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The following morning, as she stood clipping the roses, Dermott McDermott leaned over the hedge.
"Will you marry me, Katrine?" he said, with no salutation whatever.
"Will you wait," she inquired, "till I've finished cutting the roses?"
"But I'm in earnest," he announced.
She held the clippers in her gloved hand to shade the sun from her eyes, regarding him in her friendly, companionable way.
"Dermott," she said, "what makes you such a liar?" The word as she spoke it of him seemed almost a compliment.
"You've been associating, I fear, with some narrow and confined spirit, who repeats things exactly as they occurred. I've more imagination!" he explained, with a laugh. "Why should I not change things a bit?" he continued. "Every Irishman's got to have one of three vices: whiskey, love-making, or lying. Mention me one of any distinction who had none of these!"
"There was St. Patrick," Katrine suggested, a laugh held under her eyelids.
"He's so remote you can prove nothing against him. Take another that I have later news of."
"Wellington."
"He was never an Irishman."
"And Burke."
"And I'm thinkin', begging your pardon, Mistress Katrine, there was a lady to be explained away in his case. No," he said, waving her suggestion far from him, "all the Irish are alike. They've, as I say, one of three vices. I lie, that's why I'm so interestin', especially to the ladies. Suppose I say: 'Old Mrs. O'Hooligan was tripped by a dog in the lane yesterday!' Who cares? Not one soul in a thousand! But instead, with a gesture: 'Did ye hear of the startling adventure of Mrs. O'Hooligan? She was coming home at midnight from a sick friend's' (it's well to throw in a few sympathetic touches if ye can). 'Suddenly an animal, a strange animal, came by, something like a mad bull' (of course you can enlarge or diminish the animal as required; in the mist of night I have found a black cat very telling). 'She saw the vision quite plainly. It passed, touched her, there was a word in the air whose significance she was unable to determine, and in the morning the friend was well—or dead.' For conversational purposes it makes no difference."
He wore a broad smile as he spoke, looking down at her with great love and devotion.
"Ye see, Mistress Katrine, the ladies like a little exaggeration. There's Mrs. Ravenel likes me fine, and says it's my temperament; and Peggy of the Poplars is crazy about me; and hundreds in the two continents who'd marry me at a second's notice. I'm a great lover," he laughed somewhat uneasily, keeping his eyes averted, and adding, "when I don't care! Ye see, a woman doesn't mind a bit of exaggeration in a man's love-making," he went on. "Now there was Antony, who threw a world away. What's that! One world! I'd tell her I'd throw away a universe of worlds. Why not be extravagant! It's all," he laughed again softly, "it's all 'hot air,' anyway."
"And yet you're a truthful person, Dermott McDermott. There's none can tell the truth more bravely or with greater nicety than you," Katrine broke in.
"When I've need of it, and it's an affair of men," he answered. "Oh, I still know Truth when I meet her. We've not fallen out altogether, but I stick to it that she's very dry company. But this discussion, after all, is merely academic," he said, with a droll smile. "I have come to you in a perturbed state of mind. You have refused to marry me thousands of times, it is true; but I am noble, and forgive. To-morrow I am having some delicacies sent me from the North. My cook is a duffer. Now, I thought, why can't Katrine Dulany and I have a little dinner, with Nora to prepare it, Mr. Ravenel asked in, and all be happy together?"
"I don't think Mr. Ravenel can come. There are visitors at Ravenel House," Katrine explained.
"He can-and I think he will-leave them for one evening," Dermott answered.
"I'm the only human being alive that ye've not hypnotized, Frank Ravenel!" Dermott cried, with a laugh, as the three of them sat at dinner at the Old Lodge the evening following this talk. "The only person ye've ever known, probably, who did not fall under the charm of the ways and the eyes of you." There was flattery in this of such a subtle kind that Katrine looked quickly from one to the other, for with woman's intuition she had long since felt the antagonism between them.
"Ye see," Dermott went on, "I underrated the South when I came here. You Southerners understand people as I think no other folk on earth understand them. That's your great strength," he said, addressing himself entirely to Frank. "Now, in a business matter I might, though I'm by no means sure of it, get the better of you." His eyes were bland and frank as he spoke. "But where you would always have the advantage is in knowing the people you may trust. It's a great gift that. The greatest knowledge of all is to know people, and it seems to be an instinct with you, Mr. Ravenel!"
Again Katrine looked from one to the other, mystified, as Francis sat smiling under this flattery.
"Shouldn't there be accompanying laurel wreaths with this unsolicited testimonial, Mr. McDermott?" he inquired, with a laugh.
In a second Dermott took warning, left the subject, and was galloping over conversational fields furthest from compliments to Frank.
"About the trouble over your Senator here from North Carolina. I'd a talk with the President concerning him, and it was mentioned, though hiddenly, that the White House does not want him returned."
