g hours of a summer's day, or the longer hours of a
winter's night, a lone woman has to watch and think of all the possible
casualties lives of hardship and misery may impel men to. Do you imagine
that she does not mark the growing discontent of the people? see their
careworn looks, dashed with a sullen determination, and hear in their
voices the rising of a hoarse defiance that was never heard before? Does
she not well know that every kindness she has bestowed, every merciful act
she has ministered, would weigh for nothing in the balance on the day that
she will be arraigned as a landowner--the receiver of the poor man's rent!
And will you tell me after this she can dispense with courage?'

'_Bel paese davvero!_' muttered the other.

'So it is,' cried Kate; 'with all its faults I'd not exchange it for the
brightest land that ever glittered in a southern sun. But why should I tell
you how jarred and disconcerted we are by laws that have no reference to
our ways--conferring rights where we were once contented with trustfulness,
and teaching men to do everything by contract, and nothing by affection,
nothing by good-will.'

'No, no, tell me none of all these; but tell me, shall I come down in my
Suliote jacket of yellow cloth, for I know it becomes me?'

'And if we women had not courage,' went on Kate, not heeding the question,
'what would our men do? Should we see them lead lives of bolder daring than
the stoutest wanderer in Africa?'

'And my jacket and my Theban belt?'

'Wear them all. Be as beautiful as you like, but don't be late for dinner.'
And Kate hurried away before the other could speak.

When Miss O'Shea, arrayed in a scarlet poplin and a yellow gauze
turban--the month being August--arrived in the drawing-room before dinner,
she found no one there--a circumstance that chagrined her so far that she
had hurried her toilet and torn one of her gloves in her haste. 'When they
say six for the dinner-hour, they might surely be in the drawing-room by
that hour,' was Miss Betty's reflection as she turned over some of the
magazines and circulating-library books which since Nina's arrival had
found their way to Kilgobbin. The contemptuous manner in which she treated
_Blackwood_ and _Macmillan_, and the indignant dash with which she flung
Trollope's last novel down, showed that she had not been yet corrupted by
the light reading of the age. An unopened country newspaper, addressed to
the Viscount Kilgobbin, had howe