"Well, it's a very pleasing, satisfactory letter, Nelly," said the Colonel, "and I am heartily glad to hear so good an account from your son. Eh, Kate, is there a postscript?" "No; but I was reading over the concluding part--it is rather confused--Corporal Morrisson, appears to write for Dennis in the third person, and then Dennis himself comes in again, in the first person; but, dear nurse, I congratulate you, with all my heart, I think my foster-brother will now get on remarkably well." "Sorra fear iv him now. Sure there was always luck in the Captin's face, an' he'll be back yet wid a pocket full iv goold, and set us all right, I pray, God, amin. Now I'll just get the specks, an' read it all over meself, sure I can make it out beautiful afther Miss Kate readin' it." And so after a few more ejaculations, nurse retired. "It is very curious," began the Colonel. "That Captain Egerton did not write himself," interrupted Kate, quickly. "Yes, I cannot understand it, that letter indicates the kindliest feelings towards us, and yet I wonder he would not wish for some more direct communication with us, than through Dennis O'Toole." "Do letters ever go astray?" "Oh, scarcely; this one you see has arrived safe, but what surprises me is that he enclosed it without a line." "Indolence about writing, I suppose," said Kate, with a sigh. "But now I have the address, I shall certainly write." "Will you, dear grandpapa?" "Well, perhaps it would be better, decidedly--let me see what days the Indian mail leaves, we can find it out at the post-office; you must remind me, my love." "Yes, grandpapa." Then she went to the piano, and played dreamily for a long time, seeing neither notes or music, but a tableau--Dennis O'Toole and Captain Egerton, while the words of the latter "I will not have Kate Vernon's foster brother, a drunkard," seemed to meet her eye, wherever she turned it, and brought the speaker too vividly before her. One of Egerton's most distinguishing characteristics was a chivalrous delicacy of feeling towards women, generally; Kate had often observed it, with silent, but profound approbation, and she could well imagine the tender consideration with which he would treat even a dog that had belonged to one he loved, and something whispered to her that she was this one--it was but very rarely that such a thought flashed across her mind. Yet although she felt that the course of probabilities held out little or no chance of their again meeting till the lapse of many years had fixed their destinies wide apart, still the conviction that she was loved and not forgotten, thrilled through her heart, with an ecstasy so exquisite, so strange that she shrunk from it, startled at the depths of her own nature, thus revealed, even while she thanked God that he had never become necessary to her happiness.