considerable space in Paradise!' And there was a grim comicality in his
utterance of the word.

'She said no more than the truth of herself,' broke in Kate. 'With all her
queenly ways, she could face poverty bravely--I know it.'

'So you can--any of you, if a man's making love to you. You care little
enough what you eat, and not much more what you wear, if he tells you it
becomes you; but that's not the poverty that grinds and crushes. It's what
comes home in sickness; it's what meets you in insolent letters, in threats
of this or menaces of that. But what do you know about it, or why do I
speak of it? She's married a man that could be hanged if the law caught
him, and for no other reason, that I see, than because he's a felon.'

'I don't think you are fair to her, papa.'

'Of course I'm not. Is it likely that at sixty I can be as great a fool as
I was at sixteen?'

'So that means that you once thought in the same way that she does?'

'I didn't say any such thing, miss,' said he angrily. 'Did you tell Miss
Betty what's happened us?'

'I just broke it to her, papa, and she made me run away and read the note
to you. Perhaps you'll come and speak to her?'

'I will,' said he, rising and preparing to leave the room. 'I'd rather hear
I was a bankrupt this morning than that news!' And he mounted the stairs,
sighing heavily as he went.

'Isn't this fine news the morning has brought us, Miss Betty!' cried he, as
he entered the room with a haggard look, and hands clasped before him. 'Did
you ever dream there was such disgrace in store for us?'

'This marriage, you mean,' said the old lady dryly.

'Of course I do--if you call it a marriage at all.'

'I do call it a marriage--here's Father Tierney's certificate, a copy made
in his own handwriting: "Daniel Donogan, M.P., of Killamoyle and Innismul,
County Kilkenny, to Virginia Kostalergi, of no place in particular,
daughter of Prince Kostalergi, of the same localities, contracted in holy
matrimony this morning at six o'clock, and witnessed likewise by Morris
McCabe, vestry clerk--Mary Kestinogue, her mark." Do you want more than
that?'

'Do I want more? Do I want a respectable wedding? Do I want a decent man--a
gentleman--a man fit to maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have
behaved? Is this what we thought of her?'

'It is not, Mat Kearney--you say truth. I never believed so well of her
till now. I never believed before that she had anything in her head but t