‘Say it out frankly, Kate,’ cried Nina, as with flashing eyes and heightened colour she paced the drawing-room from end to end, with that bold sweeping stride which in moments of passion betrayed her. ‘Say it out. I know perfectly what you are hinting at.’

‘I never hint,’ said the other gravely; ‘least of all with those I love.’

‘So much the better. I detest an equivoque. If I am to be shot, let me look the fire in the face.’

‘There is no question of shooting at all. I think you are very angry for nothing.’

‘Angry for nothing! Do you call that studied coldness you have observed towards me all day yesterday nothing? Is your ceremonious manner—exquisitely polite, I will not deny—is that nothing? Is your chilling salute when we met—I half believe you curtsied—nothing? That you shun me, that you take pains not to keep my company, never to be with me alone is past denial.’

‘And I do not deny it,’ said Kate, with a voice of calm and quiet meaning.

‘At last, then, I have the avowal. You own that you love me no longer.’

‘No, I own nothing of the kind: I love you very dearly; but I see that our ideas of life are so totally unlike, that unless one should bend and conform to the other, we cannot blend our thoughts in that harmony which perfect confidence requires. You are so much above me in many things, so much more cultivated and gifted—I was going to say civilised, and I believe I might—’

‘Ta—ta—ta,’ cried Nina impatiently. ‘These flatteries are very ill-timed.’

‘So they would be, if they were flatteries; but if you had patience to hear me out, you’d have learned that I meant a higher flattery for myself.’

‘Don’t I know it? don’t I guess?’ cried the Greek. ‘Have not your downcast eyes told it? and that look of sweet humility that says, “At least I am not a flirt?”’

‘Nor am I,’ said Kate coldly.

‘And I am! Come now, do confess. You want to say it.’

‘With all my heart I wish you were not!’ And Kate’s eyes swam as she spoke.

‘And what if I tell you that I know it—that in the very employment of the arts of what you call coquetry, I am but exercising those powers of pleasing by which men are led to frequent the salon instead of the cafÉ, and like the society of the cultivated and refined better than—’

‘No, no, no!’ burst in Kate. ‘There is no such mock principle in the case. You are a flirt because you like the homage it secures you, and because, as you do not believe in such a thing as an honest affection, you have no scruple about trifling with a man’s heart.’

‘So much for captivating that bold hussar,’ cried Nina.

‘For the moment I was not thinking of him.’

‘Of whom, then?’

‘Of that poor Captain Curtis, who has just ridden away.’

‘Oh, indeed!’

‘Yes. He has a pretty wife and three nice little girls, and they are the happiest people in the world. They love each other, and love their home—so, at least, I am told, for I scarcely know them myself.’

‘And what have I done with him?’

‘Sent him away sad and doubtful—very doubtful if the happiness he believed in was the real article after all, and disposed to ask himself how it was that his heart was beating in a new fashion, and that some new sense had been added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife’s bright look will be meaningless.’

‘And I have done all this? Poor me!’

‘Yes, and done it so often, that it leaves no remorse behind it.’

‘And the same, I suppose, with the others?’

‘With Mr. Walpole, and Dick, and Mr. O’Shea, and Mr. Atlee too, when he was here, in their several ways.’

‘Oh, in theirs, not in mine, then?’

‘I am but a bungler in my explanation. I wished to say that you adapted your fascinations to the tastes of each.’

‘What a siren!’

‘Well, yes—what a siren; for they’re all in love in some fashion or other; but I could have forgiven you these, had you spared the married man.’

‘So you actually envy that poor prisoner the gleam of light and the breath of cold air that comes between his prison bars—that one moment of ecstasy that reminds him how he once was free and at large, and no manacles to weigh him down? You will not let him even touch bliss in imagination? Are you not more cruel than me?’

‘This is mere nonsense,’ said Kate boldly. ‘You either believe that man was fooling you, or that you have sent him away unhappy? Take which of these you like.’

‘Can’t your rustic nature see that there is a third case, quite different from both, and that Harry Curtis went off believing—’

‘Was he Harry Curtis?’ broke in Kate.

‘He was dear Harry when I said good-bye,’ said Nina calmly.

‘Oh, then, I give up everything—I throw up my brief.’

‘So you ought, for you have lost your cause long ago.’

‘Even that poor Donogan was not spared, and Heaven knows he had troubles enough on his head to have pleaded some pity for him.’

‘And is there no kind word to say of me, Kate?’

‘O Nina, how ashamed you make me of my violence, when I dare to blame you! but if I did not love you so dearly, I could better bear you should have a fault.’

‘I have only one, then?’

‘I know of no great one but this. I mean, I know of none that endangers good-nature and right feeling.’

‘And are you so sure that this does? Are you so sure that what you are faulting is not the manner and the way of a world you have not seen? that all these levities, as you would call them, are not the ordinary wear of people whose lives are passed where there is more tolerance and less pain?’

‘Be serious, Nina, for a moment, and own that it was by intention you were in the approach when Captain Curtis rode away: that you said something to him, or looked something—perhaps both—on which he got down from his horse and walked beside you for full a mile?’

‘All true,’ said Nina calmly. ‘I confess to every part of it.’

