s to the stricken and the incurably humiliated.

"What have you said to her?" asked Christine of Ferrol, "what have you
done to her?"

"I didn't do a thing, upon my soul. I didn't say a thing. She'd only
just come in."

"What did she say to you?"

"As near as I can remember, she said: 'You have been hurt, and I'm very
sorry. Why haven't you been to see me? I looked for you; but you didn't
come, and I thought you had forgotten me.'"

"What did she mean by that? How dared she!"

"See here, Christine," he said, laying his hand on her quivering
shoulder, "I didn't say much to her. I was over there one afternoon, the
afternoon I asked you to marry me. I drank a lot of liqueur; she looked
very pretty, and before she had a chance to say yes or no about it I
kissed her. Now that's a fact. I've never spent five minutes with her
alone since; I haven't even seen her since, until this morning. Now
that's the honest truth. I know it was scampish; but I never pretended
to be good. It is nothing for you to make a fuss about, because,
whatever I am--and it isn't much one way or another--I am all yours,
straight as a die, Christine. I suppose, if we lived together fifty
years, I'd probably kiss fifty women--once a year isn't a high average;
but those kisses wouldn't mean anything; and you, you, my girl"--he bent
his head down to her "why, you mean everything to me, and I wouldn't
give one kiss of yours for a hundred thousand of any other woman's in
the world! What you've done for me, and what you'd do for me--"

There was a strange pathos in his voice, an uncommon thing, because his
usual eloquence was, as a rule, more pleasing than touching. A quick
change of feeling passed over her, and her eyes filled with tears. He
ran his arm round her shoulder.

"Ah, come, come!" he said, with a touch of insinuating brogue, and
kissed her. "Come, it's all right. I didn't mean anything, and she
didn't mean anything; and let's start fresh again."

She looked up at him with quick intelligence. "That's just what we'll
have to do," she said. "The Cure this morning at mass scolded the people
about the Rebellion, and said that Nic and you had brought all this
trouble upon Bonaventure; and everybody looked at our pew and snickered.
Oh, how I hate them all! Then I jumped up--"

"Well?" asked Ferrol, "and what then?"

"I told them that my brother wasn't a coward, and that you were my
husband."

"And then--then what happened?"

"Oh, then the