"Oh, thank you, Mr. Chainey, and I will write you if I have the least bit of news!" exclaimed Alpine, with sparkling eyes, for she began to see a prospect of getting up a correspondence with the great actor. She would write to him often, asking if _he_ had any news, and he would be obliged, in common courtesy, to reply. He rose to go, and Alpine poured out eloquently her sympathy for him and her sorrow for Kathleen. "We both love her; it is a link between us," she said. "Try to think of me as a sister, and remember I shall often be thinking of you in your sorrow." He thanked her gratefully and hurried away, after promising to call again the first time he came to Boston. Alpine told her mother on her return of the young man's visit, and his startling disclosure, but Mrs. Carew pooh-poohed the whole story. "Kathleen is certainly dead," she said. "Ralph Chainey has been imposed on by a pretty lunatic, that's all. I thought he had more sense." CHAPTER XXVIII. TEDDY DARRELL'S PLANS. "You are all that I have to live for, All that I want to love, All that the whole world holds for me." Teddy Darrell kept his promise to Kathleen. He took her immediately to the home of his cousin, a widow lady of about thirty-eight years--a woman of good circumstances and social standing, but whose divided devotion to two pretty children and literary pursuits caused her to live a very retired life. Mrs. Stone must have been very fond of her cousin Teddy, for she accepted his story of the finding of Kathleen in good faith, and made the young girl welcome to her luxurious home. She saw that the hapless girl was nearly fainting with fatigue, and leaving Teddy alone in the pretty library, carried her off to bed, after first coaxing her to take some tea and toast. "Bless you, my dear, your name has been a familiar one in this household for more than a year. Teddy was so madly in love with you once that he could talk of nothing else but Kathleen Carew whenever he came. Even the children knew all about it!" Kathleen blushed at receiving so much kindness from Teddy's cousin, after having rejected _him_, so to clear herself she said: "But he got over it directly. Helen Fox told me he proposed to her the week afterward." Mrs. Stone, who was warming a dainty lace-ruffled night-gown before the fire for her guest, threw her head back and laughed heartily. "Teddy Darrell is the worst flirt in Boston! Actually, Miss Carew, I've known that boy to be engaged to three girls at the same time!" she exclaimed, merrily. "I suppose he can never be really in earnest," said the young girl. Then Mrs. Stone replied, more seriously: "I have never known him to be in earnest but once, and I have been his confidante, I believe, in all of his love affairs. He has had many fancies, but he never really loved any one but _you_, my dear girl." Kathleen did not know what to say to this, and the lady rattled on: