r laughed with a little kindly malice too.

"Even her letter," Kitty continued remorselessly, "it was as though
she--that little sprite--wrote it with a rod of chastisement, as the
Bible says. It--"

"What do you know of the inside of that letter?" asked her mother,
staring.

"What the steam of the tea-kettle could let me see," responded Kitty
defiantly; and then, to her shocked mother, she told what she had done,
and what the nature of the letter was.

"I wanted to help him if I could, and I think I'll be able to do
it--I've worked it all out," Kitty added eagerly, with a glint of steel
in the gold of her eyes and a fantastic kind of wisdom in her look.

"Kitty," said her mother severely and anxiously, "it's madness
interfering with other people's affairs--of that kind. It never was any
use."

"This will be the exception to the rule," returned Kitty. "There she
is"--again she flicked a hand towards the other room--"after they've
been parted five years. Well, she came after she read my letter to her,
and after I'd read that unopened letter to him, which made me know how
to put it all to her. I've got intuition--that's Celtic and mad," she
added, with her chin thrusting out at her mother, to whom the Irish
that her husband had been, which was so deep in her daughter, was ever a
mystery to her, and of which she was more or less afraid.

"I've got a plan, and I believe--I know--it will work," Kitty continued.
"I've been thinking and thinking, and if there's trouble between them;
if he says he isn't going on with her till he's made his fortune; if he
throws that unopened letter in her face, I'll bring in my invention
to deal with the problem, and then you'll see! But all this fuss for a
little tiny button of a thing like that in there--pshaw! Mr. Crozier is
worth a real queen with the beauty of one of the Rhine maidens. How he
used to tell that story of the Rhinegold--do you remember? Wasn't it
grand? Well, I am glad now that he's going--yes, whatever trouble there
may be, still he is going. I feel it in my heart."

She paused, and her eyes took on a sombre tone. Presently, with a
slight, husky pain in her voice, like the faint echo of a wail, she
went on: "Now that he's going, I'm glad we've had the things he gave us,
things that can't be taken away from us. What you have enjoyed is yours
for ever and ever. It's memory; and for one moment or for one day or
one year of those things you loved, there's fifty years, p