"I wanted to help him if I could, and I think I'll be able to do it--I've
worked it all out," Kitty added eagerly, with a glint of steel in the
gold of her eyes and a fantastic kind of wisdom in her look.

"Kitty," said her mother severely and anxiously, "it's madness
interfering with other people's affairs--of that kind. It never was
any use."

"This will be the exception to the rule," returned Kitty. "There she
is"--again she flicked a hand towards the other room--"after they've been
parted five years. Well, she came after she read my letter to her, and
after I'd read that unopened letter to him, which made me know how to put
it all to her. I've got intuition--that's Celtic and mad," she added,
with her chin thrusting out at her mother, to whom the Irish that her
husband had been, which was so deep in her daughter, was ever a mystery
to her, and of which she was more or less afraid.

"I've got a plan, and I believe--I know--it will work," Kitty continued.
"I've been thinking and thinking, and if there's trouble between them; if
he says he isn't going on with her till he's made his fortune; if he
throws that unopened letter in her face, I'll bring in my invention to
deal with the problem, and then you'll see! But all this fuss for a
little tiny button of a thing like that in there--pshaw! Mr. Crozier is
worth a real queen with the beauty of one of the Rhine maidens. How he
used to tell that story of the Rhinegold--do you remember? Wasn't it
grand? Well, I am glad now that he's going--yes, whatever trouble there
may be, still he is going. I feel it in my heart."

She paused, and her eyes took on a sombre tone. Presently, with a
slight, husky pain in her voice, like the faint echo of a wail, she went