O’Hagan bowed as no other man, though you search the courts of Europe, can bow. “Then, Captain O’Hagan, since you are a gentleman, please forget about the door-porter. Believe me, I have troubles enough without seeking new ones.” There was pathos in the words, in her low, quivering voice. “I cannot doubt it. And, since you know my family, you may know that its name stands stainless for seven generations. You should not be here, at this hour, alone. In the absence of a father, of a brother, accept my escort. It is in no way encumbent upon you to accept my friendship, though it would be devoted and disinterested.” She was biting her lip now, in pathetic perplexity; but there was a new confidence in the glance which she gave him. It was the glance of a woman who sorely lacked a friend, and into whose heart the conviction was stealing that heaven had sent her one. “You are more than kind, Captain O’Hagan.” Now she met his eyes frankly. Her decision was made. “I am—Lady Brian Dillon.” (“You see, Raymond,” he has since explained to me, “there was more than mere chance in my unaccountable decision to explore that passage. Fate, my boy—fate!”) He took the gloved hand which she offered with a pretty embarrassment, and bent over it in his unique, courtier fashion. “I have never met your husband, Lady Dillon. But his late father, Sir John, was one of my dearest friends. I regard you, now, as that dear friend’s daughter, and since Fate has brought us both here to-night, I regard your interests as a sacred charge. You are in trouble. How can I serve you?” ————— II. AT THE STAGE DOOR. I doubt if London could furnish another man—a father confessor excepted—who, in so brief a time, could have learnt from the young Lady Dillon so much of her history as did O’Hagan. Side by side, they paced up and down a comparatively quiet street dipping riverward, and the girl (for she was no more) confided in this man, whom, twenty minutes earlier, she had not known. Does not that argue eloquently for my friend? Does it not make amends for much that seems harsh in his nature? For although, alas! women often are deceived in men, a woman’s instincts can never err in such case as this; a true woman, as this one, never pours out the trouble with which her heart is bursting, to a knave—to a blackguard. I defy you to confute me. Be it remembered that, by a trick of Fate—or shall we say Providence?—these two had friends in common. Nor be it forgot that, for fifty miles north, south, east and west of Dunnamore, “the honour of an O’Hagan” is a form of oath. But, nevertheless, I maintain that there is something grandly and expansively human—something splendid and true—in the nature of a man whom at such brief acquaintance a good woman _knows_ to be worthy of her confidence. Don’t you agree with me?