Muslin

XXIV

Then Alice heard that the baby was dead, and that a little money would be required to bury it. Another effort was made, the money was sent; and the calm of the succeeding weeks was only disturbed by an uneasy desire to see May back in Galway, and hear her say that her terrible secret was over and done with for ever. One day she was startled by a quick trampling of feet in the corridor, and May rushed into the room. She threw herself into Alice's arms and kissed her with effusion, with tears. The girls looked at each other long and nervously. One was pale and over-worn, her spare figure was buttoned into a faded dress, and her hair was rolled into a plain knot. The other was superb with health, and her face was full of rose-bloom. She was handsomely dressed in green velvet, and her copper hair flamed and flashed beneath a small bonnet with mauve strings.

'Oh, Alice, how tired and pale you look! You have been working too hard, and all for me! How can I thank you? I shall never be able to thank you—I cannot find words to tell you how grateful I am—but I am grateful, Alice, indeed I am.'

'I am sure you are, dear. I did my best for you, it is true; and thank heaven I succeeded, and no one knows—I do not think that anyone even suspects.'

'No, not a soul. We managed it very well, didn't we? And the Reverend Mother behaved splendidly—she just took the view that you said she would. She saw that no good would come of telling mamma about me when I made her understand that if a word were said my misfortune would be belled all over the country in double-quick time. But, Alice dear, I had a terrible time of it, two months waiting in that little lodging, afraid to go out for fear someone would recognize me; it was awful. And often I hadn't enough to eat, for when you are in that state you can't eat everything, and I was afraid to spend any money. You did your best to keep me supplied, dear, good guardian angel that you are.' Then the impulsive girl flung herself on Alice's shoulders, and kissed her. 'But there were times when I was hard up—oh, much more hard up than you thought I was, for I didn't tell you everything; if I had, you would have worried yourself into your grave. Oh, I had a frightful time of it! If one is married one is petted and consoled and encouraged; but alone in a lodging—oh, it was frightful.'

'And what about the poor baby?' said Alice.

'The poor little thing died, as I wrote you, about ten days after it was born. I nursed it, and I was sorry for it. I really was; but of course . . . well, it seems a hard thing to say, but I don't know what I should have done with it if it had lived. Life isn't so happy, is it, even under the best of circumstances?'

The conversation came to a sudden close. At last the nervous silence that intervened was broken by May:

'We were speaking about money. I will repay you all I owe you some day, Alice dear. I will save up all the money I can get out of mother. She is such a dear old thing, but I cannot understand her. Not a penny did she send me for the first six weeks, and then she sent me £25; and it was lucky she did, for the doctor's bill was something tremendous. And I bought this dress and bonnet with what was left . . . I ought to have repaid you first thing, but I forgot it until I had ordered the dress.'

'I assure you it does not matter, May; I shall never take the money from you. If I did, it would take away all the pleasure I have had in serving you.'

'Oh, but I will insist, Alice dear; I could not think of such a thing.
But there's no use in discussing that point until I get the money. . . .
Tell me, what do you think of my bonnet?'

'I think it very nice indeed, and I never saw you looking better.'

And thus ended May Gould's Dublin adventure. It was scarcely spoken of again, and when they met at a ball given by the officers stationed in Galway, Alice was astonished to find that she experienced no antipathy whatever towards this rich-blooded young person. 'My dear guardian angel, come and sit with me in this corner; I'd sooner talk to you than anyone—we won't go down yet a while—we'll make the men wait;' and when she put her arms round Alice's waist and told her the last news of Violet and her Marquis, Alice abandoned herself to the caress and heard that thirty years ago the late Marquis had entered a grocer's shop in Galway to buy a pound of tea for an importuning beggar: 'And what do you think, my dear?—It was Mrs. Scully who served it out to him; and do you know what they are saying?—that it is all your fault that Olive did not marry Kilcarney.'

'My fault?'

'Your fault, because you gave the part of the beggar-maid to Violet, and if Olive had played the beggar-maid and hadn't married Kilcarney, the fault would have been laid at your door just the same.'

