escribe, aunt."

"I should think you couldn't, indeed!" puts in Kit, wrathfully.

"But, as I said before, she is delightful."

"She _may_ be," says Priscilla, the most damning doubt in her tone. "She
_may_ be, my dear. Forbid that I should deny it! But there are some
delightful people, Terence, that are not good for us."

Somehow, after this, conversation dwindles until it is gone. Terence
sulks; Monica moons; Kit ponders; the Miss Blake snooze: and so at last
home is reached.

CHAPTER XI.

How Kit sees a Vision, and being exhorted thereto by it, pleads a
certain cause with great success.

It is ten o'clock, and as lovely a night as ever overhung the earth. The
moon is at its fullest, the wind has fallen, all is calm as heaven
itself, through which Dictynna's unclouded grandeur rolls.

The Misses Blake, fatigued by their unusual dissipation, ordered an
early rout an hour agone, whereby bedroom candlesticks were in demand at
nine or half-past nine o'clock.

Now, in Monica's room Kit is standing by the open window gazing in rapt
admiration at the dew spangled garden beneath. Like diamonds glitter the
grass and the flowers beneath the kiss of the grass and the queen of
night.

Moonbeams are playing in the roses, and nestling in the lilies, and
rocking to and fro upon the bosom of the stream.

There is a peace unspeakable on all around. One holds one's breath and
feels a longing painful in its intensity as one drinks in the beauty of
the earth and sky. 'Twere _heaven_ to be assured of love on such a night
as this.

Stars make the vault above so fine that all the world, me-thinks, should
be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun. There is a
rush of feeling in the air,--a promise of better things to come,--of
hope, of glad desire, of sweet love perfected!

"How lovely a night it is!" says Kit, leaning far out of the window, and
gazing westward. She is at heart a born artist, with a mind, indeed, too
full of strange, weird thoughts at times to augur well for the happiness
of her future. Like many of her Irish race, she is dreamy,
poetical,--intense at one moment, gay, wild impulsive the next.

"See what a flood of light there is on everything!" she says. "'_Bathed_
in moonlight,' what a good thought was that. Monica, when I am as old as
you, in a very few short years I shall be a poet."

"No, you won't, darling: you will be a musician. See what fairies lie
beneath your fingers ev