Despite the message, Mrs. Carew, who went at once to Kathleen's room in a rage at her impertinence, found the young girl still in her ball-dress and jewels, sitting dreamily in an easy-chair, having dismissed Susette to arrange her bath. She yawned sleepily at her step-mother's entrance. "I sent you word to wait till to-morrow," she said, petulantly. "I did not choose to wait, Miss Impertinence!" and as Kathleen opened wide her big black eyes in a sort of contemptuous amazement, Mrs. Carew continued, angrily: "Alpine has told me how silly you were over that actor; how you love him, and long to get acquainted with him. Do you not know that it is very bold and coarse for a young girl to even think of a man that way until he has given some sign of liking for her? But Alpine declares that this man has never even noticed you." "Alpine is a sneaking tell-tale, and you are a cruel woman!" Kathleen answered, indignantly. "And, madame, if I am ignorant, as you charge, of the proper feeling to observe toward men, who is to blame for that? Why did you not train me as carefully as you did your daughter Alpine? You took my poor dead mother's place before I was two years old. Why did you not do your duty by her orphan child?" "How dare you speak to me like this?" demanded the angry woman. "Be silent, and listen to my commands!" Her fingers itched to slap the cheek that dimpled with insolent amusement, but she clinched her hand and went on: "Your father left you in my care when he went abroad for his health, and you shall obey my commands while he is gone. If you dare defy me, I shall lock you in your room, on bread and water, till you beg my pardon." There was no answer. Kathleen looked her indignation, that was all. "I distinctly forbid," said Mrs. Carew, "any further nonsense over this actor. Good heavens! an _actor_! What would your haughty father say?" contemptuously. "I will not take you to the theater again while he plays here. You disgraced yourself to-night, making eyes at him on the stage, and there shall be no more of it. I shall not permit him to make your acquaintance, even if he seeks to do so, which is very doubtful, as"--scornfully--"the infatuation seems to be all on one side." Kathleen writhed with mortification, but she did not permit her foe to see how cruelly she was wounded. She held her queenly little head erect with that silent smile of maddening amusement on her scarlet lips. Years of wrong and injustice had made her scorn this woman who filled her dead mother's place so unworthily, and she made few efforts to conceal her feelings. "I forbid any acquaintance with this Ralph Chainey--this actor. Do you understand me, Kathleen?" repeated her step-mother. "I have heard you," answered the young girl, with a mutinous pout of her full lip. "You will obey me?" a little anxiously, for Kathleen had never been so aggressively rebellious as to-night.