Both men scrutinized each other steadily for a short time, but at the game they were now playing Francis was by far the keener.

“Mother wrote me nearly six weeks ago about somebody’s suggesting such a plan for Miss Dulany.  Wait a minute,” he continued, feeling in his pockets, “here’s her letter now.”

He gave his mother’s screed to McDermott, determined that the Irishman should not suspect the part which he had taken in Katrine’s affairs, and was rewarded by seeing McDermott return the letter apparently convinced.

“Nick van Rensselaer!  So that’s the way of it,” he remarked.  “Josef simply wrote her to come, that everything had been arranged by some great lady.  There were no conditions save that she should write to her unknown benefactor once a month.  The money is to be repaid when Katrine becomes a great singer.

“It’s just as well—­just as well!” Dermott said, after a silence, peering into the cloud of smoke he had blown ceilingward, as though to foretell the future.  “Ye see, Mr. Ravenel, if she will so far honor me, I’m intending some day to marry Katrine Dulany.”

There was again the challenge of the eyes, but Frank’s training stood him well as he raised his brows with genuine surprise.  “So?” he said.  “I think no one suspected in Carolina.”  “I hope not,” McDermott returned.  “You see, she’s but a child; eighteen years!  And a man protects that age from mistakes, as you, of course, know.”

The lids came down over his inscrutable gray-blue eyes as McDermott spoke.

“And, besides, I have had so little to offer her.”  There was real humility in the tone now.  “When the Almighty gives special attention to the making of such a person as Katrine Dulany, it behooves the rest of us mortals to respect His handiwork, doesn’t it?  I’ve some poor gifts, some money, a nine-century-old name.  There’s a title, too, been lying loose in the family since sixteen hundred and I forget what year.  But I want her to be sure of herself.  As for the study with Josef, it will be good for her, but the idea of Katrine on the stage is an absurdity.  I’ve a cousin in Paris—­the Countess de Nemours, a very great lady, though I say it as shouldn’t,” he said, with a laugh, “whom I am hoping to interest in the little girl.  She’s no longer young.  By-the-way, perhaps you’ve met her!  Her miniature hangs in the hail of Ravenel House.”

“In the hall at Ravenel?” Francis repeated, in genuine surprise.

Dermott nodded.  “Under the sconces on the left of the mantel-shelf.”

“Ah!” Frank cried.  “I remember, a beautiful girl in green.  It was found among my father’s papers only last year.  It was a relic of his life abroad.”

“Yes,” Dermott answered, with a curious smile, “that’s just what it was.  A relic of his life abroad.  Well, good-bye and good luck to you,” he said, rising, and Francis noted anew the grace of movement, the distinctive pallor, the humor of the great gray eyes as McDermott turned suddenly to come back to him.  “Forgive me, Ravenel,” he said, taking his hat and stick from a self-abasing waiter, “for dragging you into my private affairs in the way I have done, but somehow I thought it might interest you to know of my love for Katrine,” and, humming an old song, he went his devious Celtic way.