"Day before yesterday, she tells me. They were married at Bliss." "Well, I should say it was 'Bliss' for Kitty Comyn that _she_ is not Mrs. Harshaw--too," I was about to add, but that would be going rather far. "And what did you want to bring that girl over here for?" "Mrs. Daly, I have told you,--I thought she loved him." "And what of his love for her?" "Good heavens! you don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he has married! _That_ was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to be the deuce of a lot worse than he is to deserve that." Had it occurred to him, I put it to Cecil Harshaw, to ask himself what the saving of his precious cousin might have cost the girl who was to have been offered up to that end? "You leave out one small feature of the case," said Harshaw, with a sick and burning look that made me drop my eyes, old woman as I am. "I love her myself so well that, by Heaven! if she had wanted Micky or any other man, she should have had him, if that was what her heart was set upon. But I didn't believe it was. I wanted her to know the truth, and, hang it! I couldn't write it to her. I couldn't peach on Micky; but I wanted to smash things. I wanted something to happen. Maybe I didn't do the right thing, but I had to do something." I couldn't tell him just what I thought of him at that moment, but I did say to him that he had some very simple ideas for an end-of-the-century young Englishman. At which he smiled sweetly, and said it was one of his simple ideas that Kitty need not be informed who or what her successor was, or how promptly she had been succeeded. "But just now you said you wanted her to know the truth." "Not the whole truth. Great Scott! she knows enough. No need to rub it in." "She knows just enough about this to misunderstand, perhaps. In justice to yourself--she heard you beating about the bush--do you want her to misunderstand you?" "Oh, hang me! I don't expect her to understand me, or even tolerate me, yet. Mine is a waiting race, Mrs. Daly." "Very well; you can wait," I said. "But news like this will not wait. She will be obliged to hear it; you don't know how or where she may hear it. Better let her hear it first in as decent a way as possible."