"YOU SHALL NOT MARRY RALPH CHAINEY!" UNCLE BEN CRIED, VIOLENTLY.
Adown my cheeks in silence
The tears came flowing free,
And, oh! I can not believe it—
That thou art lost to me.
H. Heine.
While Kathleen was still weeping over Ralph Chainey's appealing letter her uncle was announced.
She dried her tears and went down to welcome the old man.
Mrs. Stone had taken the children out for the morning, so Kathleen had a long interview with her new-found relative.
He was so much like her dead father in his voice and looks that he won Kathleen's heart at once, and when he expressed his love and sympathy for her in moving terms, the unhappy young girl gave him her confidence in the fullest measure.
She told him the story of her young life from the beginning—her step-mother's cruelty, Alpine's unkindness, and Ivan's attempts at courtship, which she had repelled with scorn.
Then her indignant voice softened as she murmured over the story of her happy love-dream—her first romantic meeting with Ralph Chainey, when he had saved her life, and her later acquaintance with him, down to the moment when she had repulsed him with scorn, and, in a fit of pique, engaged herself to Teddy Darrell.
"I was wrong—all wrong!" she cried, self-upbraidingly, and gave him Ralph's letter to read.
Benjamin Carew listened in dead silence to all that Kathleen told him of the young actor, and if she had observed him closely, she would have seen that his brows were drawn together by a heavy frown.