"She is _not_ my aunt," with a little frown of distaste; "she is nothing to me so far as blood is concerned. Oh! Freddy." She stops close to him, and gives him a grief-stricken glance. "I wish my poor father had been alive when first you saw me. That we could have met for the first time in the old home. It was shabby--faded"--her face paling now with intense emotion. "But you would have known at once that it _had been_ a fine old place, and that the owner of it----" She breaks down, very slightly, almost imperceptibly, but Monkton understands that even one more word is beyond her. "That the owner of it, like St. Patrick, came of decent people," quotes he with an assumption of gaiety he is far from feeling. "My good child, I don't want to see _anyone_ to know that of you. You carry the sign manual. It is written in large characters all over you." "Yet I wish you had known me before my father died," says she, her grief and pride still unassuaged. "He was so unlike anybody else. His manners were so lovely. He was offered a baronetcy at the end of that Whiteboy business on account of his loyalty--that nearly cost him his life--but he refused it, thinking the old name good enough without a handle to it." "Kavanagh, we all know, is a good name." "If he had accepted that title he would have been as--the same--as your father!" There is defiance in this sentence. "_Quite_ the same!" "No, no, he would not," her defiance now changes into, sorrowful honesty. "Your father has been a baronet for _centuries_, my father would have only been a baronet for a few years." "For centuries!" repeats Mr. Monkton with an alarmed air. There is a latent sense of humor (or rather an appreciation of humor) about him that hardly endears him to the opposite sex. His wife, being Irish, condones it, because she happens to understand it, but there are moments, we all know, when even the very best and most appreciative women refuse to understand _anything_. This is one of them. "Condemn my father if you will," says Mr. Monkton, "accuse him of all the crimes in the calendar, but for _my_ sake give up the belief that he is the real and original Wandering Jew. Debrett--Burke--either of those immaculate people will prove to you that my father ascended his throne in----" "You can laugh at me if you like, Freddy," says Mrs. Monkton with severity tempered with dignity; "but if you laughed until this day month you couldn't make me forget the things that make me unhappy." "I don't want to," says Mr. Monkton, still disgracefully frivolous. "_I'm_ one of the things, and yet----" "Don't!" says his wife, so abruptly, and with such an evident determination to give way to mirth, coupled with an equally strong determination to give way to tears, that he at once lays down his arms.