Part 39 (1/2)

'Our friend below-stairs looks as if _that_ was not his failing. I should say that he means a good deal.'

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

'd.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k 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 canva.s.sing 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 d.i.c.k, 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 charged as he is,' said she gravely.

'That is to say, if he be tracked and discovered.'

'It is what I mean.'

'Well, one has only to look out of that window, and see where we are, and what lies around us on every side, to be tolerably easy on that score.'

And, as he spoke, he arose and walked out upon the terrace.

'What, were you here all this time?' asked he, as he saw Nina seated on the battlement, and throwing dried leaves carelessly to the wind.

'Yes, I have been here this half-hour, perhaps longer.'

'And heard what we have been saying within there?'