Lady Evelyn

Front matter

KEET & SniTH, PUBLISHERS. NEW YORK

-IBRARY)

10 Gents

CHAPTER I. IvORD RODEJRICK

The September sun was setting stormily down there on the Wicklow coast. Far off, the purple mountains were fast losing themselves in the double darkness of coming night and storm. Nearer, over moor and meadow, the low-lying sky brooded darkly, and the rising wind sighed fitfully, sweeping up from the Irish Sea. Westward, lurid bars of blood-red showed where the fiery sun had gone down, and the black cloud-rack came rapidly trooping up, like a fleet of misshapen piratical craft, over the blue of the evening sky. Black and angry heaved the sea, under that ominous canopy, and the white-capped surf crashed already on the shingly shore with the dull roar of a beast of prey.

A lonely scene and hour. Away to the east, the fishing village of Clontarf nestled under the rocks ; to the left, its tall Tudor turrets and peaked gables, rising above the trees of the park, Clontarf Castle reared its hoary head — one of the stateliest and oldest houses in Britain. Curlews and sea-fowl screamed and whirled away in dizzy circles over the black waters ; high and dry were drawn up the fisherman’s fleet, and the only moving things on darkening earth and storm-tossed sea were a girl and a yacht.

The girl — ^to begin with the lady — stood on a lofty bowlder, gazing seaward, making a picture of herself, outlined against the blackening gloaming — a brightly pretty girl, very fair, very youthful, with a thoroughly Irish face — eyes as blue as her Wicklow skies, and as sunlit; cheeks like radiant June roses; hair, thick, rich, abundant, of the truest golden-brown ; a low brow, and a mouth like a veritable rosebud. A face for an artist, a study for a pre-Raphaelite, standing there, in vivid relief against black sky and dark sea, the brown hair and picturesque red cloak streaming in the rising wind.

The yacht lay a mile away, rising and falling in the long ground-swell — the trimmest little craft imaginable — • a picture in its .wa}^ as well as the girl — all white and green — an emerald banner with the Sunburst of old Ireland (when the fairest isle of all islands had a flag) flapping frcm the mast-head. In golden letters on the stern, was the name, “Nora Creina.’’

The girl looked impatiently at the darkening sky, at the heaving vessel, then glanced behind her with a little, petulant frown.

“How long he is !” she said, tearing up the tall sea-moss by the roots, in girlish impatience. “They expected Mr. Gerald this evening, but I don’t see why that should keep him. Ah !”

She stopped suddenly, her pretty, sunburned face brightening; for a boat was lowered from the “Nora Creina,” and two men rowed rapidly shoreward.

“He will come, then, after all !” she cried in a joyful, breathless sort of way, a rosy flush of intense delight glowing through the golden tan of her fair skin.

That tell-tale little pronoun ! The old, old story, you see, to begin with. The pretty peasant-girl waited there, in the twilight, for the rising of her day-god — the coming of her lover !

A step came rapidly down the rocky path — a step light and fleet — and a rich, melodious voice rang down the stillness, singing a ringing hunting song.

The girl started nervously, reddening to the roots of her fair brown hair ; but she turned half away, and drew closer to the tail shelter of the rock. She waited for her darling, but she was too thoroughly a woman to let his mightiness know that.

“A southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim it a

Lord Roderick.

hunting morning \” chanted the full, rich voice ; and then the singer came into view, with the light leap of a stag over the bowlders, and stood balancing himself in mid-air, on the topmost peak of a lofty crag, twenty feet over the water.

He was a tall young man — nay, youth — of scarce one-and-twenty, a “six-foot son of Anak,” lithe and long of limb, straight as an arrow, broad-shouldered, deepchested, golden-haired, and azure-eyed. A magnificent young giant — the wildest dare-devil in the three kingdoms, ^with the face of an Archangel Raphael — a mad-headed, hot-brained, reckl-ess young ne’er-do-well, who yet looked at you with eyes as blue, and smiling, and innocent as the eyes of a month-old babe. He was dressed in the colors of his first and only love — the idol of his heart — his graceful “Nora Creina,” there afloat on the v/aters — white trousers, green jacket, green cap with a gold band set jauntily on his handsome golden head. He stood poised on the dizzy peak, looking seaward, with brilliant, cloudless blue eyes.

