Oh, my heart, my heart is sick, a-wishing and awaiting: * * * * * I looked out for his coming as a prisoner through the grating Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day. JEAN INGELOW. "A week, and yet he has never been near me! Not a word, not a sign! What does he mean? Why has he left me to my cruel fate?" The beautiful prisoner raged up and down the narrow limits of her prison cell like a caged lioness, so desperate was her mood, so fierce her unrest. "Such cruel and heartless neglect from him who incited me to that dark deed is unbearable! He does not yet know Fedora if he believes she will tamely bear it!" And she clinched her white hands ominously, her eyes glittering with anger, as she thought of the man for whom she had risked so much, yet who seemed to have left her to her fate without an effort to save her. "Where is he? What has become of him? Will he leave me to die like a rat in a hole? And I thought he loved me--fool that I was! Did I not already know men too well to trust him? Oh, fool that I was! And yet, dare he desert me, the partner in his terrible secret? Perhaps the coward has fled, fearing that I may betray him!" So she raved on, every moment increasing her impotent fury. "No answer to my letters, no notice taken of my passionate appeals! Why, he might have effected my escape ere this if he had tried, and I _must_ escape! It is true I can not be hung, since that foolish girl saved Ralph's life when he was on the brink of death; but if I am sentenced I shall be sent to prison for long, long years! I can not bear the thought! Oh, God, I'm stifling--dying!" She threw herself on her hard couch, sobbing in hysterical _abandon_. A grating sound at the door; the key turned in the lock; the portal opened, closed again. Inside stood a beautiful young girl gazing with sad, accusing eyes at the wretched, sobbing woman. Fedora looked up with a cry of wonder mingled with rage: "Kathleen Carew!" "Yes, Kathleen!" answered the other. She advanced, and they gazed in momentary silence into each other's eyes--the girl Ralph Chainey loved, and the woman that was his wife. "Why are you here?" muttered Fedora, hoarsely, as she started to her feet. "For justice," answered Kathleen, sternly. "Justice?" "Yes, justice to the man you tried to murder--the man I saved from death!" "Saved, yes--curse you forever for that deed!" snarled the prisoner, viciously. Kathleen recoiled a little at her terrible aspect, and said, in wonder: "Why did you do it? Why did you want him dead?" "I hated him! I hate you!" "I know, but you would soon have been free of him by the law. Why did you want to kill him? It was horrible. Life is so sweet when one is young; and Ralph is young--only twenty-five," said the young girl, almost piteously.