pated it. And yet I have been to Cahill's," she added,
looking down, "to--to--leave a book, for I was anxious, and _he_ seems to
know nothing of your danger."

"I have only just learned it myself, and have hastened to seek you; the
mine at our feet is about to be sprung, and"----

"So ends _your_ life of ignoble disguise and _mine_ of duplicity. We
should both be thankful."

"One of us at least--thankful as the wrecked seaman, when the plank he
clings to splits and sinks him within sight of shore. But time presses; I
have come to test the truth of your character. Once more--are you ready?"

"I am indeed--ready to part this instant. I knew it should be so; it was a
pleasure to have known you, but I am resigned--ready. Fly! O lose not a
single moment; the moon is rising. Farewell, and fly!"

"Not without _you_! Girl, you affect to misunderstand me; or have you
forgotten those promises of friendship and faith, even to death, that you
have made me so often and so lately?"

"Promises--faith?" cried his startled companion; "even admitting those
playful assurances of a wild, country girl's friendship, were a compact,
could you be cruel enough to insist upon my fulfilling it in this
desperate hour?"

"Then all the interest you have expressed hitherto in my fate," pursued
the stranger; "the sympathy you have led me to think you felt for one,
suffering as I have suffered in the cause of my unhappy country--the hopes
excited in this heart when, as I pictured a delighted life passed with
you, and love, and freedom, beyond the Atlantic, you listened on, with a
consenting smile--all this was but pastime for your vacant hours?"

"It was wrong, I know," replied Katey yieldingly; "yet Heaven knows it was
no pastime. I found you in concealment--a fugitive--hunted, you told me,
by the laws for your exertions in the cause of a country I have been
taught by you to deem misgoverned; I saw you superior to all those around
you; you complained of cheerlessness and solitude, of ill health--I
brought you books, music, all that I could judge likely to lighten your
hours, and dearly am I punished for it."

"But think"----

"_Think!_" cried the girl, passionately interrupting him, for the chord
had jarred, "I never _thought_--till now--when all my giddy, imprudent
conduct crowds on my mind as if to crush me. A few months back, and we
were ignorant of each other's existence."

"Would that it had continued so," he said, in a voice of sadne