While Kearney gave this letter to his daughter to read, he walked up and
down the room with his head bent and his hands deep in his pockets.

'I think I know the answer you'll send to this, papa,' said the girl,
looking up at him with a glow of pride and affection in her face. 'I do not
need that you should say it.'

'It will take fifty--no, not fifty, but five-and-thirty pounds to bring her
over here, and how is she to come all alone?'

Kate made no reply; she knew the danger sometimes of interrupting his own
solution of a difficulty.

'She's a big girl, I suppose, by this--fourteen or fifteen?'

'Over nineteen, papa.'

'So she is, I was forgetting. That scoundrel, her father, might come after
her; he'd have the right if he wished to enforce it, and what a scandal
he'd bring upon us all!'

'But would he care to do it? Is he not more likely to be glad to be
disembarrassed of her charge?'

'Not if he was going to sell her--not if he could convert her into money.'

'He has never been in England; he may not know how far the law would give
him any power over her.'

'Don't trust that, Kate; a blackguard always can find out how much is in