“There you are, my beauty, my darling!” he cried, apostrophizing the trim little bark. “And if I don’t give you a spanking run in the teeth -of this gale before morning, I’m not my father’s son. We’ll make King’s Head in four hours, with this stiff breeze. A glorious race before midnight, my darling ‘Nora’ !”

“ ‘Oh, my Nora Creina, dear.

My charming, bashful Nora Creina!

Beauty lies in many eyes.

But love in yours, my Nora Creina.’ ”

He sang gayly, his voice floating out on the breeze to the boat, dancing like the cockle-shell it was over the breakers, and answered by the men on board with a hearty Irish cheer.

“Lord Rory!”

He had turned to leap down, agile as a cat, never seeing the red cloak and the pretty face so near him, when the girl, starting up, called and as he turned with a bewildered “Halloo !” called again :

“Lord Roderick !”

“ ’Fore George, it’s Kathleen !” He was beside her with a bound. “Standing here, like a Wicklow fairy,

Lord Roderick.

a banshee, or a goddess of the storm, or anything else you like. Come to see me off, Kathleen ? How polite of you !”

Kathleen tossed her pretty head saucily. She had come to see him off, and colored guiltily as he guessed it.

‘‘You always were conceited. Lord Rory, and always will be. As if one could not come down to watch the storm rise without coming on your account

“Watch the storm arise? By Jove! how romantic the dear little girhs getting! Has quite a Byronic sound, that, ’pon my word, and comes of improving her mind, under my tuition, as she’s been doing lately.”

He looked a dangerous preceptor for youth, this fair-haired King Olaf, with his laughing eyes and splendid face; and the red light flashed gloriously up in the pretty, sunburned cheeks under his merry gaze.

“So you’re going to Kihg’s Head to-night, my lord,” ^ Kathleen said, making a petulant little mouth. “Well, I dare say, you'll be safe in spite of the storm. ‘Any one born to be ’ You know the proverb.”

“ ‘Hanged, will never be drowned.’ Very likely. Miss O’Neal, I won’t be the first Desmond who has been hanged for his country’s benefit, either, by long odds. We always do come to grief, as a rule, and I don’t think half a dozen of us ever died decently in our beds. We’ve been pinked in the ‘Phaynix,’ we’ve had our heads set up to ornament Tower Hill, we’ve been roasted alive in our own strongholds, we’ve been court-martialed and shot at day-dawn, we’ve had our heads chopped off like spring chickens, and we’ve been hung, drawn, and quartered by the dozen for high treason. I never heard of but one Desmond who was drowned, and he was a pirate, cursed with ‘bell, book, and candle,’ so could expect no better. Yes, Miss Kathleen O’Neal, I’m off for King’s Head in my bonny ‘Nora Creina,’ and I’ll take you with me, if you choose, with all the pleasure in life.”

“Thank you, Lord Rory ! I’m not tired of my life yet. When I feel like suicide, I’ll let you know. There’s the boat. Good-evening to you. I’m going home.”

“ ‘My boat is on the shore, and my bark is on the sea.’ And so you won’t come? Well, then, I would recommend you to go home, for standing here in the wind is neither pleasant nor profitable, that I can see. Good-

Lord Roderick.

night, Kathleen. If quite convenient, . dream of me. Oh ! I say, how’s the Englishman ?”

The girl turned upon him suddenly, her face reddening, her eyes flashing passionately in the half-light.

“Lord Rory!’ she cried.

He laughed, bounding like a chamois down the steep crags.

“Then you won^t smile on your lover? Poor fellow! how I pity him ! My own heart has been broken so often, you see, Kathleen, that I can afford to sympathize with fellow-martyrs. Any messages for King’s Head? No? Then, for the second time, good-night.”

He waved his gald-banded cap courteously in gay salute, this boyish Lord Roderick Desmond, only ^on of the Earl of Clontarf, and went springing down to the shore, singing again :

“ ‘ ’Twas from Kathleen’s eyes he flew —

Eyes of most unholy blue !’ ”

But for the Kathleen standing on the rocks, she was forgotten ere the passionate, yearning blue eyes were fairly out of his sight.

He sprang into the boat, the men pushed off, and it went dancing lightly over the billows. The girl shrank away behind the tall bowlder, lost to his view in the gathering darkness, but watching him and his fairy craft with impassioned eyes, that told their own story of woman’s deepest bliss and deadliest pa.m— love.

