's affairs,
and was rewarded by seeing McDermott return the letter apparently
convinced.

"Nick van Rensselaer! So that's the way of it," he remarked. "Josef
simply wrote her to come, that everything had been arranged by some
great lady. There were no conditions save that she should write to her
unknown benefactor once a month. The money is to be repaid when Katrine
becomes a great singer.

"It's just as well--just as well!" Dermott said, after a silence,
peering into the cloud of smoke he had blown ceilingward, as though to
foretell the future. "Ye see, Mr. Ravenel, if she will so far honor me,
I'm intending some day to marry Katrine Dulany."

There was again the challenge of the eyes, but Frank's training stood
him well as he raised his brows with genuine surprise. "So?" he said. "I
think no one suspected in Carolina." "I hope not," McDermott returned.
"You see, she's but a child; eighteen years! And a man protects that age
from mistakes, as you, of course, know."

The lids came down over his inscrutable gray-blue eyes as McDermott
spoke.

"And, besides, I have had so little to offer her." There was real
humility in the tone now. "When the Almighty gives special attention to
the making of such a person as Katrine Dulany, it behooves the rest of
us mortals to respect His handiwork, doesn't it? I've some poor gifts,
some money, a nine-century-old name. There's a title, too, been lying
loose in the family since sixteen hundred and I forget what year. But I
want her to be sure of herself. As for the study with Josef, it will be
good for her, but the idea of Katrine on the stage is an absurdity. I've
a cousin in Paris--the Countess de Nemours, a very great lady, though I
say it as shouldn't," he said, with a laugh, "whom I am hoping to
interest in the little girl. She's no longer young. By-the-way, perhaps
you've met her! Her miniature hangs in the hail of Ravenel House."

"In the hall at Ravenel?" Francis repeated, in genuine surprise.

Dermott nodded. "Under the sconces on the left of the mantel-shelf."

"Ah!" Frank cried. "I remember, a beautiful girl in green. It was found
among my father's papers only last year. It was a relic of his life
abroad."

"Yes," Dermott answered, with a curious smile, "that's just what it was.
A relic of his life abroad. Well, good-bye and good luck to you," he
said, rising, and Francis noted anew the grace of movement, the
distinctive pallor, the humor of the great gray eyes as M