MRS. CAREW TRIUMPHS IN HER SWEET REVENGE UPON KATHLEEN.

"Kathleen, you and Uncle Ben must come to me soon for a visit. It is such a little time now before your marriage, and I can never have you to myself again after that!" exclaimed Helen Fox.

"Uncle Ben is going back to the country to-morrow, but I shall be glad to come," Kathleen answered.

She had been back at Mrs. Stone's for a week, but neither Mrs. Carew nor Alpine had called on her or sent any message—"the heartless wretches!" as Mrs. Stone said, indignantly.

Rumor said that the mother and daughter were making hasty preparations to sail for Europe, to be absent several years. It was rumored also that the disreputable Ivan had crossed the sea before them, flying from justice. The story of Kathleen's lost diamonds was public property now; but there was no chance that she would ever recover the jewels or their value, for Ivan had disappeared, and his mother and sister angrily repudiated the debt.

Uncle Ben himself went to the two proud women, begging them to do his niece justice.

"Think, madame," he said; "you and your daughter have stripped Kathleen of everything. The jewels were all that remained to her, and now that she is to marry a rich man, she would like to have the money for her wedding trousseau. It is very little to you out of your great wealth, but to her it is all. Be just and fair, and make good what she has lost by your son's dishonesty."

Mrs. Carew laughed mockingly.

"I would not give her a penny if she were starving to death!" she said.

"Your own husband's daughter!" he said, reproachfully.

"I hate her the more for that. I hate everybody he ever loved!" she replied, vindictively.

"You hated poor Zaidee and caused her death, I know," he replied, bitterly.

Her face suddenly grew livid, and she looked at her accuser with startled eyes.

"It—it is false!" she muttered, weakly.

"It is God's truth," answered the old man. "You told Zaidee Carew a trumped-up story of her husband's falsity, and then—her death followed. Answer me this, madame: Was her death a suicide or—a murder?"

She quailed before the stern old man, pale as death, trembling with nervous alarm; but Alpine rose up suddenly and interposed between him and her mother.

"How dare you distress my mother so with your shocking hints and suspicions?" she cried, violently. "Get out of here at once, you old wretch, or I will call Jones to throw you out into the street!"

"As your mother did poor Kathleen," he sneered.

"And served her right," she hissed. Then she rang the bell violently. When Jones appeared, she said: "Take this old beggar and throw him into the street! If you ever admit him again, you will be discharged."

Uncle Ben moved toward the door with Jones, but, looking back, asked, pleadingly:

"Will you not pay your brother's debt?"

"Never! Now go!" she stormed, and the rich curtains fell behind the bent retreating form; but from the hall a strange, exultant laugh came back to them, and Mrs. Carew shuddered.

"Heavens! how horribly that laugh sounded like my husband's laugh!"