“Yes, I suppose so—­I do not know.  I only know she is a criminal.  That is shame enough.”

“And is that all ye came to tell me?” She was going to the bottom of it now.  This man was gripped in the tortures of the damned and could only be helped when he had emptied out his heart—­all of it, down to the very dregs.

“No, there is something else.  I wanted to speak to you about Masie.  I may go back to England in a few days and I am not satisfied to leave her unprotected.  She has no mother and you have no daughter—­would you look after her for me?  I have learned to love her very dearly—­and I am greatly disturbed over her future and who is to look after her.  Her father will not listen to any plans I might make for her, nor will he take proper care of her.  He thinks he does, but he lets her do as she pleases.  She will be a woman in a very short time, and I shudder when I think of the dangers which beset her.  A shop like Kling’s is no place for a child like Masie.”

Kitty had turned pale when Felix announced his probable departure, something to which she had not yet given a thought, but she heard him to the end.

“I will do all I can for Masie, but that can wait.  And now I’m goin’ to talk to ye as if ye were my John, and ye got to be patient with me, Mr. O’Day.  God knows I’d help ye in any way I could, but ye’ve got to help me a little so I can help ye the better.  May I go on?”

“Help!  How can I help?” he asked listlessly.

“By trustin’ me—­and I can be trusted, and so can John.  I found out some months ago that ye were Sir Felix O’Day, but ye never heard me blab it to any livin’ soul, nor did John either—­not even to Father Cruse.  I’ve watched ye go in and out all these months, and many a night, tired as I was, I didn’t get to sleep, worryin’ about ye until I’d heard ye shut yer door.  Ye said nothin’ to me and I could say nothin’ to ye.  I knew ye’d tell me when the time come and it has, with ye nigh crazy, and she on her way to Sing Sing.  What she’s been through since that night I brought her here, I don’t know—­but she’d ‘a’ broke your heart if ye’d seen her staggerin’ weak, followin’ me and John like a whipped dog.  I thought then she had got the worst of it, somehow, and that she hadn’t deserved what had been handed out to her, and John thought so, too.  What it was I didn’t know, but I’ve got somebody now who does know and who will tell me the truth, and I’m askin’ ye to give it to me straight.  If she was your wife she must be a lady, for ye wouldn’t ‘a’ married anybody else.  And if she was a lady, how has it happened that she is locked up in the Tombs, and that a gentleman like ye is working at Otto’s?  And before ye answer, remember that I’m not askin’ for meself, but for you and the poor woman ye tried to find to-day.”

His tired eyes had not left her own during the long outburst.  He had never doubted her sincerity nor her kindliness, but now, as he listened, there stole over him a yearning, strange in one so habitually reticent, to share with her the secret he had hidden all these months—­except from Father Cruse.