Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turned upward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like a parenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the world alertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.
But he had many of the faults of his race, for with fine insight and ability to forecast events, he fell short in the execution of his brave schemes; failed to keep the respect of others after he had won it; accepted insufficient proof on all subjects, relying dangerously on a much-vaunted intuition, a fault in him which changed Katrine's whole life. In a way, he had become a power in
the newspaper world, and had, as she discovered, a knowledge of the private affairs of prominent people which seemed supernatural; and it was a habit of his to look over the names in a newspaper, remarking cheerfully at intervals:
"There's another man that I could put in jail."
But there was an unworded matter which gave Katrine a kinder feeling toward Barney than either her love for Nora or any past acquaintance between them might have done, and this was his admiration for Frank Ravenel.
If Barney had any knowledge, directly, through Nora, or indirectly through his intuition, of the interwovenness of Katrine's life with Ravenel's, he had the taste and the ability to conceal it.
But his literary temperament got the better of him where Katrine was concerned, and before a week was past he set up a hopeless passion for her, as she laughingly put it.
"He'd die for you, Miss Katrine," Nora explained one evening.
"Sure I don't doubt it for a minute, if there were enough people by to see him do it," Katrine answered, with Irish comprehension.
With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barney called "Her Irre