"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? CHAPTER XXI. WAS RALPH CHAINEY A VILLAIN? Roses have thorns, and love is thorny, too; And this is love's sharp thorn that guards its flower, That our beloved has the cruel power To hurt us deeper than all others do. SARAH C. WOOLSEY. 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!