“I don’t see how I could have done otherwise,” she said musingly. “Evidently Mr. Macneillie sees exactly how things are. And what can you do for a couple of homeless waifs like that but give them your help and sympathy? A girl with no mother is in such a wretched plight as soon as her love troubles begin. Don’t I know exactly how my own mistakes and miseries came from that very cause? Tell me what you really think of Ralph Denmead?” “I like him,” said Max Hereford. “He seems an honest, straight-forward, clean-minded fellow, he has plenty of humour, too, in which perhaps Evereld is a trifle lacking, and just because he has a touch of the Welsh fire in him and is at times unreasonable and unpractical, as all Kelts are----” “Now, now,” exclaimed Mrs. Hereford with her irresistible laugh. “No dark hints about Kelts, we all know what that leads to.” “I was going to remark, if you won’t quite throttle me,” he continued suavely, “that marriages between Kelts and Saxons, though barbarously prohibited by the oppressive laws of the English conquerors when they annexed Ireland, always turn out eminently successful. That in fact the union of hearts is the thing to be aimed at.” “They are not actually betrothed yet, and won’t be until she is of age, and until he has made his way a little. Then of course there will be a battle royal with the Mactavish, but he will have no authority over her, and you and I, Max, will stand by her. She shall be married from Hollybrack quietly, and they will be able to live very comfortably for, according to Bride, she will be rich.” “I only hope her guardian is really trustworthy,” said Max Hereford. “I don’t altogether like what I heard of him the other day from old Marriott. But, of course, Marriott is one of those steady going old-fashioned solicitors who are excessively cautious, and it would be almost impossible for him to approve of a Company Promoter like Sir Matthew. He may be all right enough.” “We shall see,” said Mrs. Hereford with an expressive little gesture of the hands, “For my part I wouldn’t trust him for a moment, but you will say that is my Irish imagination, and of course I have no great knowledge of the man.” Bride O’Ryan, who had been more or less taken up with her own people during the past week, had guessed nothing at all as to what was going on. The two friends had both hitherto been somewhat young for their age, and they had never been the sort of girls given to premature talk as to lovers and love-making. Their heroes were either the patriots of the past or the great leaders of the present, and their school life had been too full of work and well-organised amusement to leave much time for desultory dreaming. Bride had of course heard of the life at the Mactavishs, but it had never entered her head that Ralph Denmead could ever be anything but Evereld’s adopted brother.