Early next morning our tourists remounted the car and jogged slowly over that lovely stretch of country which lies between Glengariff and Killarney.

Their places were as on the day before—Sir Victor in the possession of Trix, Charley with Edith. But the baronet's gloom was gone—hope filled his heart. She did not love her cousin,—of that he had convinced himself,—and one day he might call her wife.

Sir Victor Catheron was that rara avis, a modest young man. That this American girl, penniless and pedigreeless, was beneath him, he never thought—of his own rank and wealth, as motives to influence her, he never once dreamed. Nothing base or mercenary could find a place in so fair a creature; so noble and beautiful a face must surely be emblematic of a still more noble and beautiful soul. Alas! for the blindness of people in love.

It was a day of delight, a day of cloudless skies, sparkling sunshine, fresh mountain breezes, sublime scenery. Wild, bleak valleys, frowning Kerry rocks, roaring torrents, bare-footed, ragged children, pigs and people beneath the same thatched roof, such squalor and utter poverty as in their dreams they had never imagined.

"Good Heaven!" Edith said, with a shudder, "how can life be worth living in such horrible poverty as this?"

"The bugbear of your life seems to be poverty, Edith," Charley answered. "I daresay these people eat and sleep, fall in love, marry, and are happy even here."

"My dear Mr. Stuart, what a sentimental speech, and sillier even than it is sentimental. Marry and are happy! They marry no doubt, and the pig lives in the corner, and every cabin swarms with children, but—happy! Charley, I used to think you had one or two grains of common-sense, at least—now I begin to doubt it."

"I begin to doubt it myself, since I have had the pleasure of knowing Edith Darrell. I defy mortal man to keep common-sense, or uncommon-sense, long in her company. Poverty and misery, in your lexicon, mean the same thing."

"The same thing. There is no earthly evil that can equal poverty."

They reached Killarney late in the evening, and drove to the "Victoria." The perfect weather still continued, the moon that had lit their last night at sea, on the wane now, lifted its silver light over the matchless Lakes of Killarney, lying like sheets of crystal light beneath.

"Oh, how lovely!" Trix exclaimed. The rest stood silent. There is a beauty so intense as to be beyond words of praise—so sweet, so solemn, as to hush the very beating of our hearts. It was such beauty as this they looked upon now.

They stood on the velvety sward—Sir Victor with Trixy on his arm, Charley and Edith side by side. A glowing mass of soft, scarlet drapery wrapped Miss Darrell, a coquettish hat, with a long, black ostrich plume, set off her Spanish face and eyes. They had dined—and when is moonlight half so poetical as after an excellent dinner?

"I see two or three boats," remarked Sir Victor. "I propose a row on the lakes."

"Of all things," seconded Beatrix, "a sail on the Lakes of Killarney!
Edith, do you realize it? Let us go at once, Sir Victor."

"Will you come with me, Edith?" Charley asked, "or would you rather go with them?"

She looked at him in surprise. How grave his face—how quiet his tone!
He had been like this all day, silent, preoccupied, grave.

"My very dear Charley, how polite we grow! how considerate of others' feelings! Quite a new phase of your interesting character. I'll go with you, certainly—Mr. Charles Stuart, in a state of lamblike meekness, is a study worth contemplating."

He smiled slightly, and drew her hand within his arm.

"Come, then," he said, "let us have this last evening together; who knows when we shall have another?"

Miss Darrell's brown eyes opened to their widest extent.

"'This last evening! Who knows when we shall have another!' Charley, if you're meditating flight or suicide, say so at once—anything is better than suspense. I once saw a picture of 'The Knight of the Woful Countenance'—the K. of the W. C. looked exactly as you look now! If you're thinking of strychnine, say so—no one shall oppose you. My only regret is, that I shall have to wear black, and hideous is a mild word to describe Edith Darrell in black."

"Hideous!" Charley repeated, "you! I wonder if you could possibly look ugly in anything? I wonder if you know how pretty you are to-night in that charming hat and that scarlet drapery?"

