Suddenly the girl's face, already so pale and wan, whitened to an ashen hue, her great dark eyes dilated in a sort of horror, and she flung the photograph far from her into a distant corner, exclaiming, indignantly:
"Ivan Belmont, my step-mother's hateful son, whom she wanted me to marry, so that I might endow him with a fortune."
It was some time before she could command her nerves sufficiently to read Daisy Lynn's diary, and then her tears fell freely, for the story of the young girl's love was all written there, gay and joyous at first, then sad and plaintive, then drifting into deep despair, followed by the disjointed ravings of a mind distraught.
"Oh, how sweet, and then how sad!" exclaimed Kathleen. "Love comes to all young girls with the same symptoms, I suppose, for I felt just as she wrote in the first after meeting Ralph Chainey—so gay, so glad, so joyous. The sky seemed brighter, the flowers sweeter, the whole world was a new place. There is nothing in the world as sweet as love."
[CHAPTER XVI.]
KATHLEEN'S DESPERATION AND HER ESCAPE.
"And then she sang a song
That made the tear-drops start;
She sang of home, sweet home,
The song that reached my heart."
Popular Song.
Kathleen sighed restlessly as she turned the pages with her little white hands.