"There now! you have got it out of me; and I wish I had bit my tongue out first. I sometimes think—that I mayn't sin!—that you have a bad angel in you."
"I am glad you told me this," I said gently. "Do not reproach yourself for having done so, I beg. Your uncle has been misled by what he has heard of my family, who are all more or less insane. Far from being mad, I am actually the only rational man named Legge in the three kingdoms. I will prove this to you, and at the same time keep your indiscretion in countenance, by telling you something I ought not to tell you. It is this. I am not here as an invalid or a chance tourist. I am here to investigate the miracle. The Cardinal, a shrewd and somewhat erratic man, selected mine from all the long heads at his disposal to come down here, and find out the truth of Father Hickey's story. Would he have entrusted such a task to a madman, think you?"
"The truth of—who dared to doubt my uncle's word? And so you are a spy, a dirty informer."
I started. The adjective she had used, though probably the commonest expression of contempt in Ireland, is revolting to an Englishman.
"Miss Hickey," I said: "there is in me, as you have said, a bad angel. Do not shock my good angel—who is a person of taste—quite away from my heart, lest the other be left undisputed monarch of it. Hark! The chapel bell is ringing the angelus. Can you, with that sound softening the darkness of the village night, cherish a feeling of spite against one who admires you?"
"You come between me and my prayers" she said hysterically, and began to sob. She had scarcely done so when I heard voices without. Then Langan and the priest entered.
"Oh, Phil," she cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear——" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have felled a poplar-tree.
"Murdher!" exclaimed the priest. "What are you doin, Phil?"
"He's an informer," sobbed Kate. "He came down here to spy on you, uncle, and to try and show that the blessed miracle was a makeshift. I knew it long before he told me, by his insulting ways. He wanted to make love to me."