The thought troubled her after she had left them together for the coffee and cigars. She had believed for a long time, as she had told Frank in the rose-garden, that Dermott was in Carolina on some business connected with Ravenel, and she had an instinct that the affair was to be brought to a head to-night. From her place in the hall she could see that Dermott had brought his chair around to Frank's side at the table, and she heard him say: "You know--or probably, with your celestial indifference to business affairs, Ravenel, you don't know that there is a small piece of land on the other side of the Silver Fork which belongs to your estate. In looking up some old titles I discovered it. It's like this." He drew a note-book from his pocket, drawing as he talked. "Here's Loon Mountain. Here's the Silver Fork. Here's the Way-Home River. Ye've the right, I discover, to the land marked R. It's, as you know, of small value to you, and I'm wanting it. It's a vagary of mine. I may be going to raise eagles on it." [Illustration] At the words, Katrine, who had been retuning an old guitar, took alarm and was alert on the instant. Striking it quickly, insistently, she came to the door of the dining-room, which framed her beauty like a picture. "I'm going to sing you an Irish song, a real Irish song!" she cried, gayly, touching the strings. The men turned, and Francis, with the land on the other side of the Silver Fork clear out of his mind at sight of her, came near the doorway where she stood. "Come all ye men and fair maids And listen to my song, I'll sing of Bloomin' Caroline, Who never did a wrong. SHE Beats the fragrant roses, She's admired by all aroun'. They call her Bloomin' Caroline, Of Edinboro Town." She played an interlude carelessly. "Young Henry, being a Highland lad, A-courting her he came, And when her parents heard of it They did not like the same. so She bundled up her costly robes, The stairs came tripping down, And away went Bloomin' Caroline From Edinboro Town." Dermott had risen and stood by the far window, looking into the night. Unseen by him, she touched Frank on the sleeve. "Do not do anything he asks you to do to-night," she whispered, with great intensity, and in a minute more was back at the singing. "They had not been in London For scarcely half a year--" and before the song ended the two men were joining the refrain, taken out of themselves by her beauty and charm. For nearly a week after this she saw neither of them again, but her honest soul was fretted by the word she had given against a true friend; so, when she saw Dermott riding along the river-bank, she called to him from the rocks upon which she sat. "Dermott McDermott," she cried, "come here!" He rode through the ferns and undergrowth toward her, as she stood looking up at him with fearless eyes.