‘Except that there is not one so poor as to ask aid from me,’ added Nina, as she took the document, glanced at the writing, and placed it in her pocket.
As they separated for the night, and Dick trotted up the stairs at Atlee’s side, he said, ‘I don’t think, after all, my ten pounds is so safe as I fancied.’
‘Don’t you?’ replied Joe. ‘My impressions are all the other way, Dick. It is her courtesy that alarms me. The effort to captivate where there is no stake to win, means mischief. She’ll make me in love with her whether I will or not.’ The bitterness of his tone, and the impatient bang he gave his door as he passed in, betrayed more of temper than was usual for him to display, and as Dick sought his room, he muttered to himself, ‘I’m glad to see that these over-cunning fellows are sure to meet their match, and get beaten even at the game of their own invention.’
CHAPTER LXXXI
AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT
It was no uncommon thing for the tenants to address petitions and complaints in writing to Kate, and it occurred to Nina as not impossible that some one might have bethought him of entreating her intercession in their favour. The look of the letter, and the coarse wax, and the writing, all in a measure strengthened this impression, and it was in the most careless of moods she broke the envelope, scarcely caring to look for the name of the writer, whom she was convinced must be unknown to her.
She had just let her hair fall freely down on her neck and shoulders, and was seated in a deep chair before her fire, as she opened the paper and read, ‘Mademoiselle Kostalergi.’ This beginning, so unlikely for a peasant, made her turn for the name, and she read, in a large full hand, the words ‘DANIEL DONOGAN.’ So complete was her surprise, that to satisfy herself there was no trick or deception, she examined the envelope and the seal, and reflected for some minutes over the mode in which the document had come to her hands. Atlee’s story was a very credible one: nothing more likely than that the boy was charged to deliver the letter at the castle, and simply sought to spare himself so many miles of way, or it might be that he was enjoined to give it to the first traveller he met on his road to Kilgobbin. Nina had little doubt that if Atlee guessed or had reason to know the writer, he would have treated the letter as a secret missive which would give him a certain power over her.
These thoughts did not take her long, and she turned once more to the letter. ‘Poor fellow,’ said she aloud, ‘why does he write to me?’ And her own voice sent back its surmises to her; and as she thought over him standing on the lonely road, his clasped hands before him, and his hair wafted wildly back from his uncovered head, two heavy tears rolled slowly down her cheeks and dropped upon her neck. ‘I am sure he loved me—I know he loved me,’ muttered she, half aloud. ‘I have never seen in any eye the same expression that his wore as he lay that morning in the grass. It was not veneration, it was genuine adoration. Had I been a saint and wanted worship, there was the very offering that I craved—a look of painful meaning, made up of wonder and devotion, a something that said: take what course you may, be wilful, be wayward, be even cruel, I am your slave. You may not think me worthy of a thought, you may be so indifferent as to forget me utterly, but my life from this hour has but one spell to charm, one memory to sustain it. It needed not his last words to me to say that my image would lay on his heart for ever. Poor fellow, I need not have been added to his sorrows, he has had his share of trouble without me!’
It was some time ere she could return to the letter, which ran thus:—