s dead, poor thing--at least, so the doctor
said--I'd go to them and say they could have the place free if only they
would go and taunt that old fiend and fling it in his face and hound him
down as he hounded down their parents."

"What good would that do either you or them?" he asked.

"Good?"

She sprang out of her chair and stood facing him.

"Don't you know what it is to hate?" she cried. "Is it only Irish blood
that can boil at rank injustice? Is it only Irish hearts which burn to
aid the oppressed and torture the oppressors as they tortured their poor
unfortunate victims? You said you would shoot the man who struck you
down, shoot him like a dog, if he were escaping your clutches. Don't you
think Kitty Lambton's children have as great, if not a greater right to
shoot that bloodless, heartless monster like a dog or a cat or any other
vermin, if they met him on this earth? I'd tell them to do it; I'd tell
them to do it if there were no other way to make his last hours more
full of misery and agony. That's what I'd do, the dirty old traitorous
villain that he is. Pah!"

She uttered the words with a tigerish pant as she swung on her heels and
strode away to the end of the verandah, where she stood for a moment
staring up at the sky, before she returned.

"It's the curse of the Irish to feel the wounds of others as keenly as
though they were one's own," she said, as she sat down again. "What
concern is it of mine whether the old fool hoards his money and drives
lost souls to perdition? I've no right to worry about other people's
troubles. Sure I have enough of my own. But it just maddened me to think
of it. Oh, it's the Irish hearts that suffer!"

The harsh vibrant tones had gone; the voice he heard was that of the
woman who had pleaded earlier in the evening for compassion for the men
who had injured her.

Impulsively he reached out his hand and touched hers.

"You must not," he said. "You must not heed such tales. You are too
warm-hearted. The sordid side of life is not for you. We who have to
come in contact with it, and know it in all its wretched squalor, know
only too well that rarely, if ever, can one of the high-pitched stories
of personal wrong be justified. The greater the criminal, the greater
the protestations of innocence and injustice. Do not be deceived. You,
who are so full of sympathy and gentleness, you who would not, by your
own hand, hurt the hair of a man's head, you----"

She sprang up