y in his
speech just here, but he carried it off jauntily--"his daughter, a
primrose girl and the love of my life, I've come to ask that you be a
bit lenient with him, Mr. Ravenel, at the times he has taken a drop too
much, as your lady mother has been in the year past. I think you'll find
him able to manage, for, in spite of his infirmity, black and white fall
under his spell alike."

"If Frank has a fault, Mr. McDermott, which I do not think he has, it's
over-generosity. You need have no fear for your friend," Mrs. Ravenel
said, proudly, putting her hand on Frank's shoulder.

As her son turned to kiss the slender fingers, Dermott McDermott
regarded the two curiously.

"You're fortunate in having a son of twenty--" He hesitated.

"Of twenty-five," Francis finished for him.

"--so devoted to you, madam. Ye're twenty-five--coming or going?" he
inquired, with a laugh.

"On my last birthday--April."

An odd light shone in McDermott's eyes for a second before he said, with
a bow:

"Neither of ye look it; I can assure you of that. Well," he continued,
reaching for his cap and whip, "I must be going. Ye've found already,
haven't ye, Ravenel, that the sound of my own voice is the music of
heaven to my ears?" And then, as though trying to recollect: "I think I
said it was at Ramazan Dulany and I fought together?"

Francis nodded.

"God," McDermott cried, his face illumined, his eyes glowing, "I wish it
had been Waterloo! I've always carried a bruised spirit that I didn't
fight at Waterloo."

"Your loss is our gain, Mr. McDermott," Francis answered, with a smile.
"You'd scarce be here to tell it if you had."

"And that's maybe true," Dermott said, pausing by the doorway to put on
his gloves. "But I'd rather have fought at Waterloo, even if I were dead
now, so that I could tell you exactly how it felt--There"--he broke his
speech with a laugh--"I caught myself on the way to an Irish bull.

"Oh! Mr. Ravenel," he called back suddenly, as though the thought had
just come to him, "I've been waiting your coming to have a talk with
you--a business talk--but not to-night." He waved the matter aside with
a gay, outward movement of the hands. "Sometime at your pleasure." Again
the eyes of the two met, and this time each measured the other more
openly than before.

"I shall be glad to see you at any time, Mr. McDermott," Frank answered,
his words courteous enough, but his eyes lacking warmth; and the
intuitive Celt reali