The pale cheeks of Lord Rosshill's seven daughters waxed a hectic red; the Ladies Cullen grew more angular, and smiled and cawed more cruelly; Mrs. Barton, the Brennans, and Duffys cackled more warmly and continuously; and Bertha, the terror of the débutantes, beat the big drum more furiously than ever. The postscripts to her letters were particularly terrible: 'And to think that the grocer's daughter should come in for all this honour. It is she who will turn up her nose at us at the Castle next year.' 'Ah, had I known what was going to happen it is I who would have pulled the fine feathers out of her.' Day after day, week after week, the agony was protracted, until every heart grew weary of the strain put upon it and sighed for relief. But it was impossible to leave off thinking and talking; and the various accounts of orange-blossoms and the bridesmaids that in an incessant postal stream were poured during the month of January into Galway seemed to provoke rather than abate the marriage fever. The subject was inexhaustible, and little else was spoken of until it was time to pack up trunks and prepare for the Castle season. The bride, it was stated, would be present at the second Drawing-Room in March.

Nevertheless Alice noticed that the gladness of last year was gone out of their hearts; none expected much, and all remembered a little of the disappointments they had suffered. A little of the book had been read; the lines of white girls standing about the pillars in Patrick's Hall, the empty waltz tunes and the long hours passed with their chaperons were terrible souvenirs to pause upon. Still they must fight on to the last; there is no going back—there is nothing for them to go back to. There is no hope in life for them but the vague hope of a husband. So they keep on to the last, becoming gradually more spiteful and puerile, their ideas of life and things growing gradually narrower, until, in their thirty-fifth or fortieth year, they fall into the autumn heaps, to lie there forgotten, or to be blown hither or thither by every wind that blows.

Two of Lord Rosshill's daughters had determined to try their luck again, and a third was undecided; the Ladies Cullen said that they had their school to attend to and could not leave Galway; poverty compelled the Brennans and Duffys to remain at home. Alice would willingly have done the same, but, tempted by the thin chance that she might meet with Harding, she yielded to her mother's persuasions. Harding did not return to Dublin, and her second season was more barren of incident than the first. The same absence of conviction, the same noisy gossiping and inability to see over the horizon of Merrion Square, the same servile adoration of officialism, the same meanness committed to secure an invitation to the Castle, the same sing-song waltz tunes, the same miserable, mocking, melancholy, muslin hours were endured by the same white martyrs.

And if the Castle remained unchanged, Mount Street lost nothing of its original aspect. Experience had apparently taught Mrs. Barton nothing; she knew but one set of tricks—if they failed she repeated them: she was guided by the indubitableness of instinct rather than by the more wandering light that is reason. Mr. Barton, who it was feared might talk of painting, and so distract the attention from more serious matters, was left in Galway, and amid eight or nine men collected here, there, and everywhere out of the hotels and barrack-rooms, the three ladies sat down to dinner.

Mrs. Barton, who could have talked to twenty men, and have kept them amused, was severely handicapped by the presence of her daughters. Olive, at the best of times, could do little more than laugh; and as Alice never had anything to say to the people she met at her mother's house, the silences that hung over the Mount Street dinner-table were funereal in intensity and length. From time to time questions were asked relating to the Castle, the weather, and the theatre.

Therefore, beyond the fact that neither Lord Kilcarney nor Mr. Harding was present, the girls passed their second season in the same manner as their first. Les deux pièces de résistance at Mount Street were a dissipated young English lord and a gouty old Irish distiller, and Mrs. Barton was making every effort to secure one of these. A pianist was ordered to attend regularly at four o'clock. And now if Alice was relieved of the duty of spelling through the doleful strains of 'Dream Faces,' she was forced to go round and round with the distiller until an extra glass of port forced the old gentleman to beg mercy of Mrs. Barton. At one o'clock in the morning the young lord used to enter the Kildare Street Club weary. But not much way was made with either, and when one returned to London and the other to a sick-bed, Olive abandoned herself to a series of flirtations. At the Castle she danced with all who asked her, and she sat out dances in the darkest corners of the most distant rooms with every officer stationed in Dublin. Mrs. Barton never refused an invitation to any dance, no matter how low, and in all the obscure 'afternoons' in Mount Street and Pembroke Street Olive's blonde cameo-like face was seen laughing with every official of Cork Hill and the gig-men of Kildare Street.

