laughing at my stupid phrase--no matter; you understand
me, at all events. I don't like that man.'

'Dick's friends are not fortunate with you. I remember how unfavourably you
judged of Mr. Atlee from his portrait.'

'Well, he looked rather better than his picture--less false, I mean; or
perhaps it was that he had a certain levity of manner that carried off the
perfidy.'

'What an amiable sort of levity!'

'You are too critical on me by half this evening,' said Nina pettishly; and
she arose and strolled out upon the leads.

For some time Kate was scarcely aware she had gone. Her head was full of
cares, and she sat trying to think some of them 'out,' and see her way to
deal with them. At last the door of the room slowly and noiselessly opened,
and Dick put in his head.

'I was afraid you might be asleep, Kate,' said he, entering, 'finding all
so still and quiet here.'

'No. Nina and I were chatting here--squabbling, I believe, if I were to
tell the truth; and I can't tell when she left me.'

'What could you be quarrelling about?' asked he, as he sat down beside her.

'I think it was with that strange friend of yours. We were not quite agreed
whether his manners were perfect, or his habits those of the well-bred
world. Then we wanted to know more of him, and each was dissatisfied that
the other was so ignorant; and, lastly, we were canvassing that very
peculiar taste you appear to have in friends, and were wondering where you
find your odd people.'

'So then you don't like Donogan?' said he hurriedly.

'Like whom? And you call him Donogan!'

'The mischief is out,' said he. 'Not that I wanted to have secrets from
you; but all the same, I am a precious bungler. His name is Donogan, and
what's more, it's Daniel Donogan. He was the same who figured in the dock
at, I believe, sixteen years of age, with Smith O'Brien and the others,
and was afterwards seen in England in '59, known as a head-centre, and
apprehended on suspicion in '60, and made his escape from Dartmoor the same
year. There's a very pretty biography in skeleton, is it not?'

'But, my dear Dick, how are you connected with him?'

'Not very seriously. Don't be afraid. I'm not compromised in any way,
nor does he desire that I should be. Here is the whole story of our
acquaintance.'

And now he told what the reader already knows of their first meeting and
the intimacy that followed it.

'All that will take nothing from the danger of harbouring a man