exclaimed suddenly.

'So I imagine.'

'But she's in love with him--she must be, or she wouldn't write like
that?'

'You don't know her. She can't do anything by halves--while she's doing
it.'

'By Jove, that's what I like. There's a woman who'd never hang on the
fence. And her ideas about love and all that: it's splendid.'

He brooded again a few moments, while Mrs Gildea sorted her papers
afresh; then he exclaimed:

'It strikes me, she's one of the sort I was talking about just now.'

'Well, she WAS born in a castle.'

'I guessed it.... You won't tell me her name?'

'How could I--I ask you? After you'd read that!'

'No. All right. You can trust me not to find out.'

'Besides, she would never do for you.'

He laughed quizzically. 'Well, I'm a barbarian, and it's possible I may
some day be a millionaire. But I'm not such a conceited cad as to
imagine a woman like that would ever fall in love with ME!' His voice
sank almost to a reverential tone. 'The only thing I do know is that if
I got the chance, I'd show her I was strong enough to carry her off to
my wigwam and she could do what she pleased afterwards. I'd be her
slave so long as she cared for me--and I'd never live with a woman who
didn't.'

'My dear Colin, you're not likely to get the chance. Please forget that
you ever read that letter.'

'No, I can't do that; but as she's in London and we're over here, it's
not much odds anyway. Well, have you found the right sheets? Give them
to me if you have and then we can come to business.'

CHAPTER 5

Colin McKeith had been gone some time and Mrs Gildea, primed with fresh
ideas, had finished her article on the lines he suggested, before she
again tackled Lady Bridget's love-affair.

The second letter (there is no need to reproduce the page of daring
sentiment that closed the first) was dated from Castle Gaverick in
South Connemara, and plunged straight into the tragic culmination.

'It's all over, Joan--was over soon after my last letter, but I've been
too wretched ever since to write. If you had been in England you might
have read in one of last week's "MORNING POST'S" that a marriage has
been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr Willoughby Maule,
formerly confidential adviser to His Highness the Rajah of
Kasalpore--and Evelyn Mary, only daughter of the late John Bagallay,
Esq, and the late Mrs Bagally of Bagallay Court, Birmingham.

Rosamond tells me that Luke told her that Evel