ghed. "If it had been you, Kathleen, I
would not have wondered, for you are as beautiful as I am plain. But
what made the man be wanting me? I have nothing beyond my hair, and who
would be marrying a girl for her hair?"

"If I were a man I would marry no other woman but Molly Healy. Plain!
Why, you are lovely, and you have a heart of gold, Molly," Kathleen
answered.

"Mr. Cairns could not see my heart; it is what a man sees that he loves.
But I am perplexed what to do. I like Mr. Cairns, and he is an honest
gentleman, not like Gerard, all on the surface. But I don't fancy I love
him. What does it feel like to be in love, Kathleen?"

Kathleen blushed scarlet at the question.

"There is a real love and a false one," she said. "The false sort loves
a man, not for what he is, but for what he is imagined to be. The real
love comes from recognising that a man is noble and brave."

Molly pondered a while over this.

"Mr. Cairns is not young, and he is not beautiful," she soliloquised,
"but he is honest and brave, just a gentleman. Perhaps I might come to
love him in time."

"Shall I prophesy?" Kathleen asked.

"If it would be any help to you or to me, I would not be the one to stop
you."

"Then I see you, in six months time, Mrs. Cairns," Kathleen answered.

"I wish it had been O'Brien, or Fitzgerald, even O'Connor, but Desmond
has chosen the better way," said Molly.

CHAPTER XXVI.

GOOD AND EVIL.

It was evening again at "Layton." The moon was shining down on Kathleen
O'Connor as it shone on her that night when Gerard walked beside and
tempted her. She was pacing the shadowed avenue with Denis Quirk beside
her. Their voices were low, mere faint murmurs to Father Desmond
O'Connor, who sat on the verandah beside old Samuel Quirk and spoke an
occasional word to the old man.

There was stillness in the garden, bright moonlight and dark shadows.
Overhead the heavens were glittering with a myriad stars. Well might
Kathleen's thoughts revert to that other night when danger paced beside
her. This night she had no dread, for Denis Quirk had been tried and
tempered by the furnace of suffering. Nevertheless, the girl's heart was
beating more rapidly than usual, because she recognised that this night
marked an epoch in her existence.

For three months since his wife's death Denis Quirk had abstained from
asking that which was constantly in his mind. This he did, not because
he felt himself bound by a specious