In May the Bartons went abroad, and Olive flirted with foreign titles—French Counts, Spanish Dukes, Russian Princes, Swedish noblemen of all kinds, and a goodly number of English refugees with irreproachable neckties and a taste for baccarat. In the balmy gardens of Ostend and Boulogne, jubilant with June and the overture of Masaniello, Milord and Mrs. Barton walked in front, talking and laughing gracefully. Olive chose him who flattered her the most outrageously; and Alice strove hard to talk to the least objectionable of the men she was brought in contact with. Amid these specious talkers there were a few who reminded her of Mr. Harding, and she hoped later on to be able to turn her present experiences to account. There was, of course, much dining at cafés and dining at the casinos, and evening walks along the dark shore. Alice often feared for her sister, but the girl's vanity and lightheadedness were her safeguards, and she returned to Galway only a little wearied by the long chase after amusement.

The soft Irish summer is pleasant after the glare of foreign towns, and the country, the rickety stone walls and the herds of cattle, the deep curved lines of the plantations of the domain lands, the long streaks of brown bog, the flashing tarns of bog-water, and the ruined cottage, lay dozing in beautiful silvery haze. There was much charm for Alice in these familiar signs; and, although she did not approve of—although she would not care ever to meet them again—the people she had met at Ostend and Dieppe had interested her. She had picked up ideas and had received impressions, and with these germinating in her, a time of quiet, a time for reading and thinking, came as a welcome change after the noise of casinos and the glitter of fireworks. The liberty she had enjoyed, the sense it had brought with it that she was neither a doll nor a victim, had rendered her singularly happy. The plot of a new story was singing in her head, the characters flitted before her eyes, and to think of them or to tell Cecilia of them was a pleasure sufficient for all her daily desire. Olive, too, was glad. The sunlight has gone into her blood, and she romps with her mother and Milord amid the hay, or, stretched at length, she listens to the green air of the lawn, her dreams ripple like water along a vessel's side, the white wake of the past in bubble behind her; and when the life of the landscape is burnt out, and the day in dying seems to have left its soul behind, she stands watching, her thoughts curdling gently, the elliptical flight of the swallows through the gloom, and the flutter of the bats upon the dead sky.

But the thoughtless brain, fed for many weeks upon noise and glitter, soon began to miss its accustomed stimulants, and Mrs. Barton was quick to comprehend sudden twitchings of the face and abrupt movements of the limbs. And, keenly alive to what was passing in her daughter's mind, she insisted on Olive's accompanying her to the tennis-parties with which the county teemed. Sir Charles, Mr. Adair, and even poor Sir Richard were put forward as the most eligible of men.

'It is impossible to say when the big fish will be caught; it is often the last try that brings him to land,' murmured Mrs. Barton. But Olive had lost courage, and could fix her thoughts on no one. And, often when they returned home, she would retire to her room to have a good cry.

'Leave me alone, Alice; oh, go away. Don't tease me, don't tease me! I only want to be left alone.'

'But listen, dear; can I do anything for you?'

'You! no, no, indeed you can't. I only want to be left alone. I am so miserable, so unhappy; I wish I were dead!'

'Dead?'

'Yes, dead; what's the use of living when I know that I shall be an old maid? We shall all be old maids. What's the use of being pretty, either, when Violet, though she be but a bag of bones, has got the Marquis? I have been out two seasons now, and nothing has come of all the trying. And yet I was the belle of the season, wasn't I, Alice?' And now, looking more than ever like a cameo Niobe, Olive stared at her sister piteously. 'Oh yes, Alice, I know I shall be an old maid; and isn't it dreadful, and I the belle of the season? It makes me so unhappy. No one ever heard of the belle (and I was the belle not of one, but of two seasons) remaining an old maid. I can understand a lot of ugly things not getting married, but I—'

Alice smiled, and half ironically she asked herself if Olive really suffered. No heart-pang was reflected in those blue mindless eyes; there was no heart to wound: only a little foolish vanity had been bruised.

