'Do I interest you?' asked he, more tenderly.

'Intensely,' was the reply.

'Oh, if I could but think _that_. If I could bring myself to believe that the day would come, not only to secure your interest, but your aid and your a.s.sistance in this great task! I have long sought the opportunity to tell you that we, who hold the destinies of a people in our keeping, are not inferior to our great trust, that we are not mere creatures of a state department, small deities of the Olympus of office, but actual statesmen and rulers. Fortune has given me the wished-for moment, let it complete my happiness, let it tell me that you see in this n.o.ble work one worthy of your genius and your generosity, and that you would accept me as a fellow-labourer in the cause.'

The fervour which he threw into the utterance of these words contrasted strongly and strangely with the words themselves; so unlike the declaration of a lover's pa.s.sion.

'I do--not--know,' said she falteringly.

'What is that you do not know?' asked he, with tender eagerness.

'I do not know if I understand you aright, and I do not know what answer I should give you.'

'Will not your heart tell you?'

She shook her head.

'You will not crush me with the thought that there is no pleading for me there.'

'If you had desired in honesty my regard, you should not have prejudiced me: you began here by enlisting my sympathies in your Task; you told me of your ambitions. I like these ambitions.'

'Why not share them?' cried he pa.s.sionately.

'You seem to forget what you ask. A woman does not give her heart as a man joins a party or an administration. It is no question of an advantage based upon a compromise. There is no sentiment of grat.i.tude, or recompense, or reward in the gift. She simply gives that which is no longer hers to retain! She trusts to what her mind will not stop to question--she goes where she cannot help but follow.'

'How immeasurably greater your every word makes the prize of your love.'

'It is in no vanity that I say I know it,' said she calmly. 'Let us speak no more on this now.'

'But you will not refuse to listen to me, Nina?'

'I will read you if you write to me,' and with a wave of good-bye she slowly left the room.

'She is my master, even at my own game,' said Walpole, as he sat down, and rested his head between his hands. 'Still she is mistaken: I can write just as vaguely as I can speak, and if I could not, it would have cost me my freedom this many a day. With such a woman one might venture high, but Heaven help him when he ceased to climb the mountain!'

CHAPTER XLIX

A CUP OP TEA

It was so rare an event of late for Nina to seek her cousin in her own room, that Kate was somewhat surprised to see Nina enter with all her old ease of manner, and flinging away her hat carelessly, say, 'Let me have a cup of tea, dearest, for I want to have a clear head and a calm mind for at least the next half-hour.'

'It is almost time to dress for dinner, especially for you, Nina, who make a careful toilet.'

'Perhaps I shall make less to-day, perhaps not go down to dinner at all. Do you know, child, I have every reason for agitation, and maiden bashfulness besides? Do you know I have had a proposal--a proposal in all form--from--but you shall guess whom.

'Mr. O'Shea, of course.'

'No, not Mr. O'Shea, though I am almost prepared for such a step on his part--nor from your brother d.i.c.k, who has been falling in and out of love with me for the last three months or more. My present conquest is the supremely arrogant, but now condescending, Mr. Walpole, who, for reasons of state and exigencies of party, has been led to believe that a pretty wife, with a certain amount of natural astuteness, might advance his interests, and tend to his promotion in public life; and with his old instincts as a gambler, he is actually ready to risk his fortunes on a single card, and I, the portionless Greek girl, with about the same advantages of family as of fortune--I am to be that queen of trumps on which he stands to win. And now, darling, the cup of tea, the cup of tea, if you want to hear more.'

While Kate was busy arranging the cups of a little tea-service that did duty in her dressing-room, Nina walked impatiently to and fro, talking with rapidity all the time.

'The man is a greater fool than I thought him, and mistakes his native weakness of mind for originality. If you had heard the imbecile nonsense he talked to me for political shrewdness, and when he had shown me what a very poor creature he was, he made me the offer of himself! This was so far honest and above-board. It was saying in so many words, "You see, I am a bankrupt." Now, I don't like bankrupts, either of mind or money. Could he not have seen that he who seeks my favour must sue in another fashion?'

'And so you refused him?' said Kate, as she poured out her tea.

