will be no one but ourselves, but to-morrow we will have some guests, among them several young men worth your while." The tone was significant, as if her step-son did not count at all, and Dainty's heart sank as she turned away, leaving her alone with Sheila Kelly, the Irish maid. "Shure, ye have but twinty minutes, miss, to make yer twilight, so best give me yer kays, and let me unpack whilst ye bathe," she said, in broadest brogue. Dainty had conceived an instant aversion to the coarse-mouthed, sly-looking Irish girl, so she answered, quietly: "You may bring me some flowers for my corsage—some of those pink roses I saw as we drove in—while I unpack the trunk myself." [22] [22] CHAPTER IV. THE OLD MONK. THE OLD MONK. The ill-looking maid flounced away, thinking resentfully that the pretty young lady was afraid to trust her with her keys, while Dainty, whose only reason had been an unwillingness to expose her simple wardrobe, proceeded to lay out a gown for the evening—a delicately embroidered white cashmere that no one would have suspected had been cleverly made over from her mother's bridal trousseau. While she was dressing her hair with deft fingers, she was startled by a very unpleasant sound—a series of harsh, hacking coughs—seeming to proceed from the room next her own. She thought: "Some one is ill in there. What a terribly consumptive cough, poor soul!" Presently Sheila hurried in with a wealth of roses glistening with the fresh-fallen evening dew, and after thanking her, Dainty asked, curiously: "Is there some one ill in the next room?" "Shure, miss, there's nobuddy in the next room at all, at all, and not a sick crathur in the house. Why is it ye thought so?" "I heard some one coughing in there—a tight, hacking cough, like some one in the last stages of consumption," Dainty answered; and instantly
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