This slender, handsome Ivan Belmont, with his straw-gold curls and seraphic blue eyes, was a cold and brutal villain who utterly belied his gentle looks. He had all his mother's evil traits intensified, and would not stop at murder if there was anything to be gained by it, provided he was not to be found out. He was a coward, and afraid of punishment.
So when Kathleen made her bold charge against him, and he realized that possible detection and punishment hung over his head, his coward heart gave a thump as if it would burst the confines of his narrow chest, his brain reeled, his fair face whitened to an ashy hue, his limbs trembled beneath him as he clutched the back of a chair, and with an inarticulate groan of feeble denial, he sunk in a senseless heap upon the floor.
"Ivan is dead! You have killed him with your false words!" shrieked Alpine, running to her brother.
Mrs. Carew followed, and they knelt down over Ivan, exclaiming and lamenting, although much of it was for effect, for they did not waste much affection on their black sheep.
Kathleen, readily comprehending that Ivan had fainted from terror, curled a scornful lip, and turning her back on them, walked across the room to where a life-size portrait of her dead father filled a panel near his writing-desk.
Vincent Carew had been a singularly handsome and imposing gentleman, and the fine artist had done full justice to his noble subject. The dark eyes seemed to hold the very fire of life and the smiling lips almost about to breathe a blessing on his wronged, unhappy orphan child.
As Kathleen paused in front of the magnificent portrait of her lost father, the hard, defiant look on her face faded as if by magic, and the burning light of her large Oriental dark eyes was softened by a rush of tears. Almost unconsciously she sunk upon her knees and lifted her clasped white hands appealingly.
"Oh, father, dear father, if only you could speak to me, if only you could tell me why you turned against your unhappy child?" she sighed, pathetically.
It was a sorrowful picture—pathetic enough to move anything but the heart of a fiend—that unhappy girl kneeling there in tears and love before the portrait of the father who had disinherited her and left her to want and misery.
But no one noticed her. Mrs. Carew and her daughter were busy over Ivan, whose swoon was a deep one. Kathleen's raining tears fell unnoticed and unpitied, save by the great All-seeing Eye.