'And to think,' cried this whimpering beauty, when Alice had seen her successfully through a flood of hysterical tears, 'that I was silly enough to give up dear Edward. I am punished for it now, indeed I am; and it was very wicked of me—it was a great sin. I broke his heart. But you know, Alice dear, that it was all mamma's fault; she urged me on; and you know how I refused, how I resisted her. Didn't I resist—tell me. You know, and why won't you say that I did resist?'

'You did, indeed, Olive; but you must not distress yourself, or you will make yourself ill.'

'Yes, perhaps you are right, there's nothing makes one look so ugly as crying, and if I lost my looks and met Edward he might not care for me. He'd be disappointed, I mean—but I haven't lost my looks; I am just as pretty as I was when I came out first. Am I not, Alice?'

'Indeed you are, dear.'

'You don't think I have gone off a bit—now do tell me? and I want to ask you what you think of my hair in a fringe; Papa says it isn't classical, but that's nonsense. I wish I knew how Edward would like me to wear it.'

'But you mustn't think of him, Olive dear; you know mother would never hear of it.'

'I can't help thinking of him. . . . And now I will tell you something, Alice, if you promise me on your word of honour not to scold me, and, above all, not to tell mamma.'

'I promise.'

'Well, the other day I was walking at the end of the lawn feeling so very miserable. You don't know how miserable I feel; you are never miserable, for you think of nothing but your books. Well (mind, you have given me your word not to tell anyone), I saw Captain Hibbert riding along the road, and when he saw me he stopped his horse and kissed his hand to me.'

'And what did you do?'

'I don't know what I did. He called me, and then I saw Milord coming along the road, and fled but, oh, isn't it cruel of mamma to have forbidden Edward to come and see us? and he loving me as much as ever.'

This was not the moment to advise her sister against clandestine meetings with Captain Hibbert; she was sobbing violently, and Alice had to assure her again and again that no one who had been the belle of the season had ever remained an old maid. But Alice (having well in mind the fate that had befallen May Gould) grew not a little alarmed when, in the course of next week, she suddenly noticed that Olive was in the habit of going out for long walks alone, and that she invariably returned in a state of high spirits, all the languor and weariness seeming to have fallen from her.

Alice once thought of following her sister. She watched her open the wicket and walk across the meadows towards the Lawler domain. There was a bypath there leading to the highroad, but the delicacy of their position in relation to the owners prevented the Bartons from ever making use of it. Nor did Alice fail to notice that about the same time, Barnes, on the pretence of arranging the room for the evening, would strive to drive her from her writing-table, and beds were made and unmade, dresses were taken out of the wardrobe, and importuning conversations were begun. But, taking no heed of the officious maid, Alice, her thoughts tense with anxiety, sat at her window watching the slender figure of the girl growing dim in the dying light. Once she did not return until it was quite dark, and, reproaching herself for having remained so long silent, Alice walked across the pleasure-grounds to meet her.

'What, you here?' cried Olive, surprised at finding her sister waiting for her at the wicket. She was out of breath; she had evidently been running.

'Yes, Olive, I was anxious to speak to you—you must know that it is very wrong to meet Captain Hibbert—and in the secrecy of a wood!'

'Who told you I had been to meet Captain Hibbert? I suppose you have been following me!'

'No, Olive, I haven't, and you have no right to accuse me of such meanness. I have not been following you, but I cannot help putting two and two together. You told me something of this once before, and since then you have scarcely missed an evening.'

'Well, I don't see any harm in meeting Edward; he is going to marry me.'

'Going to marry you?'

'Yes, going to marry me; is there anything so very extraordinary in that? Mamma had no right to break off the match, and I am not going to remain an old maid.'

'And have you told mother about this?'

'No, where's the use, since she won't hear of it?'

'And are you going to run away with Captain Hibbert?'

'Run away with him!' exclaimed Olive, laughing strangely. 'No, of course
I am not.'

'And how are you to marry him if you don't tell mother?'

