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This silenced him a bit. He stood rocking on his heels for a minute or more, and then, muttering something between his teeth which I could not make out, he continued his march up the stairs. A quarter of an hour later, Sir Nicolas himself drove up with the young American, and he hadn't been in the hotel two minutes before I'd told him what had passed and what I'd seen. Strange to say, he took it as calm as a man hearing of the weather.

"The fellow's a lunatic—that's what he is," he cried, while he began to dress for the opera; "she's told me his history, coming home. He's a drug- drinker, and what he remembers to-day he'll know nothing of to-morrow, or perhaps for a month or more. Ye needn't mind him no more than a toy-pistol. I have her word for it, and that's good enough for me."

"Then his cousin wasn't in Dublin three years ago?" asked I.

"Indeed and he was, and that's the humor of it. He left before my affair, d'ye see, and if they write him, it's a pretty tale of me he'll be telling. Bedad! I couldn't have wished it better if me own hands had the planning of it."

"I'm glad to hear that, sir," said I, "so long as the young lady doesn't listen."

"Listen! Not she. 'Tis easy for the ears to be shut when the heart is open. Sure, won't I be marrying her within the month? She's American, you must remember, and tied to nobody's apron-