And then distance and darkness took him, and Kathleen hid her hot face in her hands, loving, and knowing she loved, as vainly arid wildly as that other’ Kathleen, of whose “unholy blue eyes” Moore sings, hurled into the lake by flinty-hearted Saint Kevin.

Vainly, indeed, for she was only the daughter of the village pedagogue, and he, ah ! the blue blood of the princely Desmonds — kings of old — flowed in his veins, and an earl’s coronet awaited him in the future.

Night had fallen — black, starless, wild. The frowning coast had vanished ; they were far out on the tempestlashed ocean, the wind rushing by with a roar, a dark and fiery hell of waters heaving around them.

lo Lord Roderick.

And through the night and the storm the gallant little '‘Nora Creina” shot ahead like an arrow, and on her deck, his gold head streaming in the salt blast, -Lord Roderick Desmond stood, scanning the stormy blackness with a powerful night glass.

Far off — a luminous speck against the dead darkness — something bright, like a fallen star, glimmered and glowed. His men were gathered around him ; they needed no glass to see that one luminous ray.

“By heavens!” he cried, clo«^ing his telescope with a clash, “it's a ship on fire I”

And then his rich voice rang out above the uproar of . the storm, the wind, and the sea, giving his orders to bear down to the relief of the burning ship.

Away — as a deer flies from the hounds — the “Nora Creina” flew over the foam-lashed billows. Nearer and nearer they drew to that brilliant ray — that terrible bonfire on the ocean. Larger and larger it loomed upFefore them — a pillar of fire — in the storm-lashed sea.

And as they neared it — so close that but a few yards divided them — they could see on the blazing deck two figures — a man and a woman.

“We must lower the boat at once, and if the boat does not go down like an egg-shell, then a miracle will have taken place,” Lord Roderick said. “Lower away, my lads ; there is not a second to be lost.”

And as his words rang out, wild and high above the uproar, there came, piercingly, a woman’s scream of distress.

It seemed surely death, but even unto death these men would hav^e followed their gallant young leader. And a Desmond never knew fear, and death and Lord Roderick had stood face to face many a time already in his brief one-and-twenty years.

Was he going to shirk it now, and a zvoman perishing before his eyes? His wild cheer, clear as a bugle blast, echoed cheerily as he sprang into the frail skiflf.

''You will come with me, Fitzgerald,” he said. “No, my lads ; any more of you would only be in the way. Now, then, pull with a will.”

And the fairy bark sped away over the foamy breakers, as though upheld by fairy hands. The “luck of the Des-

Lord Roderick.

II monds/’ traditionary all the country-side over, was with them in their dauntless daring to-night.

“Leap into the sea!” those on. board the yacht heard Lord Roderick cry ; “we will pick you up. We can go no nearer.”

The man on the deck of the burning vessel seized the Avoman in his arms, and, ere the words were well uttered, leaped overboard into the black, bitter waters. The flaming ship lit up the storm-lashed ocean for yards around.

They sank — they rose. Fitzgerald bent to the oars, and sent the light skiff shooting to Avhere their Avhite faces gleamed above the hissing waves. Lord Roderick bent over and laid hold of the woman’s long, streaming hair.

breathlessly the watchers on board the yacht gazed. There was a moment of inexpressible peril and suspense ; tli^n the woman was lifted in the stalwart young arms of Lord Clontarf’s son and laid in the bottom of the boat.

But that moment was fatal. The white face of the man vanished, as a huge wave dashed him brutally into its depths. Over the wild, midnight sea one last agonized cry rang out :

“Oh, God, save me ! save my Inez I”

“Back to the yacht, Fitzgerald — ^back, for our lives!’’ Lord Roderick shouted. “The man has perished ! Back ! Give me the oars !”

The little boat, urged by those strong, skilled, rowers, shot back to the “Nora Creina” as if invisible hands guided it through the tempestuous sea.

They reached the yacht, and a great shout of joy and thankfulness arose as the young heroes passed up the rescued Avoman and came on board.

The burning ship blazed steadily to the water’s edge, then went headlong down, and an awful blackness reigned.

Of all her living crew, only this one woman remained to tell the tale.

She lay on the deck where they had placed her — still as one dead. I^ord Roderick lifted her in his arms, carried her into the lamplit cabin, and laid her upon a couch.

