'It would be entirely superfluous,' replied Wogan with decision, 'since the thing's done with.' 'But is it?' asked Kelly. 'Is it, Nick? Look you here. We thought it was done with a year ago, and up springs Mr. Scrope at Avignon. Mr. Scrope does his work and there's not the end of it. For I am carried here and so my very betrothal is another consequence. It is as though her ladyship had presented me to Rose. Well, how are we to know it's done with now? If it ends here it is very well. But, d'ye see, Nick, it was after all not the most honourable business in the world, and am I to make this great profit out of it? Well, perhaps my fears confuse my judgment. I am all fears to-day, Nick,' and he stopped for a moment and clapped his hand into his pocket. 'I'll confess to you a very childish thing,' said he. 'Look!' and out of his pocket he drew a pistol. 'What's that for?' asked Nick. 'It's loaded,' replied Kelly. 'I went up to my room, after the little girl had taken me, and loaded it and slipped it into my pocket,' and he began to laugh, perhaps something awkwardly. 'For, you see, since she prizes me, why I am grown altogether valuable.' He put back the pistol in his pocket. 'But don't misunderstand me, Nick. The new fears are quite overbalanced by a new confidence. Sure, it's not the future I am afraid of.' 'I understand,' said Wogan gravely. 'It's what's to come.' 'Yes, that's it,' said Kelly. Being afraid, and being a man of honour, Kelly did nothing, said nothing on the head of his old love affair, and trembled with apprehension of he knew not very well what. A path of flowers stretched before him, but a shadow walked on it, a tall, handsome shadow, yet unfriendly. It is Mr. Wogan's firm belief, based on experience, that a woman always finds everything out. The only questions are, when, and how will she take it? Sometimes it is a letter in the pocket of an old coat which the dear charitable creature is giving to a poor devil of a chairman. Sometimes it is a glance at a rout, which she shoots flying. Now it is a trinket, or a dead flower in a book, or a line marked in a poem, but there is always a trail of the past, and woman never misses it. George's wooing seemed as flowery as the meadows about Avignon, white with fragrant narcissus, or as the gardens purple with Judas trees in spring. Rose was all _parfait amour_, and, in her eyes, Mr. Kelly was a hero, a clerical Montrose, or a Dundee of singular piety. Wogan has known women more zealous for the Cause, such as her Grace of Buckingham, or Madame de Mezieres, who had ever a private plot of her own running through the legs of our schemes, like a little dog at a rout, and tripping us up. To Miss Townley George was the Cause, and the Cause was George, so that, in truth, she was less of a Jacobite than a Georgite.