"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.