ut should I say that I trust
her? And if I should trust her and love her too, where must it all end in?
I do not believe in her theory that love will transform a fellow of my
mould into a hero, not to say that I have my own doubt if she herself
believes it. I wonder if Kate reads her more clearly? Girls so often
understand each other by traits we have no clue to; and it was Kate who
asked her, almost in tone of entreaty, "to spare me," to save me from a
hopeless passion, just as though I were some peasant-boy who had set his
affection on a princess. Is that the way, then, the world would read our
respective conditions? The son of a ruined house or the guest of a beggared
family leaves little to choose between! Kate--the world--would call my lot
the better of the two. The man's chance is not irretrievable, at least such
is the theory. Those half-dozen fellows, who in a century or so contrive
to work their way up to something, make a sort of precedent, and tell the
others what they might be if they but knew how.

'I'm not vain enough to suppose I am one of these, and it is quite plain
that she does not think me so.' He pondered long over this thought, and
then suddenly cried aloud, 'Is it possible she may read Joe Atlee in this
fashion? is that the stuff out of which she hopes to make a hero?' There
was more bitterness in this thought than he had first imagined, and there
was that of jealousy in it too that pained him deeply.

Had she preferred either of the two Englishmen to himself, he could have
understood and, in a measure, accepted it. They were, as he called them,
'swells.' They might become, he knew not what. The career of the Saxon
in fortune was a thing incommensurable by Irish ideas; but Joe was like
himself, or in reality less than himself, in worldly advantages.

This pang of jealousy was very bitter; but still it served to stimulate him
and rouse him from a depression that was gaining fast upon him. It is true,
he remembered she had spoken slightingly of Joe Atlee. Called him noisy,
pretentious, even vulgar; snubbed him openly on more than one occasion, and
seemed to like to turn the laugh against him; but with all that she had
sung duets with him, corrected some Italian verses he wrote, and actually
made a little sketch in his note-book for him as a souvenir. A souvenir!
and of what? Not of the ridicule she had turned upon him! not the jest she
had made upon his boastfulness. Now which of these two did this