'I shall tell her when the time comes to tell her. And now, Alice dear, you will promise not to betray me, won't you? You will not speak about this to anyone, you promise me? If you did, I know I should go mad or kill myself.'

'But when will you tell mother of your resolution to marry Captain
Hibbert?'

'Tell her? I'll tell her to-morrow if you like; that is to say, if you will give me your word of honour not to speak to her about my meeting Edward in the Lawler Wood.'

Afterwards Alice often wondered at her dullness in not guessing the truth. But at the time it did not occur to her that Olive might have made arrangements to elope with Captain Hibbert; and, on the understanding that all was to be explained on the following day, she promised to keep her sister's secret.

XXV

Lord Dungory dined at Brookfield that evening. He noticed that Olive was nervous and restless, and he reminded her of what a French poet had said on the subject of beauty. But she only turned her fair head impatiently, and a little later on when her mother spoke to her she burst into tears. Nor was she as easily consoled as usual, and she did not become calm until Mrs. Barton suggested that her dear child was ill, and that she would go upstairs and put her to bed. Then, looking a little alarmed, Olive declared she was quite well, but she passionately begged to be left alone. As they left the dining-room she attempted to slip away; Alice made a movement as if to follow her, but Mrs. Barton said:

'Leave her to herself, Alice; she would rather be left alone. She has overstrained her nerves, that is all.'

Olive heard these words with a singular satisfaction, and as she ascended the stairs from the first landing, her heart beat less violently. On the threshold of her room she paused to listen for the drawing-room door to shut. Through the silent house the lock sounded sharply.

'I hope none of them will come upstairs bothering after me,' the girl murmured to herself. 'If they do I shall go mad;' and standing in the middle of the floor she looked round the room vacantly, unable to collect her thoughts. The wardrobe was on her right, and, seeing herself in the glass, she wondered if she were looking well. Her eyes wandered from her face to her shoulders, and thence to her feet. Going over to the toilette-table she sought amid her boots, and, having selected a strong pair, she began to button them. Her back was turned to the door, and at the slightest sound she started. Once or twice the stairs creaked, and she felt something would occur to stop her. Her heart was beating so violently that she thought she was going to be ill; and she almost burst out crying because she could not make up her mind if she should put on a hat and travelling-shawl, or run down to the wood as she was, to meet the Captain. 'He will surely,' she thought, 'have something in the carriage to put around me, but he may bring the dog-cart, and it looks very cold. But if Alice or mamma saw me coming downstairs with a shawl on, they'd suspect something, and I shouldn't be able to get away. I wonder what time it is? I promised to meet Edward at nine; he'll of course wait for me, but what time is it? We dined at half-past seven; we were an hour at dinner, half-past eight, and I have been ten minutes here. It must be nearly nine now, and it will take me ten minutes to get to the corner of the road. The house is quiet now.'

Olive ran down a few steps, but at that moment heavy footsteps and a jingling of glasses announced that the butler was carrying glasses from the dining-room to the pantry. 'When will he cease, when will he cease; will he hang about that passage all night?' the girl asked herself tremblingly; and so cruel, so poignant had her suspense become, that had it been prolonged much further her overwrought nerves would have given way, and she would have lapsed into a fit of hysterics. But the tray-full of glasses she had heard jingling were now being washed, and the irritative butler did not stir forth again. This was Olive's opportunity. From the proximity of the drawing-room to the hall-door it was impossible for her to open it without being heard; the kitchen-door was equally, even more, dangerous, and she could hear the servants stirring in the passages; there was no safe way of getting out of the house unseen, except through the dining-room.

The candles were lighted, the crumbs were still on the tablecloth; passing behind the red curtain she unlocked the French window, and she shivered in the keen wind that was blowing.

It was almost as bright as day. A September moon rose red, and in a broken and fragmentary way the various aspects of the journey that lay before her were anticipated: as she ran across the garden swards she saw the post-horses galloping in front of her; as her nervous fingers strove to unfasten the wicket, she thought of the railway-carriage; and as she passed under the great dark trunks of the chestnut-trees she dreamed of Edward's arm that would soon be cast protectingly around her, and his face; softer than the leafy shadows above her, would be leaned upon her, and his eyes filled with a brighter light than the moon's would look down into hers.