She was dripping wet, and her hair, long as a mermaid’s, clung about her. Her eyes were closed ; the face was marble wliite. Cold and still she lay there before him in a dead swoon.

Gerald Desmond.

And the young Lord Roderick stood above her, a brandy-flask in his hand, gazing down on that white, still face. For, in all the cne-and-twentj years of his bright, brief life, Earl Clontarf’s only son had never looked on anything half so lovely as this unknown girl he had saved from death.

CHAPTER IL

GIJRAI^D DESMOND.

Sunset hour again, low there on the picturesque Wicklow coast. An October sunset — cloudless and brilliant. An oriflamme of splendor, of golden and crimson and purple, a royal canopy for the King of Day — filled all the ^ west with indescribable glory.

And once again, all alone on the wild and “solitary shore, Kathleen O’Neal stood, looking over the boundless sea at that crimson glory in the sky.

The soft, abundant brown hair hung loose, and fluttered in the light evening wind. In and out of the red glow on the sea the fishing-boats glanced. Far away white sails shone in the offing, and rising and falling airily in its sheltered cove, the “Nora Creina” lay at anchor.

Kathleen looked at none of these things. She had sunk down on a bed of sea-moss, half lying, half sitting, one round white arm thrown up over a tall rock, her head lying wearily on that arm.

The great, soft blue eyes, so brilliant, so joyous six weeks before, looked blankly over the ocean, with a dull and dreary loneliness inexpressively sad to see. The pretty, piquant face had lost all its bright bloom, its glad gay smiles and dimples.

She lay there listlessly and forlornly enough, pale as the surf breaking on the sands below. Only six weeks since that lurid sunset when she had waited impatiently here for her lover, with a heart as bright and as light as a bird’s. Nozv she sat haggard and pale, weary and hopeless ; for in six brief weeks the light had faded from pretty Kathleen’s life, and her lover was as utterly and

Gerald Desmond.

entirely lost to her as though the angry waves of that stormy night had swept over his golden head forever.

Her lover ! Yes ; hers, by the memory of a thousand words, of a thousand loving smiles, of a thousand tender kisses, of walks, and talks, and sails, and presents, and looks, and whispers.

Only boy-and-girl love, perhaps, but very sweet and charming to them both, until now — and now the boy-lord had forgotten his low-born love as completely as though she had never existed, and the girl was breaking her heart over it, as g^ls have done from time immemorial.

“Will she ever love him as I have done?” Kathleen thought, her heart full of hopdess, bitter pain; “half so dearly as I have done? And he did love me a little, before she came between us. Oh, mother of God ! keep my soul from the sinful wish that the black waves had swallowed her that night!”

A step came down the shingly strand — a man’s step; but the girl never stirred. It was not his. What, then, did it matter if all the world passed before her? All would still be desolation, since he was not there.

“Give you good-even, my pretty Kathleen,” said a soft, loA^ voice that Kathleen knew well, and a whiff of scented cigar-smoke puffed in her face. “On my life, you make a very charming picture, my dear. I never wished I were an artist until this moment. Come here to see the sun go down, eh? Ah, well!” with a lazy sigh. “Neat thing in the way of sunsets, too. How’s the dear old dad?”

Kathleen rose up with a bound, flushing rosy red, and dropping an embarrassed little courtesy. A tall man stood before her— a gentlemanly looking personage of thirty or thereabouts, well dressed, well looking, with a shadowy resemblance in his light-blue eyes and fair hair to the gold-haired, azure-eyed darling of her heart. He was not one-hundredth part so handsome, but he vaguely resembled Lord Roderick Desmond, and was that young lordling’s third cousin — the penniless son of a penniless younger brother, and a barrister at law, of Lincoln’s Inn, London.

He looked much more like an Englishman than an Irish Desmond, with his carefully trained side-whiskers.

Gerald Desmond.

his slow, languid voice, and his affectation of utter indifference to all things under the sun.

