"I defy any one to say I have told anything," says Kelly, with much-injured innocence. "But I am quite prepared to hear my actions, as usual, grossly maligned. I am accustomed to it now. The benefit of the doubt is not for _me_." "There isn't a doubt," says Hermia. "Go on. I must try to bear it,"--meekly. "I know I am considered incapable of a pure motive." "Was it you drew back the curtain?" "Well, really, yes, I believe it was. I wanted my friend, you see, and I knew I should find him with the bangles. Yes; it was I drew the curtain." "Just what I should have expected from you," says Mrs. Herrick. "Ah! Thank you! Now at last you are beginning to see things in their true light, and to take my part," says Mr. Kelly, with exaggerated gratitude. "Now, indeed, I feel I have not lived in vain! You have, though at a late hour, recognized the extraordinary promptitude that characterizes my every action. While another might have been hesitating, I drew the curtain. I am seldom to be found wanting, I may, indeed, always be discovered just where----" "You _aren't_ wanting," interrupts Mrs. Herrick, with a sudden smile. "How can _that_ be," says Kelly, with reproachful sadness, "when I am generally to be found near you?" At this Hermia gives in, and breaks into a low soft laugh. "But I wish you had not told that story of Olga and Mr. Ronayne," she says, in a whisper, and with some regret. "You saw how badly Rossmoyne took it." "That is partly why I told it. I think you are wrong in trying to make that marriage: she would be happier with Ronayne." "For a month or two, perhaps." "Oh, make it _three_," says Kelly, satirically. "Surely the little winged god has so much staying power." "A few weeks ago you told me you did not believe in him at all." "I have changed all that." "Ah! _you_ can be fickle too." "A man is not necessarily fickle because when he discovers the only true good he leaves the bad and presses towards it. I think, too, his mentor," in a lowered tone, "should be the last to misjudge him." "Nothing is so lasting, at least, as riches," says Mrs. Herrick, with a chastened but unmistakable desire to change his mood. "Olga with unlimited means and an undeniable place in the world of society would be a happier Olga than as the wife of a country gentleman." "I don't agree with you; but you know best--_perhaps_. You speak your own sentiments, of course. A title is indispensable to you too, as well as to her?" His tone is half a question. "It counts," she says, slowly, trifling with firm though slender fingers with the grasses that are growing in the interstices of the marble. "Pshaw!" says Kelly. Rising with a vehemence foreign to him, he crosses to where Ulic Ronayne is standing alone. CHAPTER XXII. How Olga drowns a faithful servant--How Mr. Kelly conjures up a ghost--And how Monica, beneath the mystic moonbeams, grants the gift she first denies.