e wax candles in the polished
silver candelabra on the dressing-table.

"Sheila will help you to unpack and make your toilet for dinner," she
said, adding, as an after-thought: "You need not trouble to make an
elaborate toilet, as there will be no one but ourselves, but to-morrow
we will have some guests, among them several young men worth your
while."

The tone was significant, as if her step-son did not count at all, and
Dainty's heart sank as she turned away, leaving her alone with Sheila
Kelly, the Irish maid.

"Shure, ye have but twinty minutes, miss, to make yer _twilight_, so
best give me yer kays, and let me unpack whilst ye bathe," she said, in
broadest brogue.

Dainty had conceived an instant aversion to the coarse-mouthed,
sly-looking Irish girl, so she answered, quietly:

"You may bring me some flowers for my corsage--some of those pink roses
I saw as we drove in--while I unpack the trunk myself."

CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD MONK.

The ill-looking maid flounced away, thinking resentfully that the pretty
young lady was afraid to trust her with her keys, while Dainty, whose
only reason had been an unwillingness to expose her simple wardrobe,
proceeded to lay out a gown for the evening--a delicately embroidered
white cashmere that no one would have suspected had been cleverly made
over from her mother's bridal _trousseau_.

While she was dressing her hair with deft fingers, she was startled by a
very unpleasant sound--a series of harsh, hacking coughs--seeming to
proceed from the room next her own. She thought:

"Some one is ill in there. What a terribly consumptive cough, poor
soul!"

Presently Sheila hurried in with a wealth of roses glistening with the
fresh-fallen evening dew, and after thanking her, Dainty asked,
curiously:

"Is there some one ill in the next room?"

"Shure, miss, there's nobuddy in the next room at all, at all, and not a
sick crathur in the house. Why is it ye thought so?"

"I heard some one coughing in there--a tight, hacking cough, like some
one in the last stages of consumption," Dainty answered; and instantly
Sheila Kelly crossed herself and looked furtively behind her like one
pursued, muttering:

"The saints preserve us! T' ould _monk_!"

"The old monk, did you say? Who is he?" exclaimed Dainty, sharply; but
the maid shook her head.

"Don't ask _me_, _miss_, please--ask the young master about the _cough_
ye heard, and shure he will tell ye, darlint," return