"Certainly I know, and charming I undoubtedly must look to wring a word of praise from you. It's the first time in all your life, sir, you ever paid me a compliment. Hitherto you have done nothing but find fault with my looks and everything else."

"There is a time for everything," he answers, a little sadly—sadly! and Charley Stuart! "The time for all that is past. Here is our boat. You will steer, Edith? Yes—then I'll row."

The baronet and Trix were already several yards off, out upon the shining water. Another party—a large boat containing half-a-dozen, Captain Hammond among them, was farther off still. In this boat sat a girl with a guitar; her sweet voice as she sang came romantically over the lake, and the mountain echoes, taking it up, sang the refrain enchantingly over and over again. Edith lifted up her face to the starry sky, the moonlight bathing it in a glory.

"Oh, what a night!" she sighed. "What a bright, beautiful world it is, and how perfectly happy one could be, if—"

"One had thirty thousand a year!" Charley suggested.

"Yes, exactly. Why can't life be all like this—moonlight, capital dinners, lots of friends and new dresses, a nice boat, and—yes—I will say it—somebody one likes very much for one's companion."

"Somebody one likes very much, Edith? I wonder sometimes if you like me at all—if it is in you to like any one but yourself."

"Thanks! I like myself, certainly, and first best I will admit. After that—"

"After that?" he repeats.

"I like you. No—keep quiet, Charley, please, you'll upset the boat. Of course I like you—aren't you my cousin—haven't you been awfully kind—don't I owe all this to you? Charley, I bless that night in the snow—it has been the luckiest in my life."

"And the unluckiest of mine."

"Sir!"

"O Edith, let us speak for once—let us understand one another, and then part forever, if we must. Only why need we part at all?"

She turns pale—she averts her face from him, and looks out over the radiant water. Sooner or later she has known this must come—it has come to-night.

"Why need we part at all?" He is leaning on his oars, and they are floating rightly with the stream. "I don't need to tell you how I love you; you know it well enough; and I think—I hope—you care for me. Be true to yourself, Edith—you belong to me—come to me; be my wife."

There is passion in his tone, in his eyes, but his voice is quiet, and he sits with the oars in his hands. Even in this supreme moment of his life Mr. Stuart is true to his "principles," and will make no scene.

"You know I love you," he repeats, "as the man in the Cork theatre said the other night: 'I'll go down on my knees if you like, but I can love you just as well standing up.' Edith, speak to me. How can you ever marry any one but me—but me, whose life you saved. My darling, forget your cynicism—it is but lip-deep—you don't really mean it—and say you will be my wife."

"Your wife!" She laughs, but her heart thrills as she says it. "Your wife! It would be pleasant, Charley; but, like most of the pleasant things of life, it can never be."

"Edith!"

"Charley, all this is nonsense, and you know it. We are cousins—we are good friends and stanch comrades, and always will be, I hope; but lovers—no, no, no!"

"And why?" he asks.

"Have I not told you already—told you over and over again? If you don't despise me, and think me heartless and base, the fault has not been my want of candor. My cynicisms I mean, every word. If you had your father's wealth, the fortune he means to leave you, I would marry you to-morrow, and be," her lips trembled a little, "the happiest girl on earth."

"You don't care for me at all, then?" he calmly asks.

"Care for you! O Charley! can't you see? I am not all selfish. I care for you so much that I would sooner die than marry you. For you a marriage with me means ruin—nothing else."

"My father is fond of me. I am his only son. He would relent."

"He never would," she answered firmly, "and you know it. Charley, the day he spoke to you in Cork, I was behind the window-curtains reading. I heard every word. My first impulse was to come out and confront him—to throw back his favors and patronage, and demand to be sent home. A horrid bad temper is numbered among the list of my failings. But I did not. I heard your calm reply—the 'soft answer that turneth away wrath,' and it fell like oil on my troubled spirit.

"'Don't lose your temper,' you said; 'Fred Darrell's daughter and I won't marry, if that's what you mean.'

"I admire your prudence and truth. I took the lesson home, and—stayed behind the curtains. And we will keep to that—you and Fred Darrell's daughter will never marry."

