"Kate,--I want to ask you a particular question."
"What question?"
"You must not suppose, let the answer be what it may, that it can make any difference between you and me."
"Oh,--I hope not," she replied trembling.
"It shall make none," he answered with all a master's assurance and authority. "Therefore you need not be afraid to answer me. Tidings have reached me on a matter as to which I ought to be informed."
"What matter? Oh Fred, you do so frighten me. I'll tell you anything I know."
"I have been told that--that your father--is alive." He looked down upon her and could see that her face was red up to her very hair. "Your mother once told me that she had never been certain of his death."
"I used to think he was dead."
"But now you think he is alive?"
"I think he is;--but I do not know. I never saw my father so as to remember him; though I do remember that we used to be very unhappy when we were in Spain."
"And what have you heard lately? Tell me the truth, you know."
"Of course I shall tell you the truth, Fred. I think mother got a letter, but she did not shew it me. She said just a word, but nothing more. Father Marty will certainly know if she knows."
"And you know nothing?"
"Nothing."
"I think I must ask Father Marty."
"But will it matter to you?" Kate asked.
"At any rate it shall not matter to you," he said, kissing her. And then again she was happy; though there had now crept across her heart the shadow of some sad foreboding, a foretaste of sorrow that was not altogether bitter as sorrow is, but which taught her to cling closely to him when he was there and would fill her eyes with tears when she thought of him in his absence.
On this day he had not found Mrs. O'Hara at the cottage. She had gone down to Liscannor, Kate told him. He had sent his boat back to the strand near that village, round the point and into the bay, as it could not well lie under the rocks at high tide, and he now asked Kate to accompany him as he walked down. They would probably meet her mother on the road. Kate, as she tied on her hat, was only too happy to be his companion. "I think," he said, "that I shall try and see Father Marty as I go back. If your mother has really heard anything about your father, she ought to have told me."