'Oh, godmother,' cried Kate imploringly.

'It wasn't I, my darling, that said the five hundred would be better spent
on wedding-clothes or house-linen. That delicate and refined suggestion was
your father's. It was his lordship made the remark.'

It was a fortunate accident at that conjuncture that a servant should
announce the arrival of Mr. Flood, the Tory J.P., who, hearing of Donogan's
escape, had driven over to confer with his brother magistrate. Lord
Kilgobbin was not sorry to quit the field, where he'd certainly earned few
laurels, and hastened down to meet his colleague.

CHAPTER LXXXV

THE END

While the two justices and Curtis discussed the unhappy condition of
Ireland, and deplored the fact that the law-breaker never appealed in vain
to the sympathies of a people whose instincts were adverse to discipline,
Flood's estimate of Donogan went very far to reconcile Kilgobbin to Nina's
marriage.

'Out of Ireland, you'll see that man has stuff in him to rise to eminence
and station. All the qualities of which home manufacture would only make
a rebel will combine to form a man of infinite resource and energy in
America. Have you never imagined, Mr. Kearney, that if a man were to employ
the muscular energy to make his way through a drawing-room that he would
use to force his passage through a mob, the effort would be misplaced, and
the man himself a nuisance? Our old institutions, with all their faults,
have certain ordinary characteristics that answer to good-breeding and
good manners--reverence for authority, respect for the gradations of rank,
dislike to civil convulsion, and such like. We do not sit tamely by when
all these are threatened with overthrow; but there are countries where
there are fewer of these traditions, and men like Donogan find their place
there.'

While they debated such points as these within-doors, Dick Kearney and
Atlee sat on the steps of the hall door and smoked their cigars.

'I must say, Joe,' said Dick, 'that your accustomed acuteness cuts but a
very poor figure in the present case. It was no later than last night you
told me that Nina was madly in love with you. Do you remember, as we went
upstairs to bed, what you said on the landing? "That girl is my own. I may
marry her to-morrow, or this day three months."'

'And I was right.'

'So right were you that she is at this moment the wife of another.'

'And cannot you see why?'

'I suppose I can: she preferred him to