WAS RALPH CHAINEY A VILLAIN?

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."

Kathleen did as she was asked. She related the whole story of her life, from the first meeting with Ralph Chainey until now.

Fedora listened with eager attention.

She was especially interested in Mrs. Belmont and her son Ivan.

"And she wanted you to marry him?" she said.

"Yes; but I will never do it. I hate him, and so does papa. He is a spendthrift, and dissolute," said Kathleen, quoting words that her father had used of his step-son.

Fedora frowned and said, hastily:

"But he is very handsome, isn't he?"

"I believe some people think so, but I don't. I guess Daisy Lynn thought so, or she would not have gone mad for love of him;" and the whole story of Daisy Lynn came out.

It proved very interesting indeed to the blonde, who asked many questions, and seemed disappointed that Kathleen could not answer them all.

When she had elicited all that Kathleen could tell, she returned to the subject of Ralph Chainey.

"I knew he was false to me, but I did not believe he was wicked enough to do murder," she said.

Kathleen shuddered as with a mortal chill, and said faintly:

"There must be some mistake."

The blonde gazed in silence for several minutes at the lovely face of the hapless young girl, then asked, abruptly:

"What shall you do about it?"

"Nothing," Kathleen answered, sorrowfully; and she thought to herself that she would give the world to blot out of her life all memory of the man she had loved so dearly and so well; yet she knew that his memory would haunt her all her life long, and that her heart would break because he had proved unworthy.

She looked pleadingly at the woman before her, and exclaimed:

"Will you please take me home to my father?"

"To-morrow," answered Fedora, soothingly. She rose as she spoke. "Lie down and sleep; it is late," she added. "To-morrow I will go home with you and restore you to your friends."

She went out, carefully locking the door behind her.

Alone in her own room, she looked at the beautiful jewels that had cost Kathleen so dear, and muttered:

"He did it for me—to get these for me. How he loves me! But this girl! her life is a menace to his liberty. If I let her go home and tell what she knows, suspicion will fall upon him. Why did he bungle so, if he must do that ghastly job?" Then she laughed. "Oh, I have paid you out, Ralph Chainey!"