"But, Edith, you know what I meant. Good Heavens! you don't for a second suppose—"

"I don't for a second suppose anything but what is good and generous of you, Charley. I know you would face your father like a—like a 'griffin rampant,' to quote Trix, and brave all consequences, if I would let you. But I won't let you. You can't afford to defy your father. I can't afford to marry a poor man."

"I am young—I am strong—I can work. I have my hands and my head, a tolerable education, and many friends. We would not starve."

"We would not starve—perhaps," Edith says, and laughs again, rather drearily. "We would only grub along, wanting everything that makes life endurable, and be miserable beyond all telling before the first year ended. We don't want to hate each other—we don't want to marry. You couldn't work, Charley—you were never born for drudgery. And I—I can't forget the training of my life even for you."

"You can't, indeed—you do your training credit," he answered bitterly.

"And so," she goes on, her face drooping, "don't be angry; you'll thank me for this some day. Let it be all over and done with to-night, and never be spoken of more. Oh, Charley, my brother, don't you see we could not be happy together—don't you see it is better we should part?"

"It shall be exactly as you wish. I am but a poor special pleader, and your worldly wisdom is so clear, the dullest intellect might comprehend it. You, throw me over without a pang, and you mean to marry the baronet. Only—as you are not yet his exclusive property, bought with a price—answer me this: You love me?"

Her head drooped lower, her eyes were full of passionate tears, her heart full of passionate pain. Throw him over without a pang! In her heart of hearts Edith Darrell knew what it cost her to be heartless to-night.

"Answer me!" he said imperiously, his eyes kindling. "Answer me! That much, at least, I claim as my right. Do you love me or do you not?"

And the answer comes very humbly and low.

"Charley! what need to ask? You know only too well—I do."

And then silence falls. He takes up the oars again—their soft dip, and the singing of the girl in the distant boat, the only sounds. White moonlight and black shadows, islands overrun with arbutus, that "myrtle of Killarney," and frowning mountains on every hand. The words of the girl's gay song come over the water:

"The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing,
The light that lies
In woman's eyes
Has been my heart's undoing.

"Though wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorned the lore she brought me;
My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly's all they've taught me."

"And folly's all they've taught me!" Charley says at length. "Come what may, it is better that I should have spoken and you should have answered. Come what may—though you marry Sir Victor to-morrow—I would not have the past changed if I could."

"And you will not blame me too much—you will not quite despise me?" she pleads, her voice broken, her face hidden in her hands. "I can't help it, Charley. I would rather die than be poor."

He knows she is crying; her tears move him strangely. They are in the shadow of Torc Mountain. He stops rowing for a moment, takes her hand, and lifts it to his lips.

"I will love you all my life," is his answer.

* * * * *

This is how two of the water-party were enjoying themselves. A quarter of a mile farther off, another interesting little scene was going on in another boat.

Trixy had been rattling on volubly. It was one of Trixy's fixed ideas that to entertain and fascinate anybody her tongue must go like a windmill. Sir Victor sat and listened rather absently, replied rather dreamily, and as if his mind were a hundred miles away. Miss Stuart took no notice, but kept on all the harder, endeavoring to be fascinating. But there is a limit even to the power of a woman's tongue. That limit was reached; there came a lull and a pause.

"The time I've lost in wooing," began the English girl in the third boat. The idea was suggestive; Trixy drew a deep breath, and made a fresh spurt—this time on the subject of the late Thomas Moore and his melodies. But the young baronet suddenly interposed.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Stuart," he began hastily, and in a somewhat nervous voice; "but there is a subject very near to my heart on which I should like to speak to you this evening."

Trix sat straight up in the stern of the boat, as if she had been galvanized. Her heart gave one great ecstatic thump. "Oh," thought Miss Stuart, "he's going to pop!" I grieve to relate it, but that was the identical way the young lady thought it. "He's going to pop, as sure as I live!"

There was a pause—unspeakably painful to Miss Stuart. "Yes, Sir
Victor," she faltered in her most dulcet and encouraging accents.

