never saw a young lady so cool under fire
before."

She blushes as she listens; her heart thrills with a half-reluctant
pride at his praise.

"What has come to me," she says to herself crossly, "that I can't look
at the man without blushing? It's time I had more sense."

"I have come to stay a day or two," he tells them.

A week passes, however, and he does not go away. To Honor it is a week
of very mixed sensations. She has never before known any one like this
stolid Englishman, who under all his composure hides a passion so
fiery, a will so strong.

On his part he is very grave and gentle. Not once does a word of love
pass his lips; and she is glad of it, for she is in no mood to think of
love or lovers.

"It would be horrible to think of such things," she tells herself,
"while poor Power Magill is wandering in homeless misery."

She is thinking of him to-night as she looks out at the moonlight,
lying chill and white on the grass and the bare flower-beds.

"Where is he now?" she asks herself with a shivering sigh, as she
listens to the restless creak and sough of the trees. It is a question
she is asking continually; but who can answer it?

He may be lying dead on some bare hillside, or at the bottom of some
dark gorge in the mountains.

From the drawing-room window she can see across to the drive. Some one
is coming slowly toward the house--a girl, little more than a child,
with an old cloak flung over her head--country fashion. Honor watches
her, and wonders which of the village people have been brave enough to
pass the ruins of Donaghmore at this hour.

The girl comes straight on to the window at which Honor is still
standing. When she is quite close she opens her cloak and holds out a
letter--not a bulky letter, a mere scrap, closely twisted; and, without
a second thought, Honor raises the window and takes it out of her hand.

"Who has sent it, Nora?"--for she recognizes the child now that she
sees her face.

But Nora only shakes her head and hurries away, passing over the
moonlit grass like the mere shadow of a girl.

The gentlemen are stirring in the dining-room now; she can hear their
chairs being set back, and her father's voice as he opens the door for
their guest.

There is not a moment to be lost if she is to read her letter in
secret, and instinctively she feels that it is meant for no eyes but
her own. Untwisting it rapidly, she spreads it out and reads:

"Will you venture to the old