RALPH CHAINEY IS DRIVEN TO DESPERATION, AND TURNS ON HIS FOE.

Ralph Chainey went from Alpine's presence to his home in Sumner, one of the beautiful suburbs of Boston, and to the presence of his gentle widowed mother, who presided over a lovely home that was shared with her by an older son and his small family.

"Ralph, dear, you look pale. You are ill!" she exclaimed, anxiously.

"My head aches severely. I will go to my room and lie down for an hour to get my nerves steady for to-night," he said; and kissing her affectionately he left her to seek seclusion for his aching heart and brain.

He leaned his aching head on his hand, and a rush of bitter memories swept over him.

He saw himself five years ago a boy of twenty-two, brilliant, ardent, and impetuous, just beginning his dramatic career. At the very outset he had fallen into the toils of a beautiful actress years older than himself. By a clever playing of her cards, she had entrapped him into a marriage; but scarcely had the honey-moon waned ere he learned to his horror the true character of his wife. She was false, light, and wicked, and no entreaties could win her from her wicked ways.

A separation ensued, and Ralph, ashamed to court publicity by applying for a divorce, agreed to support the false woman if she would promise not to annoy him by venturing into his presence. She accepted these terms, but instead of retiring to seclusion, as he desired her, Fedora, as she called herself, joined a ballet troupe, and scandalized her unfortunate young husband by her wild career. Still the marriage was wholly unknown to the world, and in hopes of maintaining this silence, the young actor suffered on patiently, his pride wounded, his fancy dead, his soul thrilled with disgust, but one solace left to him, and that the knowledge that his false wife had kept faith with him in preserving his secret—kept faith because he had threatened her with exposure and divorce upon its betrayal.

At last she had broken faith, and, bitterest of all, had betrayed his miserable folly to the one woman that he wished never to know it—to beautiful, proud Kathleen, the idol of his very soul, for whom he had felt all the passion of the poet's plaint:

It had fallen on him like a crushing blow, the knowledge that Fedora lived, when he had been duped, deceived into believing that she was dead and he was free.

A telegraphic message from Richmond, where she had been playing, had summoned him to her death-bed; but when he reached the city her friends told him she was dead and buried.

They showed him a new grave in the beautiful shades of romantic Hollywood, and presented him with a long bill for her funeral expenses. He paid it without a murmur, and could not help feeling glad that he was rid of his terrible incubus. He did not dream that it was only a clever plot of the wicked woman to extort money, and that she enjoyed very much the liberal sum he had handed over to liquidate the expenses of her interment.

He realized it all now—saw how cruelly Fate, in the shape of the heartless Fedora, had used him, and, with a bitter groan, stared his cruel destiny in the face.

Fedora—his false wife—lived! She had parted him forever from his beautiful, dark-eyed love.

He believed that Kathleen was going to marry Teddy Darrell, as Alpine hinted, but he was not so sure that it was for love. He remembered, with a thrill of blended rapture and despair, how he had caught Kathleen to his heart this morning, and how she had lain passive in his arms at first.

"She did not repulse me at first," he thought. "Her heart throbbed wildly against mine, and she lay yielding and passive in the utter abandon of a pure woman who truly loves. Then she remembered all at once, and withdrew herself from me in stinging scorn."

He groaned bitterly at the memory of her cruel words.

"My poor, proud darling! if she would but have listened to me, she might have pitied and forgiven me," he thought, with the fluctuating hopes of a lover's heart. He loved Kathleen so dearly that he could not remain angry with her, although he tried to do so. In his heart he made excuses for her. She was so young, so inexperienced, and there was no telling what lies Fedora had told the young girl.

"I will punish that fiend, at least," he cried, starting to his feet. "No more squeamishness shall deter me from seeking a divorce, and I shall do so at once. Who knows but that Kathleen may pity me, may relent, when she learns all that I have suffered?"