'Far from it--I rather listened to his suit. I was so far curious to hear what he could plead in his behalf, that I bade him write it. Yes, dearest; it was a maxim of that very acute man my papa, that when a person makes you any dubious proposition in words, you oblige him to commit it to writing.

Not necessarily to be used against him afterwards, but for this reason--and I can almost quote my papa's phrase on the occasion--in the homage of his self-love, a man will rarely write himself such a knave as he will dare to own when he is talking, and in that act of weakness is the gain of the other party to the compact.'

'I don't think I understand you.'

'I'm sure you do not; and you have put no sugar in my tea, which is worse.

Do you mean to say that your clock is right, and that it is already nigh seven? Oh dear! and I, who have not told you one-half of my news, I must go and dress. I have a certain green silk with white roses which I mean to wear, and with my hair in that crimson Neapolitan net, it is a toilet _a la_ minute.'

'You know how it becomes you,' said Kate, half slyly.

'Of course I do, or in this critical moment of my life I should not risk it. It will have its own suggestive meaning too. It will recall _ce cher_ Cecil to days at Baia, or wandering along the coast at Portici. I have known a fragment of lace, a flower, a few bars of a song, do more to link the broken chain of memory than scores of more laboured recollections; and then these little paths that lead you back are so simple, so free from all premeditation. Don't you think so, dear?'

'I do not know, and if it were not rude, I'd say I do not care?'

'If my cup of tea were not so good, I should be offended, and leave the room after such a speech. But you do not know, you could not guess, the interesting things that I could tell you,' cried she, with an almost breathless rapidity. 'Just imagine that deep statesman, that profound plotter, telling me that they actually did not wish to capture Donogan--that they would rather that he should escape!'

'He told you this?'

'He did more: he showed me the secret instructions to his police creatures--I forget how they are called--showing what they might do to connive at his escape, and how they should--if they could--induce him to give some written pledge to leave Ireland for ever.'

'Oh, this is impossible!' cried Kate.

'I could prove it to you, if I had not just sent off the veritable bit of writing by post. Yes, stare and look horrified if you like; it is all true.

I stole the piece of paper with the secret directions, and sent it straight to Donogan, under cover to Archibald Casey, Esq., 9 Lower Gardner Street, Dublin.'

'How could you have done such a thing?'

'Say, how could I have done otherwise. Donogan now knows whether it will become him to sign this pact with the enemy. If he deem his life worth having at the price, it is well that _I_ should know it.'

'It is then of yourself you were thinking all the while.'

'Of myself and of him. I do not say I love this man; but I do say his conduct now shall decide if he be worth loving. There's the bell for dinner. You shall hear all I have to say this evening. What an interest it gives to life, even this much of plot and peril! Short of being with the rebel himself, Kate, and sharing his dangers, I know of nothing could have given me such delight.'

She turned back as she left the door, and said, 'Make Mr. Walpole take you down to dinner to-day; I shall take Mr. O'Shea's arm, or your brother's.'

The address of Archibald Casey, which Nina had used on this occasion, was that of a well-known solicitor in Dublin, whose Conservative opinions placed him above all suspicion or distrust. One of his clients, however--a certain Mr. Maher--had been permitted to have letters occasionally addressed to him to Casey's care; and Maher, being an old college friend of Donogan's, afforded him this mode of receiving letters in times of unusual urgency or danger. Maher shared very slightly in Donogan's opinions. He thought the men of the National party not only dangerous in themselves, but that they afforded a reason for many of the repressive laws which Englishmen pa.s.sed with reference to Ireland. A friendship of early life, when both these young men were college students, had overcome such scruples, and Donogan had been permitted to have many letters marked simply with a D., which were sent under cover to Maher. This facility had, however, been granted so far back as '47, and had not been renewed in the interval, during which time the Archibald Casey of that period had died, and been succeeded by a son with the same name as his father.

When Nina, on looking over Donogan's note-book, came upon this address, she saw also some almost illegible words, which implied that it was only to be employed as the last resort, or had been so used--a phrase she could not exactly determine what it meant. The present occasion--so emergent in every way--appeared to warrant both haste and security; and so, under cover to S.

Maher, she wrote to Donogan in these words:--