"Yes, Kate, it is, but how do you know it?" "Midge told me." "Daisy!" he turned round and gave me a piercing look. "Why, I never hinted anything of the sort to her." "No, but she found it out; and what do you want to go to Rome for, Cornelius?" "To study, Kate. I have been too homely, too simple, and that is why I am slighted; I should like to go, to study, to try the historic style: but where is the use to talk of all this?" He sighed profoundly. "The historic style," cried Miss O'Reilly, kindling; "Cornelius, you have hit the true thing at last: depend upon it you have. Of course you have been too humble! give them something bold and dashing, and let us see what they'll say to that! Go to Rome, Cornelius, go to Rome." "The means, Kate, the means!" "Bless the boy! As if I had not money." "Oh! Kate! you have done more than enough for me as it is," he replied, crimsoning; "it makes my blood boil to think that I shall soon be twenty- five--" "Nonsense!" she interrupted hastily, "will you go to Rome, study the great masters, see all that painting has achieved of most glorious, become a great painter yourself--or stay at home and plod on?" His varying countenance told how strong was the temptation: his look lit, his colour came and went like that of a girl. "Yes or no?" decisively said Kate. "Well, then,--yes," he replied desperately; "I know it is mean, but I cannot help it, the thought of it has for weeks kept me awake at night, and haunted me day after day." "And you never told me," reproachfully interrupted his sister, "and never would if Midge had not found it out!" He eluded the reproach by asking me how I had found it out. I could not satisfy him; instinct had guided me more than knowledge; the word Rome, uttered with stifled sigh; an impatient declaration that there was nothing to be done here; a long lingering over old engravings of which the originals were in Italy, were the signs which, often repeated and united to my intimate acquaintance with every change of his face, had showed me the secret thought of his heart. "You must go at once," resolutely said Kate; "can you be ready next week?" "I could be ready to-morrow," replied Cornelius, with eyes that lit. There was a pang which he saw not on his sister's face; my heart fell to see how eager he was to go from us. Unconscious of this he continued-- "The sooner I go the better, is it not, Kate? for then, you know, I shall return the sooner, too." "Very true," she sighed; and his departure was fixed for the following week.