‘‘Mr. Gerald !” Kathleen cried ; ‘'you here ! I didn’t know — I thought you were ”

“At home, as 1 should be — very likely. But hard work all summer has used me up, and I’ve taken a run over to Clontarf to freshen for the autumn and winter campaign. ‘Men must work and women must weep;’ and they avail themselves of their prerogative, the dear, moist creatures, to the full, I must say, equally at weddings and deaths. You don’t know the song of the ‘Three Fishers,’ I dare say, Katie, but you look as though you had gone in for the weeping business yourself, of late. , Six weeks ago I saw you as blooming as one of your own Irish roses ; now a belle of five seasons could hardly look more chalky and haggard than my wild, fresh Wicklow rosebxid. Is it^ speedy consumption, Kathie, or a more fatal disease — * crossed in love?”

He took the cigar from between his lips and bent toward her, a keenly knowing look in his small, light-blue eyes.

He and little Kathleen knew each other well — from the days when he, a tall, hobbledehoy of sixteen, had been “coached” by old O’Neal, a decayed gentleman and a thorough classical scholar, and had romped with the prettiest fourteen-year-old fairy in the county.

Old O’Neal had been proud of his clever pupil; and Gerald Desmond, who was always prodigal of those fine words which cost so little, and butter so deliciously the parsnips of society, was a regular visitor at the cottage of his old preceptor during his flying visits to Clontarf.

He had seen Rory and Kathleen together more times than he could count, and he had pulled his long, blonde whiskers and smiled sardonically at Rory’s boyish devotion and Kathleen’s innocent blushes.

“Quite a chapter out of Arcadia, really,” he said, with his cynical sneer ; for he had been a cynic before he left off roundabouts. “Paul and Virginia, the Babes of the Wood — anything innocent and turtle-dove-like you please. My dear, artless Rory and my pretty, blushing Kathleen! As guileless as a pair of newly fledged goslings ! How refreshing it is to know that such sweet simplicity yet reigns on this big, wicked earth !”

Gerald Desmond.

And Mr. Gerald, in his hard, old precocity — a “man about town” at two-and-twenty, with all the knowledge of a wicked old age — chaffed his lordly cousin, and caused that ingenuous youth to blush nearly as much as little Kathleen herself, half in boyish shame, half in honest indignation.

“It’s quite a pastoral — the ‘Loveg of Rory and Kathleen.’ I think I’ll turn poetaster and write it out, and beat the ‘Venus and Adonis’ all to sticks. How’s it going to end, Rory, my lad ? it to be the gushing legend of Lord Burleigh and his Ellen over again? and is artless Kathleen, the village schoolmaster’s daughter, to grace a coronet? Or will it be, ‘Oh, weep for the hour when to Evelyn’s bower the lord of the valley with false vows came?’ Hey, my Wicklow Apollo?”

And to all of which Mr. Gerald never got any more explicit answer than a modest blush and an indignant “Oh, hang it, Ger! none of your nagging! Let a fellow alone, can’t you ?”

He bent over Kathleen now, and saw the red blood rising to the I9W, fair brow, and the hot mist that filled the soft blue eyes.

“Rory hasn’t been up to the cottage for the past six weeks, I dare swear,” he said, carelessly. “He is taken up by night and by day, sleeping and waking, body and soul, with that dark-eyed donna from old Castile. Seen her yet, Kathleen ?”

He could see the tempestuous heaving of Kathleen’s breast, the passionate cloud of jealousy that darkened her whole fair face.

“Yes; I have seen her — again and again and again!”

“And she is beautiful as one’s dreams of the angels, eh ? Not that I ever dream of those celestial messengers myself : and I don't suppose they have big black eyes and a shower of midnight tresses down to their waists, if one did see them. But she is lovely as an houri from Stamboul, and — vou hate her as Old Nick hates holy water!”

“Mr. Gerkld ! I ?”

“You, Kathleen — for this reason: Rory has gone mad for her. ' Ah, what an impetuous, hot-headed, reckless, hare-brained fellow that is ! On my word, it takes my breath away only to think of him ! And impetuosity is so very pronounced, and in such excessively bad style !

i6

Gerald Desmond.

But he is madly in love ; and really the Senorita d’Alvarez is very well worth loving — supposing anything is worth getting the steam up to such a pitch here beloW. She's a royal beauty ; she’s the heiress of a millionaire, with shares and bonds, and consols and coupons, and castles in Spain and bank stock in England. Only it would be such ah infinite deal of trouble, I would fall in love with her and marry her myself.”

