with a tall, handsome, distingué young man. Lifting his hat with a smile, he left the young lady there, and walked away with a hasty backward glance at the window that showed him a lovely, woful face staring in undisguised wonder at the spectacle of Ralph Chainey walking home with deceitful Alpine Belmont.

"Alpine, you wicked girl, how could you treat me so unfairly?" she demanded, shaking with passion.

Alpine flung herself into a chair, flushed, laughing, insolent.

"You told mamma last night that I was a sneaking tell-tale, didn't you? Well, then, I paid you off, that's all! Besides, mamma does not allow you to know Ralph Chainey—a pity for you, my poor Kathleen, for he's the most fascinating young man I ever met. I made myself very agreeable to him, and I think he fell in love with me. You see yourself he walked home with me from Helen's luncheon. Would you like to know what I told him about you, my charming Kathleen?"

"No!" the girl answered, hotly.

"I don't believe you—you're dying to hear. Well, it was this: I said you did not recognize him in the least last night till I told you it was the man that saved you at Newport. Then I said you would not come to meet him at the luncheon to-day, because you said it would be such a bore having to thank him. Ha, ha! You'd like to murder me, I know!"

CHAPTER VI.

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: