fine in his manners. But
you'll get on with him all right--girls like mashers."

"You know that I hate that word, Power! Why will you use it?"

"Because it describes your cousin to a nicety."

"Goodness! A masher!" the girl cries in dismay. "How will such a
creature live at Donaghmore? He should have gone to Aunt Julia's in
Dublin--he would have felt at home there."

Whereat they both laugh, natural hearty laughter that dies away in
musical echoes.

Aunt Julia is one of the bugbears of the Blake family, her gentility
and general fineness being altogether too much for them.

"Oh, hang it, the fellow's man enough to prefer Donaghmore and you to
Merrion Square!"

"And Aunt Julia," the girl finishes slyly.

"Yes," he says. And then, with sudden passion--"Is this man to come
between us, Honor? To-day as I looked at him I felt, if it was so, I
could find it in my heart to shoot him dead!"

It is getting dusk here on the lower quarry road, which leads them by a
short cut to Donaghmore. On one side stretches the bog, on the other
the grim gray rocks shut out the sky. To Honor's nervous fancy it
almost seems as if the rocks catch up his vengeful words, and echo them
mockingly. More than one ghastly story is connected with this lonely
spot; and, spoken here, the cruel words have double meaning.

"You are changed already," the man says more calmly, seeing the
expression of horror on her face. "You and Launce have never been the
same to me since that affair at Boyne. It is only Horace who remains my
friend."

"And am I not your friend, Power?"

"There can be no friendship between you and me, Honor. There can be but
one of two things--love or hatred. I love you as better men would tell
you they love their own souls. I want you for my wife--no friend, but
my very own, until death us do part! Honor, my darling--Honor, my own
love, will you come to me?"

His arms close round her in the darkness, and with a low sob she yields
to their masterful pressure, while his words--half fierce in their
passion--seem to reach her like words heard in a dream.

Suddenly, out from the middle of the bog, comes a plaintive cry like
the call of some night-bird. It is answered half a mile away, in the
direction of Donaghmore, and then again there is silence. But it is no
bird-call, Honor knows; and she raises her face from her lover's breast
with a little sigh of fear.

"Don't sigh, my darling! Sure no harm could touch you with me," the