There was a silken rustle, then a beautiful woman with cheeks of satiny pink, dark hair, and eyes of pure Irish blue, moved to Lord O’More’s side, and catching his arm, shook him impatiently.

“Terence!  Have you lost your senses?” she cried.  “Didn’t you understand what the child said?  Look at her face!  See what she has!”

Lord O’More opened his eyes widely and sat up.  He did look at the Angel’s face intently, and suddenly found it so good that it was difficult to follow the next injunction.  He arose instantly.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.  “The fact is, I am leaving Chicago sorely disappointed.  It makes me bitter and reckless.  I thought you one more of those queer, useless people who have thrust themselves on me constantly, and I was careless.  Forgive me, and tell me why you came.”

“I will if I like you,” said the Angel stoutly, “and if I don’t, I won’t!”

“But I began all wrong, and now I don’t know how to make you like me,” said his lordship, with sincere penitence in his tone.

The Angel found herself yielding to his voice.  He spoke in a soft, mellow, smoothly flowing Irish tone, and although his speech was perfectly correct, it was so rounded, and accented, and the sentences so turned, that it was Freckles over again.  Still, it was a matter of the very greatest importance, and she must be sure; so she looked into the beautiful woman’s face.

“Are you his wife?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the woman, “I am his wife.”

“Well,” said the Angel judicially, “the Bird Woman says no one in the whole world knows all a man’s bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does.  What you think of him should do for me.  Do you like him?”

The question was so earnestly asked that it met with equal earnestness.  The dark head moved caressingly against Lord O’More’s sleeve.

“Better than anyone in the whole world,” said Lady O’More promptly.

The Angel mused a second, and then her legal tinge came to the fore again.

“Yes, but have you anyone you could like better, if he wasn’t all right?” she persisted.

“I have three of his sons, two little daughters, a father, mother, and several brothers and sisters,” came the quick reply.

“And you like him best?” persisted the Angel with finality.

“I love him so much that I would give up every one of them with dry eyes if by so doing I could save him,” cried Lord O’More’s wife.

“Oh!” cried the Angel.  “Oh, my!”

She lifted her clear eyes to Lord O’More’s and shook her head.

“She never, never could do that!” she said.  “But it’s a mighty big thing to your credit that she thinks she could.  I guess I’ll tell you why I came.”

She laid down the paper, and touched the portrait.

“When you were only a boy, did people call you Freckles?” she asked.

“Dozens of good fellows all over Ireland and the Continent are doing it today,” answered Lord O’More.