"Father," she said, trying to look into my face, "it is not that. You know you will not lose me! There is something else the matter. There is something you are hiding from me! Ah! Jim went in a cab, and----" "Jim is all right." I answered, feeling her hand fall from my arm. "In that way at any rate." "Then I am not afraid," she answered stoutly, "if you and Jim are all right." "Look here, Kitty," I said, making up my mind, "sit down, I want to talk to you." And she did sit down, and I told her all. With some girls it might not have been the best course; but Kitty is not like most of the girls I meet nowadays--of whom one half are blue stockings, with no more fitness for the duties of wives and mothers than the statuettes in a shop window, and the other half are misses in white muslin, who are always giggling pertly or sitting with their thumbs in their mouths. Kitty is a companion, a helpmeet, God bless her! She knows that Wellington did not fight at Blenheim, and she does not think that Lucknow is in the Crimea. She knows so much, though she knows no Greek and she loves dancing--her very eyes dance at the thought of it. But she would rather sit at home with the man she loves than waltz at Marlborough House. And if she has not learned a little fortification on the sly, and does not know how many men stand between Jim and his company--I am a Dutchman! Lord! when I see a man marry a doll with a pretty face--not that Kitty has not a pretty face, and a sweet one too, no thanks to her father--I wonder whether he has considered what it will be to sit opposite my lady at, say, twenty thousand nine hundred meals on an average! That is the test, sir. So I told Kitty all, and the way she took it showed me that I was right. "What?" she exclaimed, when I had finished the story, to which she had listened, with her face turned from me, and her arm on the mantelpiece, "is that all, father?" "My dear," I said sadly, "you do not understand." I remembered how often I had heard--and sometimes noticed--that women's ideas of honour differ from men's. "Understand!" she retorted, turning upon me, fiery hot. "I understand that you think Jim has done this mean, miserable, wretched thing. Father," she continued, with sudden gravity, and she laid both her hands on my shoulders, so that her brave eyes looked into my eyes, "if three people came to you and told you that I had gone into your bedroom and taken money from the cash-box in your cupboard to pay a bill of mine, and that when I had done it I had kept it from you, and told stories about it--if three, four, five people told you that they had seen me do it, would you believe them?" "No, Kitty," I said, smiling against my will, "not though five angels told me so, my dear. I know you too well." "And, sir, though five angels told me this, I would not believe it! Do you think I do not know him--and love him?"