misfortune. Not so, however. His mind viewed the matter in a different
light. He was willing to concede much to mistaken feelings of
nationality, and to associations with a time of former independence; but
these motives could have no relation to one who came into the service
as he himself and Frank did,--soldiers by the grace and favor of the
Emperor.

The blot this treason left upon his name was then a sore affliction to
one whose whole aim in life had been to transmit an honorable reputation
and an unshaken fidelity behind him. His reasoning was thus: "_We_
have no claims of ancient services to the monarchy to adduce,----_our_
ancestors never proved their devotion to the House of Hapsburg in times
past,--we must be taken for what our own deeds stamp us." With this
decisive judgment he was ready to see Frank delivered before a court,
tried and sentenced, without offering one word in his behalf. "This
done," thought he, "it remains but for me to show that I have made the
only expiation in my power, and paid with my heart's blood for another's
fault."

Such was the resolve with which he crossed the Alps,--a resolve defeated
for the moment by discovering that Frank was no longer a prisoner, but
had made his escape in some unexplained manner on the eventful day of
Goito.

This disappointment, and the still sadder tidings of the Emperor's
withheld permission to Kate's marriage, came to his ears the same
day,--the most sorrowful, perhaps, of his whole life. His honorable fame
as a soldier tarnished, his high ambition for a great alliance dashed by
disappointment, he fell back for consolation upon poor Nelly's letter.
The weak point of his character had ever been a dread of what he called
his Irish cousins; the notion that his successes and supposed wealth
would draw upon him a host of hungry and importunate relatives, eager to
profit by the hard-won honors of his unaided career. And although year
after year rolled on, and no sign was made, nor any token given, that
he was remembered in the land of his forefathers, the terror was still
fresh in his mind; and when at last Peter Dalton's letter reached him,
he read the lines in a torrent of anger,--the accumulation of long years
of anticipation. Nelly's epistle was a complete enigma to him. She was
evidently unprotected, and yet not selfish; she was in the very humblest
circumstances, and never asked for assistance; she was feelingly alive
to every sorrow of her brother and