"I had made up my mind not to speak of it at all," went on Sir Victor, looking embarrassed and rather at a loss for words, "until we reached England. I don't wish to be premature. I—I dread a refusal so unspeakably, that I almost fear to speak at all."

What was Miss Stuart to say to this? What could any well-trained young lady say?

"Good gracious me!" (this is what she thought,) "why don't he speak out, and not go beating about the bush in this ridiculous manner! What's he afraid of? Refusal, indeed! Stuff and nonsense!"

"It is only of late," pursued Sir Victor Catheron, "that I have quite realized my own feelings, and then when I saw the attention paid by another, and received with evident pleasure, it was my jealousy first taught me that I loved."

"He means Captain Hammond," thought Trixy; "he's jealous of him, as sure as a gun. How lucky we met him at Macroom."

"And yet," again resumed the baronet, with a faint smile, "I don't quite despair. I am sure, Miss Stuart, I have no real cause."

"No-o-o, I think not," faltered Miss Stuart.

"And when I address myself to your father and mother—as I shall very soon—you think, Miss Stuart, they will also favor my suit?"

"They favor his suit?" thought Trix, "good Heaven above! was ever earthly modesty like this young man's?" But aloud, still in the trembling tones befitting the occasion, "I—think so—I know so, Sir Victor. It will be only too much honor, I'm sure."

"And—oh, Miss Stuart—Beatrix—if you will allow me to call you so—you think that when I speak—when I ask—I will be accepted?"

"He's a fool!" thought Beatrix, with an inward burst. "A bashful, ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is all very well—nobody likes a little of it better than I do; but there is no use running it into the ground."

"You are silent," pursued Sir Victor. "Miss Stuart, it is not possible that I am too late, that there is a previous engagement?"

Miss Stuart straightened herself up, lifted her head, and smiled. She smiled in a way that would have driven a lover straight out of his senses.

"Call me Beatrix, Sir Victor; I like it best from my friends—from—from you. No, there is no previous engagement, and" (archly, this) "I am quite sure Sir Victor Catheron need never fear a refusal."

"Thanks." And precisely as another young gentleman was doing in the shadow of the "Torc," Sir Victor did in the shadow of the "Eagle's Nest." He lifted his fair companion's hand to his lips, and kissed it.

After that of course there was silence. Trixy's heart was full of joy—pure, unadulterated joy, to bursting. Oh, to be out of this, and able to tell pa and ma, and Charley, and Edith, and everybody! Lady Catheron! "Beatrix—Lady Catheron!" No—I can't describe Trixy's feelings. There are some joys too intense and too sacred for the Queen's English. She shut her eyes and drifted along in that blessed little boat in a speechless, ecstatic trance.

An hour later, and, as the clocks of Killarney were striking ten, Sir Victor Catheron helped Miss Stuart out of the boat, and had led her up—still silently—to the hotel. At the entrance he paused, and said the only disagreeable thing he had uttered to-night. "One last favor, Beatrix," taking her hand and gazing at her tenderly, "I must ask. Let what has passed between us remain between us for a few days longer. I had rather you did not speak of it even to your parents. My aunt, who has been more than a mother to me, is ignorant still of my feelings—it is her right that I inform her first. Only a few days more, and then all the world may know."

"Very well, Sir Victor," Beatrix answered demurely; "as you please, of course. I shan't speak to pa or ma. Goodnight, Sir Victor, good night!"

May I tell it, Miss Stuart actually gave the baronet's hand a little squeeze? But were they not engaged lovers, or as good? and isn't it permitted engaged lovers to squeeze each other's right hands? So they parted. Sir Victor strolled away to smoke a cigar in the moonlight, and Miss Stuart, with a beatified face, swept upstairs, her high-heeled New York gaiters click-clicking over the ground. Lady Catheron, Lady Catheron! Oh, what would all Fifth Avenue say to this?

Sleep was out of the question—it was open to debate whether she would ever sleep again. She would go and see Edith. Yes, Edith and Charley had got home before her—she would go and see Edith.