The white meadow that she crossed so swiftly gleamed like the sea, and the cows loomed through the greyness like peaceful apparitions. But the dark wood with its sepulchral fir-tops and mysteriously spreading beech-trees was full of formless terror, and once the girl screamed as the birds flew with an awful sound through the dark undergrowth. A gloomy wood by night has terrors for the bravest, and it was only the certainty that she was leaving girl-life—chaperons, waltz-tunes, and bitter sneering, for ever—that gave courage to proceed. A bit of moss-grown wall, a singularly shaped holly-bush, a white stone, took fantastic and supernatural appearances, and once she stopped, paralyzed with fear, before the grotesque shadow that a dead tree threw over an unexpected glade. A strange bird rose from the bare branches, and at that moment her dress was caught by a bramble, and, when her shriek tore the dark stillness, a hundred wings flew through the pallor of the waning moon.

At the end of this glade there was a paling and a stile that Olive would have to cross, and she could now hear, as she ran forward, the needles of the silver firs rustling with a pricking sound in the wind. The heavy branches stretched from either side, and Olive thought when she had passed this dernful alley she would have nothing more to fear; and she ran on blindly until she almost fell in the arms of someone whom she instantly believed to be Edward.

'Oh! Edward, Edward, I am nearly dead with fright!' she exclaimed.

'I am not Edward,' a woman answered. Olive started a step backwards; she would have fainted, but at the moment the words were spoken Mrs. Lawler's face was revealed in a beam of weak light that fell through a vista in the branches.

'Who are you? Let me pass.'

'Who am I? You know well enough; we haven't been neighbours for fifteen years without knowing each other by sight. So you are going to run away with Captain Hibbert!'

'Oh, Mrs. Lawler, let me pass. I am in a great hurry, I cannot wait; and you won't say anything about meeting me in the wood, will you?'

'Let you pass, indeed; and what do you think I came here for? Oh, I know all about it—all about the corner of the road, and the carriage and post-horses! a very nice little plan and very nicely arranged, but I'm afraid it won't come off—at least, not to-night.'

'Oh, won't it, and why?' cried Olive, clasping her hands. 'Then it was Edward who sent you to meet me, to tell me that—that—What has happened?'

'Sent me to tell you! Whom do you take me for? Is it for a—well, a nice piece of cheek! I carry your messages? Well, I never!'

'Then what did you come here for—how did you know? . . .'

'How did I know? That's my business. What did I come here for? What do you think? Why, to prevent you from going off with Teddy.'

'With Teddy!'

'Yes, with Teddy. Do you think no one calls him Teddy but yourself?'

Then Olive understood, and, with her teeth clenched she said, 'No, it isn't true; it is a lie; I will not believe it. Let me pass. What business have you to detain me?—what right have you to speak to me? We don't know you; no one knows you: you are a bad woman whom no one will know.'

'A bad woman! I like that—and from you. And what do you want to be, why are you running away from home? Why, to be what I was. We're all alike, the same blood runs in our veins, and when the devil is in us we must have sweethearts, get them how we may: the airs and graces come on after; they are only so much trimming.'

'How dare you insult me, you bad woman? Let me pass; I don't know what you mean.'

'Oh yes, you do. You think Teddy will take you off to Paris, and spoon you and take you out; but he won't, at least not to-night. I shan't give him up so easily as you think for, my lady.'

'Give him up! What is he to you? How dare you speak so of my future husband? Captain Hibbert only loves me, he has often told me so.'

'Loves nobody but you! I suppose you think that he never kissed, or spooned, or took anyone on his knee but you. Well, I suppose at twenty we'd believe anything a man told us; and we always think we are getting the first of it when we are only getting someone else's leavings. But it isn't for chicks of girls like you that a man cares, it isn't to you a man comes for the love he wants; your kisses are very skim milk indeed, and it is we who teach them the words of love that they murmur afterwards in your ears.'

