From the curtained alcove where Daisy Lynn's soft, white sheets and blankets and counterpanes were stored on shelves, Kathleen brought the sheets and tore them into strips, working on them every night until she had succeeded in making a strong plaited rope with which to let herself down from the window.
"Heaven help me—dear Heaven help me!" she prayed all the while; and one dark night toward midnight she fastened the rope to the shutter hinge and let herself safely down to the street.
Stunned by the velocity of her descent, and with bleeding hands rasped by the rough rope, Kathleen fell upon the ground and lay there pantingly a few moments.
"Free at last, thank Heaven—free!" she murmured, gladly, and wrapping her long circular cloak around her, and drawing the warm hood close about her beautiful face, she ran breathlessly along, flashed around a corner, and had left her prison behind her, fleeing, as she hoped, to home and happiness.
It was growing late, and in the quiet city of Philadelphia there were few pedestrians abroad, and those mostly men. In any other city of that size Kathleen, with her beautiful face, would have been insulted over and over, but the Quaker City of Brotherly Love had in it a smaller ruffianly element than the others. When she stopped and appealed to those she met she invariably received a coin instead of a leer; but they were so small—so small, and, oh, it would take so much money to get to Boston!
She had stopped a policeman on his beat and asked him timidly how much money it would take to get to Boston.
"Oh, as much as twenty dollars, I guess!" he replied; and at his curious stare she thanked him and ran away, pausing under a street lamp to count her money.
"Only two dollars and twenty cents! I shall never, never get enough!" she sighed, and then she gave a shriek. A thief had snatched the money from her little white hand and run down a side street.
Kathleen started to run after him, but there was no policeman in sight, and the thief had quite disappeared. She ran till her limbs trembled with weariness, and suddenly emerged into Walnut Street. People were coming out of the Walnut Street Theater, and crowding the pavement. She saw a handsome man handing a fair young girl to her carriage, and the sight awoke memories of the past when she, Kathleen Carew, heiress then to a million, now a beggar in the streets, had been handed to her carriage by Ralph Chainey, the handsome young actor, who had whispered in her ear:
"I hope we shall meet again."