Like every one else, she admired the young actor, and though his preference for Kathleen had angered her, she was not prepared to do him the flagrant injustice of believing him as wicked as her mother asserted.
There was a moment's silence; then Mrs. Carew exclaimed, with a startled air:
"Good heavens, Alpine! think what this means to us! Kathleen dead, the whole Carew fortune is ours!"
Alpine had the grace to be ashamed.
"How can you think of that now?" she exclaimed, reproachfully. "I—I had rather know that—that Kathleen was alive than have the wealth of the Vanderbilts!"
Then she burst into tears and left the room in a hurry.
Mrs. Carew looked after her aghast.
"I did not think she would take it so hard, but then I always suspected her at times of a sneaking fondness for that black-eyed witch," she mused. "Well, I don't mind. It will look better in society, a little real grief on Alpine's part. As for me, I'm glad she's out of the way, and the Carew wealth assured to me and mine."
She gave a low laugh of satisfaction, but her hands were shaking with excitement, and her heart fluttered strangely. She was recalling the coincidence of Kathleen's and her mother's deaths—both at nearly the same age—sixteen—and both by violent means.