e able to
make you think _that_. But----" She turns to him suddenly, and gazes at
him through large eyes that are heavy with tears. "I shall always be
sorry for one thing, and that is--that you first met me where you did."

"At your aunt's? Mrs. Burke's?"

"She is _not_ my aunt," with a little frown of distaste; "she is nothing
to me so far as blood is concerned. Oh! Freddy." She stops close to him,
and gives him a grief-stricken glance. "I wish my poor father had been
alive when first you saw me. That we could have met for the first time
in the old home. It was shabby--faded"--her face paling now with intense
emotion. "But you would have known at once that it _had been_ a fine old
place, and that the owner of it----" She breaks down, very slightly,
almost imperceptibly, but Monkton understands that even one more word is
beyond her.

"That the owner of it, like St. Patrick, came of decent people," quotes
he with an assumption of gaiety he is far from feeling. "My good child,
I don't want to see _anyone_ to know that of you. You carry the sign
manual. It is written in large characters all over you."

"Yet I wish you had known me before my father died," says she, her grief
and pride still unassuaged. "He was so unlike anybody else. His manners
were so lovely. He was offered a baronetcy at the end of that Whiteboy
business on account of his loyalty--that nearly cost him his life--but
he refused it, thinking the old name good enough without a handle to
it."

"Kavanagh, we all know, is a good name."

"If he had accepted that title he would have been as--the same--as your
father!" There is defiance in this sentence.

"_Quite_ the same!"

"No, no, he would not," her defiance now changes into, sorrowful
honesty. "Your father has been a baronet for _centuries_, my father
would have only been a baronet for a few years."

"For centuries!" repeats Mr. Monkton with an alarmed air. There is a
latent sense of humor (or rather an appreciation of humor) about him
that hardly endears him to the opposite sex. His wife, being Irish,
condones it, because she happens to understand it, but there are
moments, we all know, when even the very best and most appreciative
women refuse to understand _anything_. This is one of them. "Condemn my
father if you will," says Mr. Monkton, "accuse him of all the crimes in
the calendar, but for _my_ sake give up the belief that he is the real
and original Wandering Jew. Debrett--Burke--either of t