And later—
"The pork bill! Heavens! I saw McClenahan in the Senate about it, and I said to him: 'If ye stand for the pork bill, ye'll not be returned to the Senate next year. I'll see to it myself. I know your district. God! How I know it! You can buy every vote in that part of the land of the free and home of the brave for ten dollars, or less—and I've the money to do it.' He didn't vote for it." McDermott finished with a jolly laugh.
Again and again during the dinner he discussed his private affairs in this manner, deferring to Ravenel, flattering him by asking opinions on weighty subjects, listening to the answers with gloomy attentiveness, bewildering, fascinating, dominating, by a perfectly conscious use of every power he possessed.
At the mention of a coaching party which had passed Katrine's house the day before, with Frank driving four-in-hand, he added a note of gayety to the dinner, returning at the same time to the game he was playing with Frank.
"I never see ye drive, Ravenel," he cried, "but I think of the olden days. Ye've a style all your own when you hold the lines. Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I'm seized with rhyme." He stood silent, his eyes drawn together at the corners, his gaze concentrated, glass in hand, before he began with a hypnotic look and great lightness of bearing to recite, waiting every little while for the right word to come to him:
"I rather fancy that last!" he cried, repeating it:
"To you, Mr. Ravenel!" he cried, draining his glass.
"Thank you, McDermott," Francis answered, with a pleased smile, "you have, indeed, the gift of rhyme." And Katrine knew as Frank spoke that his distrust of Dermott had been laid aside for the present, and that he was in a state of mind to grant anything which Dermott might demand of him.
The thought troubled her after she had left them together for the coffee and cigars. She had believed for a long time, as she had told Frank in the rose-garden, that Dermott was in Carolina on some business connected with Ravenel, and she had an instinct that the affair was to be brought to a head to-night.
From her place in the hall she could see that Dermott had brought his chair around to Frank's side at the table, and she heard him say:
"You know—or probably, with your celestial indifference to business affairs, Ravenel, you don't know that there is a small piece of land on the other side of the Silver Fork which belongs to your estate. In looking up some old titles I discovered it. It's like this." He drew a note-book from his pocket, drawing as he talked. "Here's Loon Mountain. Here's the Silver Fork. Here's the Way-Home River. Ye've the right, I discover, to the land marked R. It's, as you know, of small value to you, and I'm wanting it. It's a vagary of mine. I may be going to raise eagles on it."
At the words, Katrine, who had been retuning an old guitar, took alarm and was alert on the instant. Striking it quickly, insistently, she came to the door of the dining-room, which framed her beauty like a picture.
"I'm going to sing you an Irish song, a real Irish song!" she cried, gayly, touching the strings. The men turned, and Francis, with the land on the other side of the Silver Fork clear out of his mind at sight of her, came near the doorway where she stood.
She played an interlude carelessly.
Dermott had risen and stood by the far window, looking into the night. Unseen by him, she touched Frank on the sleeve.
"Do not do anything he asks you to do to-night," she whispered, with great intensity, and in a minute more was back at the singing.
and before the song ended the two men were joining the refrain, taken out of themselves by her beauty and charm.
For nearly a week after this she saw neither of them again, but her honest soul was fretted by the word she had given against a true friend; so, when she saw Dermott riding along the river-bank, she called to him from the rocks upon which she sat.
"Dermott McDermott," she cried, "come here!"
He rode through the ferns and undergrowth toward her, as she stood looking up at him with fearless eyes.
"I've done something I want to tell you, something you won't like, for it was going against you; and it makes me feel that I've not been quite loyal to you, you that's always been so good to me, too." The quick tears filled her eyes as she spoke.
He dismounted to be nearer her, and, putting out his hand, said:
"There's nothing you could do that's not forgiven. You hold my heart in the hollow of your hand. What did ye do, child?"
"The other night when I saw you turning Mr. Ravenel the way you wanted by your flattery and your hypnotic presence, I knew ye wished him to do something for you. I knew when you told him how clever he was— cleverer than you were yourself —that it must be something very great to make you admit a thing like that. And when you were not near I warned him against selling you that land. I said: 'Don't do anything Dermott McDermott wants you to do to-night." Here she broke into a storm of weeping. "You see, he's been so kind to me," she explained.
Dermott stood looking at her with pity and admiration as he put his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Ye did just what was right, little lady; just the thing that any sweet, grateful woman should have done. You understood what I was doing, thought a friend might be cajoled wrongly, and warned him against it. I'm proud of ye for it!" he cried, with enthusiasm. "Proud of you!" he repeated. "And besides," he added, with a laugh, "it didn't make the slightest difference. He did it anyhow! We signed the papers to-day!"
"The papers for what?" she demanded.
"For that useless bit of land on the other side of the fork," he responded.
"Dermott," she said, "you play fair, don't you? You wouldn't take advantage of any one?"
"Wouldn't I?" he said. "If it were to help you, I'd outwit the deil himself, Lady Katrine."