devil with those to whom I have helped to acquaint him!"

But Mrs. Nagle and the priest both knew that the brave words were a vain
boast. Charles alone was deceived; and he showed no pleasure in the
thought that the man who had been to him so kind and so patient a
comrade and so trusty a friend was after all not leaving England
immediately.

"I must be going back to the Eype now." Mottram spoke heavily; again he
looked at Mrs. Nagle with a strangely probing, pleading look. "But I'll
come over to-morrow morning--to Mass. I've not forgotten that to-morrow
is St. Catherine's Day--that this is St. Catherine's Eve."

Charles seemed to wake out of a deep abstraction. "Yes, yes," he said
heartily. "To-morrow is the great day! And then, after we've had
breakfast I shall be able to consult you, James, about a very important
matter, that new well they're plaguing me to sink in the village."

For the moment the cloud had again lifted; Nagle looked at his cousin
with all his old confidence and affection, and in response James
Mottram's face worked with sudden emotion.

"I'll be quite at your service, Charles," he said, "quite at your
service!"

Catherine stood by. "I will let you out by the orchard gate," she said.
"No need for you to go round by the road."

They walked, silently, side by side, along the terrace and down the
stone steps. When in the leafless orchard, and close to where they were
to part, he spoke:

"You bid me go--at once?" Mottram asked the question in a low, even
tone; but he did not look at Catherine, instead his eyes seemed to be
following the movements of the stick he was digging into the ground at
their feet.

"I think, James, that would be best." Even to herself the words Mrs.
Nagle uttered sounded very cold.

"Best for me?" he asked. Then he looked up, and with sudden passion,
"Catherine!" he cried. "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the
wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong
Charles--I swear it solemnly. Catherine!--do not bid me leave you.
Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to
become beseeching and imperious.

Catherine Nagle suddenly threw out her hands with a piteous gesture.
"Ah! James," she said, "I cannot trust my own----" And as she thus made
surrender of her two most cherished possessions, her pride and her
womanly reticence, Mottram's face--the plain-featured face so
exquisitely dear to her--became transfigured. He s