"That woman was not Mrs. Franklyn. I did not believe at first that it could be poor Zaidee's mother. She could not have changed so much in seventeen years, I knew; yet I could not speak out then, lest I betray myself. I thought I would wait for the developments of to-morrow. Alas! it was a fatal resolve. We were decoyed here by the trick of some deadly enemy, and every moment that I remain locked up here Kathleen is in the most deadly peril. God in Heaven help me to escape, that I may succor my poor child!" Desperate with fears for Kathleen, he threw himself against the door and shook it with all his might. The sounds rang through the house, but no one came to release him. He shrieked aloud, but no voice replied to his frantic calls. In his misery an awful suspicion had come to him. He remembered Kathleen's threat to Ivan Belmont, that she would send him to prison unless she received the value of her stolen diamonds. What if that villain had laid a deadly trap to decoy Kathleen to this place and murder her to save himself the payment of that pitiful sum! This affair looked like it. Perhaps she was already murdered--his beautiful Kathleen, that he loved so dearly, and whom he had brought here in his mistaken eagerness to get her away from Boston. Searching frantically about, he perceived with joy an old rusty poker beneath the iron fender of the fire-place. He seized it, and with the strength of a madman wrenched the lock from the door. It flew open. He was free. Then ensued the most piteous search the world ever knew--the old man's frantic search for missing Kathleen. It was all in vain. The old house was empty, the girl was gone, the old woman was gone, and the night-wind, as it sighed around the gables of the lonely old house, did not whisper to him of the awful secret the river hid. CHAPTER XLVIII. "KATHLEEN HAS MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED." 'Tis strange to think if we could fling aside The mask and mantle that love wears from pride, How much would be we now so little guess, Deep in each heart's undreamed, unsought recess. L. E. L. Ralph Chainey waited in cruel suspense for an answer to the appealing letter he had sent to Kathleen. But long days passed and no letter came from his heart's love. Then he saw the announcement in a morning paper that she had gone away with her uncle to visit her Southern relatives. "Cruel girl! she has gone without a word or sign. She hates me indeed, and will never forgive my boyhood's folly," he groaned, despairingly. The first shock of pain and disappointment was so great that he could scarcely bear it. He thought vaguely of suicide, wondered which would be the easier way out of life--the dagger, the bullet, poison, or the river. Shakespeare's words came to him: