{"product_id":"2940148339328","title":"Kathleen's Diamonds","description":"What is the matter? Oh, nothing—a girl\u003cbr\u003eIs found here in suicide rest.\u003cbr\u003eRomantic? Of course; here's a rich, dark curl\u003cbr\u003eOn the beautiful, blue-veined breast.\u003cbr\u003eAmelia V. Purdy.\u003cbr\u003eIncredible, you say?\u003cbr\u003eAlas, it was too true!\u003cbr\u003eShe was dead by her own hand, the beautiful child-wife of Vincent Carew, the millionaire—dead in her youth and beauty, leaving behind her all that life held for a worshipped wife and loving mother; for upstairs at this moment in the silken nursery her child, the baby Kathleen, barely six months old, lay sweetly sleeping, watched by an attentive French bonne, while in the darkened parlor below, the girlish mother, not yet eighteen, lay pale and beautiful in her coffin, with white flowers blooming on the pulseless breast, hiding the crimson stain where the slight jeweled dagger from her hair had sheathed itself in her tortured heart.\u003cbr\u003eShe was so young, so ignorant, or surely she would have held back her suicidal hand—she would have taken pity on her child, the dark-eyed little heiress she was[Pg 6] leaving motherless in the wide, wide world that, whatever else it may give us, can not make up for the loss of the best thing life has to offer—a mother's love!\u003cbr\u003eIt is always a terrible misfortune to a young girl to be motherless, and it was going to be the tragedy of Kathleen Carew's life that she had no mother. The dagger-thrust that let out the life-blood of unhappy Zaidee Carew turned the whole course of her daughter's life aside into different channels.\u003cbr\u003eBut that lay in the future. Now all Boston wondered over the tragic death of Vincent Carew's wife, and people asked each other in dismay:\u003cbr\u003e\"Why did she do it?\"\u003cbr\u003eNo one could answer that question.\u003cbr\u003eThe world thought that the young wife was perfectly happy.\u003cbr\u003eAnd why not? Surely she had good cause.\u003cbr\u003eVincent Carew, the rich bachelor, who was a power in politics, and aspired to be governor of his state, had married Zaidee Franklyn out of a poverty-stricken home, lifting her at a bound to rank and fortune, and all for love of her fair face.\u003cbr\u003eHe had snapped his white fingers in the face of the world that called his marriage a mésalliance, and carried everything by storm. For his sake, society—cultured Boston society—had received his wife, the lovely young Southern girl, with her shy ways and neglected education, and for a time all went well.\u003cbr\u003eSo no one could answer the question why did she kill herself, but that was because Vincent Carew was too proud to admit the ubiquitous reporter inside his aristocratic portals. If one of these curious mortals had secured admittance to the house and questioned the servants,[Pg 7] they would have told him what they suspected and discussed in whispers among themselves—that madame was madly jealous of the teacher her husband had employed to finish her very imperfect education.\u003cbr\u003e\"She is a snake in the grass, that pretty widow, and she makes my mistress unhappy,\" said the housekeeper, the first month that Mrs. Belmont came, and her opinion was adopted by all the other servants. They all hated the stately young widow in her black garments, and when the grewsome tragedy of Mrs. Carew's death darkened the sunlight in that luxurious home, they whispered to each other that it was Mrs. Belmont who had worked their mistress such bitter woe that she could not bear her life.\u003cbr\u003eIf indeed she had schemed for anything like this, Mrs. Belmont had succeeded in her designs. Zaidee Carew, with her own dimpled, white hand, had cut the Gordian knot of life, and in a few more days a stately funeral cortège moved away from Vincent Carew's doors to the cemetery where his dead wife, in all her youthful beauty, was laid to rest beneath the grass and flowers.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Lost Leaf Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47108698833136,"sku":"2940148339328","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148339328_p0.jpg?v=1763701111","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148339328","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}