[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
RALPH CHAINEY'S ANGER.
I can not break the cruel net,
And yet—
My eyes with scornful tears are wet—
Release me, teach me to forget.
Celia Thaxter.
Kathleen gained her own room, locked the door, and fell prostrate on the floor in a passion of blinding grief and jealous anger. Tears came to her relief, and rained down her cheeks in a tempest of emotion.
"Will he go away, or will he remain, tell Mrs. Stone my whole story, and beg her to plead his cause with me?" she asked herself, and hoped unconsciously that he would.
She did not know the young man's sturdy pride. He had waited for Mrs. Stone, transacted his business with her, and gone away without a word.
"She did not love me, or she would have let me explain it all, as I wished. She did not care to have the barrier between us swept away. So be it. Let her go. She is not worthy such love as I gave her," he thought, with scorn of the heart that could trample on such devotion:
"The spirit of eager youth
That named her queen of queens at once, and loved her in very truth;
That threw its pearl of pearls at her feet, and offered her, in a breath,
The costliest gift a man can give from his cradle to his death."
His brow clouded with a heavy frown as he thought of the woman who had turned the heart of his fair young love so cruelly against him.
"Does she really live? Have I been duped by a cunning lie—a trick to extort the price of a costly funeral? I almost believe it. Let me find out if it is true, and bitter shall be that fiend's punishment," he mused with almost savage intensity.