“‘It was the devil tempted me!’ she finally cried, and so no doubt it was, but he played her a scurvy trick, for she got a sentence of eight years’ penal servitude for listening to his voice.”
“Oh! poor creature!” said May, pitifully.
“My sympathies, I confess, lie with Miss Kathleen Weir,” continued Ralph Webster, smiling. “She has lost her diamonds, worth thousands of pounds, which she will never see again, and she might have had a very awkward reflection cast on her honesty. But I admit I am prejudiced in her favor, for just before I started to come here a note in the prettiest language imaginable was handed to me from Miss Kathleen Weir. My modesty forbade me to bring it, or to repeat all she had written. But she paid me a great many compliments on my ‘masterly cross-examination’—please remember I am quoting—which, no doubt, she said, ‘elicited the truth from that wretched woman.’ And, moreover, she wanted me to go to see her to-morrow afternoon, and I mean to go.”
“Oh! Ralph, to see an actress!” said Miss Webster, in dismay.
“Oh! do go,” cried May, laughing. “I am dying to hear all about her.”
“I will go,” said Ralph Webster, slowly, not knowing that the hand of Fate was leading him into a pitfall beset with doubt and anxieties from which there was no escape.
CHAPTER XXVI.
KATHLEEN WEIR.
Ralph Webster did as he said he would, and went on the following afternoon to call on the actress, Miss Kathleen Weir.