‘I’d far rather that you said you were sorry for it.’

‘But I am not; I’m very glad—I’m very proud of it.

Yes, look as reproachfully as you like, Kate! “very proud” was what I said.’

‘Then I am indeed sorry,’ said Kate, growing pale as she spoke.

‘I don’t think, after all this sharp lecturing of me, that you deserve much of my confidence, and if I make you any, Kate, it is not by way of exculpation; for I do not accept your blame; it is simply out of caprice—mind that, and that I am not thinking of defending myself.’

‘I can easily believe that,’ said Kate dryly.

And the other continued: ‘When Captain Curtis was talking to your father, and discussing the chances of capturing Donogan, he twice or thrice mentioned Harper and Fry—names which somehow seemed familiar to me; and on thinking the matter over when I went to my room, I opened Donogan’s pocket-book and there found how these names had become known to me. Harper and Fry were tanners, in Cork Street, and theirs was one of the addresses by which, if I had occasion to warn Donogan, I could write to him. On hearing these names from Curtis, it struck me that there might be treachery somewhere. Was it that these men themselves had turned traitors to the cause? or had another betrayed them? Whichever way the matter went, Donogan was evidently in great danger; for this was one of the places he regarded as perfectly safe.

‘What was to be done? I dared not ask advice on any side. To reveal the suspicions which were tormenting me required that I should produce this pocket-book, and to whom could I impart this man’s secret? I thought of your brother Dick, but he was from home, and even if he had not been, I doubt if I should have told him. I should have come to you, Kate, but that grand rebukeful tone you had taken up this last twenty-four hours repelled me; and finally, I took counsel with myself. I set off just before Captain Curtis started, to what you have called waylay him in the avenue.

‘Just below the beech-copse he came up; and then that small flirtation of the drawing-room, which has caused you so much anger and me such a sharp lesson, stood me in good stead, and enabled me to arrest his progress by some chance word or two, and at last so far to interest him that he got down and walked along at my side. I shall not shock you by recalling the little tender “nothings” that passed between us, nor dwell on the small mockeries of sentiment which we exchanged—I hope very harmlessly—but proceed at once to what I felt my object. He was profuse of his gratitude for what I had done for him with Walpole, and firmly believed that my intercession alone had saved him; and so I went on to say that the best reparation he could make for his blunder would be some exercise of well-directed activity when occasion should offer. “Suppose, for instance,” said I, “you could capture this man Donogan?”

‘“The very thing I hope to do,” cried he. “The train is laid already. One of my constables has a brother in a well-known house in Dublin, the members of which, men of large wealth and good position, have long been suspected of holding intercourse with the rebels. Through his brother, himself a Fenian, this man has heard that a secret committee will meet at this place on Monday evening next, at which Donogan will be present. Molloy, another head-centre, will also be there, and Cummings, who escaped from Carrickfergus.” I took down all the names, Kate, the moment we parted, and while they were fresh in my memory. “We’ll draw the net on them all,” said he; “and such a haul has not been made since ‘98. The rewards alone will amount to some thousands.” It was then I said, “And is there no danger, Harry? “’

‘O Nina!’

‘Yes, darling, it was very dreadful, and I felt it so; but somehow one is carried away by a burst of feeling at certain moments, and the shame only comes too late. Of course it was wrong of me to call him Harry, and he, too, with a wife at home, and five little girls—or three, I forget which—should never have sworn that he loved me, nor said all that mad nonsense about what he felt in that region where chief constables have their hearts; but I own to great tenderness and a very touching sensibility on either side. Indeed, I may add here, that the really sensitive natures amongst men are never found under forty-five; but for genuine, uncalculating affection, for the sort of devotion that flings consequences to the winds, I say, give me fifty-eight or sixty.’

‘Nina, do not make me hate you,’ said Kate gravely.

‘Certainly not, dearest, if a little hypocrisy will avert such a misfortune. And so to return to my narrative, I learned, as accurately as a gentleman so much in love could condescend to inform me, of all the steps taken to secure Donogan at this meeting, or to capture him later on if he should try to make his escape by sea.’

‘You mean, then, to write to Donogan and apprise him of his danger?’

‘It is done. I wrote the moment I got back here. I addressed him as Mr. James Bredin, care of Jonas Mullory, Esq., 41 New Street, which was the first address in the list he gave me. I told him of the peril he ran, and what his friends were also threatened by, and I recounted the absurd seizure of Mr. Walpole’s effects here; and, last of all, what a dangerous rival he had in this Captain Curtis, who was ready to desert wife, children, and the constabulary to-morrow for me; and assuring him confidentially that I was well worth greater sacrifices of better men, I signed my initials in Greek letters.’

‘Marvellous caution and great discretion,’ said Kate solemnly.

‘And now come over to the drawing-room, where I have promised to sing for Mr. O’Shea some little ballad that he dreamed over all the night through; and then there’s something else—what is it? what is it?’

‘How should I know, Nina? I was not present at your arrangement.’

‘Never mind; I’ll remember it presently. It will come to my recollection while I’m singing that song.’

‘If emotion is not too much for you.’

‘Just so, Kate—sensibilities permitting; and, indeed,’ she said,’ I remember it already. It was luncheon.’