indeed," nothing daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all
events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated
that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider,
shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To _look_ at
you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the
_barbarity_ of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships
the ground you walk on, was----"

"But what did I do?" interrupts poor Monica, trembling before this
whirlwind.

"What _didn't_ you do? you mean. You would not even grant him one kind
parting glance. I could have _cried_ for him, he looked so sad and
forlorn. I think he looked like suicide,--I do, indeed,--and I shouldn't
wonder a bit if in the morning we heard----"

"Oh, Kit, don't! _don't!_" says Monica, in an agony, as this awful
insinuation gains force with her.

"Well, I won't then," says the advocate, pretending to surrender her
point by adroitly changing her front. A very Jesuit at soul is this
small Kit. "After all, I daresay he will grow tired of your incivility,
and so--forget you. Some one else will see how dear a fellow he is, and
smile upon him, and then he will give you up."

This picture, being in Monica's eyes even _more_ awful than the former,
makes great havoc in her face, rendering her eyes large and sorrowful,
and, indeed, so suffused with the heart's water that she seems upon the
very verge of tears. She turns these wet but lovely orbs upon her
tormentor.

"That would be the best thing he could do for _himself_," she says, so
sadly that Kit insensibly creeps closer to her; "and as for me, it
doesn't matter about me, of course."

"Monica, you like him, then," says Kit, suddenly, rising on her knees
and looking into her sister's averted eyes. "I am sure of it: I know it
now. Why did you not confide in me before?"

"Because it seems all so hopeless; even--if I loved him enough to marry
him--_they_ would never give in" (meaning, presumably, her aunts): "so
why should he or I waste time over so impossible a theory?"

"Why should it be impossible? Why should you not be married?"

"Because the fates are against us. Not," quickly, "that _that_ so much
matters: I don't want to marry _anybody_! But--but," lowering her lids,
"I do want him to _love_ me."

"My dear child, talk sense if you talk at all," says the material Kit.
"There never yet was a heroine in any novel ever read by me (and