KATHLEEN MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

When Kathleen Carew recovered consciousness she found herself on a bed in a shabby garret bed-room, with the eyes of the blonde beauty looking into hers.

"So you are come to at last? I began to think you were dead, child. Here! smell this, and you'll soon be better," she exclaimed, vivaciously, as she held a bottle of camphor under Kathleen's nose.

Kathleen pushed it away like a petulant child.

"What am I doing here?" she sobbed, in a frightened voice.

"This is my home, you know. I offered to bring you here to save you from Ralph Chainey, that wicked actor. Oh, my! what a scene there was after you fainted. He came back, and I can tell you, he was frightened at finding me there. I told him he must go away, that I had told you all, and you hated him. He tried to brazen it all out at first, but presently he was humble enough, and I made him carry you out and put you in my carriage. Then he went away, vowing he would get you into his power some day."

Kathleen shuddered from head to foot, and cried, appealingly:

"Oh, madame, is he really your husband? For the sake of Heaven, do not tell me an untruth, for it is more bitter than death to lose faith in one's lover!"

"Alas! if it is so hard to lose faith in a lover, how much worse to be deceived by a husband?" cried the blonde, pathetically.

She dashed her white hand across her dry eyes, and Kathleen caught the glitter of a diamond ring flashing like a little sun. In her small, pink ears there were magnificent diamonds, too, and Kathleen began to watch them with fascinated eyes.

"What a beautiful diamond ring! Won't you let me try it on, please?" she asked, humbly.

The blonde, flattered by the admiration for her ring, slipped it off with some difficulty, and allowed Kathleen to take it in her fingers.

She held it up and gazed inside the gold circle, reading aloud:

"'Kathleen Carew!'"

"Why, I never knew before that a name was cut——" began the woman, then bit her lip and checked herself, abruptly.

"Where did you get this ring?" asked Kathleen, excitedly.

"My husband gave it to me."

"And your beautiful ear-rings?"

"They, too, were gifts from my husband."

"From Ralph Chainey?"

"Of course. Didn't I tell you he was my husband? Do you want to see my marriage certificate?" holding out her finger for the ring.

"Presently," said Kathleen, sitting erect, with a strange fire in her eyes. "Is this," she continued, in a strange voice, "your name inside the ring?"

"Of course," airily answered the blonde.

Kathleen's slumbrous eyes began to glow with an angry light, and she exclaimed, passionately:

"It is false! It is my own name, and the ring is mine! The ear-rings also are mine! My father gave them to me!"

"You must be crazy, girl!" exclaimed the blonde, in honest surprise. She snatched the ring and slipped it back on her finger.

"I tell you I am in earnest," stormed Kathleen, roused to a sudden fury by the thought of her wrongs. "I tell you I am Kathleen Carew, and those jewels were stolen from me by a man who choked me and left me for dead on the ground, while he tore those gems from my bleeding hands and ears. And you say it was your husband——" she stopped, shuddering violently. Was she criminating Ralph Chainey?