[CHAPTER XXI.]
WAS RALPH CHAINEY A VILLAIN?
Roses have thorns, and love is thorny, too;
And this is love's sharp thorn that guards its flower,
That our beloved has the cruel power
To hurt us deeper than all others do.
Sarah C. Woolsey.
Kathleen, pale, shuddering, startled, gazed in horror at the face of the bold, handsome creature who declared to her that these gems for which she had been almost murdered were given to her by Ralph Chainey.
Was it true that the woman was Ralph's wife, and that he had given her the jewels?
If so, what an awful vista of suspicion and crime opened back of these two facts!
Could it be that Ralph Chainey was the fiend who had robbed and murdered her that night, and then by his clever acting thrown off suspicion from himself?
The terrible suspicion made her tremble like a leaf in the wind; and meantime the woman, whom we will call Fedora, was gazing at her with suspicious eyes.
"I don't know what to make of you, girl," she said, impatiently. "Come, now; I want to hear your story from beginning to end."