She opened the door and went in with a swish of silk and patchouli. The candles were unlit. Miss Darrell, still wearing her hat and scarlet wrap, sat at the window contemplating the heavenly bodies.

"All in the dark, Dithy, and thinking by the 'sweet silver light of the moon?' O Edie! isn't it just the heavenliest night?"

"Is that what you came in to say, Miss Stuart?"

"Don't be impatient, there's a dear! I wanted to tell you how happy I am, and what a delicious—de-li-ci-ous," said Trix, dragging out the sweet syllables, "sail I've had. O Edie! how I've enjoyed myself! Did you?"

"Immensely!" Edith answered, with brief bitterness, and something in her tone made Trixy look at her more closely.

"Why, Edith, I do believe you've been crying!"

"Crying! Bosh! I never cry. I'm stupid—I'm sleepy—my head aches.
Excuse me, Trix, but I'm going to bed."

"Wait just one moment. O Edith," with a great burst, "I can't keep it! I'll die if I don't tell somebody. O Edith, Edith! wish me joy, Sir Victor has proposed!"

"Trix!"

She could just say that one word—then she sat dumb.

"O yes, Edith—out in the boat to-night. O Edith! I'm so happy—I want to jump—I want to dance—I feel wild with delight! Just think of it—think of it! Trixy Stuart will be My Lady Catheron!"

She turned of a dead white from brow to chin. She sat speechless with the shock—looking at Trixy—unable to speak or move.

"He's most awfully and aggravatingly modest," pursued Beatrix. "Couldn't say plump, like a man and brother, 'Trixy Stuart, will you marry me?' but beat about the bush, and talked of being refused, and fearing a rival, and speaking to ma and pa and Lady Helena when we got to England. But perhaps that's the way the British aristocracy make love. He asked me if there was any previous engagement, and any fear of a refusal, and that rubbish. I don't see," exclaimed Trixy, growing suddenly aggrieved, "why he couldn't speak out like a hero, and be done with it? He's had encouragement enough, goodness knows!"

Something ludicrous in the last words struck Edith—she burst out laughing. But somehow the laugh sounded unnatural, and her lips felt stiff and strange.

"You're as hoarse as a raven and as pale as a ghost," said Trix. "That's what comes of sitting in draughts, and looking at the moonshine. I'm awfully happy, Edith; and when I'm Lady Catheron, you shall come and live with me always—always, you dear old darling, just like a sister. And some day you'll be my sister in reality, and Charley's wife."

She flung her arms around Edith's neck, and gave her a rapturous hug.
Edith Darrell unclasped her arms and pushed her away.

"I'm tired, Trix; I'm cold." She shivered from head to foot. "I want to go to bed."

"But won't you say something, Dithy? Won't you wish me joy?"

"I—wish—you joy."

Her lips kept that strange feeling of stiffness—her face had lost every trace of color. Oh, to be alone and free from Trix!

"You say it as if you didn't mean it," said Trix indignantly, getting up and moving to the door. "You look half-frozen, and as white as a sheet. I should advise you to shut the window and go to bed."

She was gone. Edith drew a long breath—a long, tired, heavy sigh. So! that was over—and it was Trix, after all.

Trix, after all! How strangely it sounded—it stunned her. Trix, after all and she had made sure it was to be herself. He had looked at her, he had spoken to her, as he had never looked or spoken to Trix. His color had risen like a girl's at her coming—she had felt his heart bound as she leaned on his arm. And it was Trix, after all!

She laid her arm upon the window-sill, and her face down upon it, feeling sick—sick—that I should have to write it!—with anger and envy. She was Edith Darrell, the poor relation, still—and Trix was to be Lady Catheron.

"A pretty heroine!" cries some, "gentle reader," looking angrily up; "a nasty, envious, selfish creature. Not the sort, of a heroine we're used to." Ah! I know that—none better; but then pure and perfect beings, who are ready to resign their lovers and husbands to make other women happy, are to be found in—books, and nowhere else. And thinking it over and putting yourself in her place—honestly, now!—wouldn't you have been envious yourself?