“I wish you would,” Kathleen said, between her clenched, pearly teeth. “Why did she ever leave Spain? Why did she ever come ”

“Here — between you and Rory ? Ah ! why, indeed ? You see, Kathie, the don married an English woman, rich beyond all telling, and beautiful as — her daughter. Donna Inez has spent her whole life in a Spanish convent, in Valadana, I believe, and Don Pedro and his English donna went in for high life in our modern Vanity Fair — ■ Paris. Then the English lady dies, and the Spanish papa waxes lonely, goes to the convent, claims his daughter, and starts with her for England, to present her to her English relatives by the distaff side, and — the ship catches fire off the Irish Coast, and the crew take to the boats, and the two passengers are forgotten in the hubbub, and Master Rory and his yacht arrive in the nick of time to bear off the shrieking beauty from the devouring flames— a modern St. George and the Dragon. What a scene it would make for the boards of the Princess or the Porte St. Martin ! How the pit and the galleries would applaud !

“You’ve not read many novels in your life-time, my Kathleen, and you’re all the better for it ; but if you had, you wouldn’t need me to tell you the sequel to this delightful romance. In yellow covered literature the curtain invariably falls, after a score or two of such tremendous sensations, on the crowning folly of man — marriage.”

“Marriage !” Kathleen repeated, her breath coming short and quick — “marriage, Mr. Gerald! Will Lord Roderick marry her?''

“I think it extremely likely. As I said, he is in a state of utter imbecility about her, and she— well, those impassioned, tall, black-eyed, dark-skinned, fiery-blooded southrons are generally the very devil either to love or hate.

Gerald Desmond.

And Rory’s thews and sinews, his six foot of stature, his yellow locks and his blue eyes have made their mark already. The lad’s good-looking, as you know, Kathleen, and Donna De Castilia is susceptible. In spite of papa’s recent death, and her trailing crape and sables, she looks graciously already on the future Earl of Clontarf. Yes, Miss O’Neal, I think I will be called upon to draw up the marriage settlements for my lordly cousin before the world wags twelve months longer.”

She was tearing up the turf with a fierce, suppressed excitement that must find vent somehow. Gerald Desmond glanced at her askance.

“And if I were you, Kathleen, I would take the initiative. I would marry Morgan out of hand.”

“Mr. Gerald !”

She turned upon him, her pale cheeks flushing, her eyes flashing in the twilight.

“Don’t flare up, you little Celtic pythoness ! Yes, I would. Morgan’s an Englishman and an attorney — heinous crimes both, in your eyes and your father’s ; but for all that, you can’t do better. He’s well to do; he’ll make a lady of you, or a lady on a small scale, and no one need ever apply to you that nasty little word, jilted!**

“Gerald Desmond ! How dare you ?”

Gerald Desmond shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He rarely laughed.

“Coming the tragic muse, eh ? Pray, don’t excite yourself, my dear. I’m talking like a father to you. I met Morgan down there beyant, as they say here, and he begged me most piteously to put in a good word for him. You’ve lost Lord Roderick, you see; and I give you my Avord, Kathleen, I thought at one time his little flirtation would have ended seriously. But he has gone down beyond hope before the Spanish eyes of the Castilian beauty, and your cake’s dough. Marry Morgan, like a good girl, and live happy forever after.”

She clutched a handful of grass, and flung it passionately over the rocks.

“I would die ten thousand deaths, I would jump into the sea yonder, before I would marry Morgan! I hate him !”

“Poor devil!” said Morgan’s intercessor, plaintively. “But you’ll marry some one, some time, you know, Kathleen. It’s woman’s destiny, the end and aim of her whole life — marriage.”

“I shall never marry !” her voice choked as she said it, and she turned away. “I will go to my grave what I am to-night.”

“My dear little gushing Kathleen I” Gerald Desmond absolutely laughed a little, so amused was he. “ ‘I’ll live and die a maid,’ as the old songs say, for Rory’s sweet sake. Don’t do it, Kathleen. Go up to Clontarf and forbid the bans.”

“What do you mean ?”

“Why, this, little one: the donna is as proud as the deuce — all these high and mighty Spanish beauties are — and as jealous as the devil. Go up to the castle, insist on an interview, tell her Rory is yours, not hers, that your claim to him is beyond dispute. So it is, you know ; he has been courting you ever since he was three feet high. Tell her he loves you still, and is only after her doubloons. By Jove ! Kathleen, she’ll drop him like a hot potato.”