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aa 1200 Me KATHLEEN'S DIAMONDS.
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te. grasped her w ‘rist. with steely . fingers, his” eyes
fi ashed with a fire akin to hers, and he whispered;
“Wish! You must not dare accuse. her SO} You drive
me mad! Oh, it can not be! oe
~-. “You take that false woman’s part,. then, Uncle: Ben,’
“against me and my peor young mother? Listen, then’s:
let me tell you all I-know—a secret I kept from my dead:
“They dared, the hounds! accuse m-my brother thus? ”
- he breathed, fier cely, the per ‘spiration starting out < on iis
~krow, his strong frame trembling.
“Yes, they accused him,” answered the girk “Do not
- take it so hard, Uncle Ben. He was innocent, I. know;
‘but: that fiendish woman -played her part to per fection.
father, because I believed in him, trusted him, in spite of»
_- the servants’ gossip | that accused ‘him of complicity i in his
young wife’s death.” —
She'made my mother believe that Vincent Car ew wished —
her out of the way, so that he might wed her, the trai-
tress!. She made the servants believe the same. She.
even plotted ”” But suddenly the girl paused with
clasped hands. ~“ Oh! uncle, dear, it will wound you if
- {. mention, this; it will blacken my father’s memory ‘in
your eyes—and I always loved him—I love him still, in
spite of what he has done’ to ine, and] t ought to ‘spare
him.”
—“Go- on, Kathleen: T.command you to-tell me-every-
thi ing. I have a sacred right to ‘now, ” ‘commanded. the
gitated man by her side.-~
“Listen, then, dear uncle: ° Justa few months, before
omy. father went away. on that forcign tour, from which
-he never returned-alive, I received a message from an
old. woman calling me to her death-bed in the suburbs of
the city. I went, taking my maid with me, In a secret
interview that followed the dying woman told me she had
been housekeeper at the Carew mansion in my. mother’s
tirse. She could: not die easy without revealing fo me a>
secret she. had carried untold for sixteen years.”
- “That-secret?”’ questioned Benjamin Carew, wildly.
“f Was this,” replied the girl, solemnly: ff (On the day of
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