"It is you," she said, shaking a disdainful finger in his face; "it is you to whom I must look for my jewels! Where are they? What have you done with them?"
He tried hard to stammer a weak denial of all knowledge of them, but even his own mother and sister knew that he was lying. Kathleen's great flashing eyes surveyed him in bitter scorn.
"Do not deny it—I can see that you are speaking falsely," she said. "You can not deny it in the face of the jewelers' assertion. Perhaps you have sold them to get money to go on with your dissipated habits. Listen: I will give you one week in which to return the diamonds, or four thousand dollars in lieu of them." She paused, and he muttered another disclaimer, but Kathleen persisted: "I can not afford to lose the small fortune that is all that remains to me of my father's gifts for a scruple of pity to those who have been pitiless to me. So unless you return the jewels or their value in a week's time, I shall hand you over to the law."
With a heightened color she took the old man's arm.
"Come, Uncle Ben, let us go," she said, and swept from the room with the air of a dethroned princess, Uncle Ben following humbly in her wake.
Jones let her out with an air of distinct approval, having hovered near the library door and heard all that transpired within.
Kathleen, going down the steps with her shabby, newly found relative, came face to face with a man going up—Ralph Chainey. A start on either side, a cold, stiff bow, then Kathleen stepped into the carriage and sunk half-fainting against the cushions.
"Who was that, my dear?" inquired her uncle, observing her agitation.
Kathleen stifled a sob, and answered:
"It was Ralph Chainey, the great actor."