‘But why should she assume I must be her slave?’ cried he aloud, in a sort of defiance. ‘I have shown her no such preference, nor made any advances that would show I want to win her favour. Without denying that she is beautiful, is it so certain it is the kind of beauty I admire? She has scores of fascinations--I do not deny it; but should I say that I trust her? And if I should trust her and love her too, where must it all end in? I do not believe in her theory that love will transform a fellow of my mould into a hero, not to say that I have my own doubt if she herself believes it. I wonder if Kate reads her more clearly? Girls so often understand each other by traits we have no clue to; and it was Kate who asked her, almost in tone of entreaty, “to spare me,” to save me from a hopeless passion, just as though I were some peasant-boy who had set his affection on a princess. Is that the way, then, the world would read our respective conditions? The son of a ruined house or the guest of a beggared family leaves little to choose between! Kate--the world--would call my lot the better of the two. The man’s chance is not irretrievable, at least such is the theory. Those half-dozen fellows, who in a century or so contrive to work their way up to something, make a sort of precedent, and tell the others what they might be if they but knew how. ‘I’m not vain enough to suppose I am one of these, and it is quite plain that she does not think me so.’ He pondered long over this thought, and then suddenly cried aloud, ‘Is it possible she may read Joe Atlee in this fashion? is that the stuff out of which she hopes to make a hero?’ There was more bitterness in this thought than he had first imagined, and there was that of jealousy in it too that pained him deeply. Had she preferred either of the two Englishmen to himself, he could have understood and, in a measure, accepted it. They were, as he called them, ‘swells.’ They might become, he knew not what. The career of the Saxon in fortune was a thing incommensurable by Irish ideas; but Joe was like himself, or in reality less than himself, in worldly advantages.