The women looked at each other in silence, and both heard the needles shaken through the darkness above them. Mrs. Lawler stood by the stile, her hand was laid on the paling. At last Olive said:

'Let me pass. I will not listen to you any longer; nor do I believe a word you have said. We all know what you are; you are a bad woman whom no one will visit. Let me pass!' and pushing passionately forward she attempted to cross the stile. Then Mrs. Lawler took her by the shoulder and threw her roughly back. She fell to the ground heavily.

'Now you had better get up and go home,' said Mrs. Lawler, and she approached the prostrate girl. 'I didn't mean to hurt you; but you shan't elope with Teddy if I can prevent it. Why don't you get up?'

'Oh! my leg, my leg; you have broken my leg!'

'Let me help you up.'

'Don't touch me,' said Olive, attempting to rise; but the moment she put her right foot to the ground she shrieked with pain, and fell again.

'Well, if you are going to take it in that way, you may remain where you are, and I can't go and ring them up at Brookfield. I don't think there will be much eloping done to-night, so farewell.'

XXVI

About ten o'clock on the night of Olive's elopement, Alice knocked tremblingly at her mother's door.

'Mother,' she said, 'Olive is not in her room, nor yet in the house; I have looked for her everywhere.'

'She is downstairs with her father in the studio,' said Mrs. Barton; and, signing to her daughter to be silent, she led her out of hearing of Barnes, who was folding and putting some dresses away in the wardrobe.

'I have been down to the studio,' Alice replied in a whisper.

'Then I am afraid she has run away with Captain Hibbert. But we shall gain nothing by sending men out with lanterns and making a fuss; by this time she is well on her way to Dublin. She might have done better than Captain Hibbert, but she might also have done worse. She will write to us in a few days to tell us that she is married, and to beg of us to forgive her.'

And that night Mrs. Barton slept even more happily, with her mind more completely at rest, than usual; whereas Alice, fevered with doubt and apprehension, lay awake. At seven o'clock she was at her window, watching the grey morning splinter into sunlight over the quiet fields. Through the mist the gamekeeper came, and another man, carrying a woman between them, and the suspicion that her sister might have been killed in an agrarian outrage gripped her heart like an iron hand. She ran downstairs, and, rushing across the gravel, opened the wicket-gate. Olive was moaning with pain, but her moans were a sweet reassurance in Alice's ears, and without attempting to understand the man's story of how Miss Olive had sprained her ankle in crossing the stile in their wood, and how he had found her as he was going his rounds, she gave the man five shillings, thanked him, and sent him away. Barnes and the butler then carried Olive upstairs, and in the midst of much confusion Mr. Barton rode down the avenue in quest of Dr. Reed—galloped down the avenue, his pale hair blowing in the breeze.

'I wish you had come straight to me,' said Mrs. Barton to Alice, as soon as Barnes had left the room. 'We'd have got her upstairs between us, and then we might have told any story we liked about her illness.'

'But the Lawlers' gamekeeper would know all about it.'

'Ah, yes, that's true. I never heard of anything so unfortunate in my life. An elopement is never very respectable, but an elopement that does not succeed, when the girl comes home again, is just as bad as—I cannot think how Olive could have managed to meet Captain Hibbert and arrange all this business, without my finding it out. I feel sure she must have had the assistance of a third party. I feel certain that all this is Barnes's doing. I am beginning to hate that woman, with her perpetual smile, but it won't do to send her away now; we must wait.' And on these words Mrs. Barton approached the bed.

Shaken with sudden fits of shivering, and her teeth chattering, Olive lay staring blindly at her mother and sister. Her eyes were expressive at once of fear and pain.

'And now, my own darling, will you tell me how all this happened?'

'Oh, not now, mother—not now . . . I don't know; I couldn't help it. . . .
You mustn't scold me, I feel too ill to bear it.'

'I am not thinking of scolding you, dearest, and you need not tell me
anything you do not like. . . . I know you were going to run away with
Captain Hibbert, and met with an accident crossing the stile in the
Lawler Wood.'

'Oh, yes, yes; I met that horrid woman, Mrs. Lawler; she knew all about it, and was waiting for me at the stile. She said lots of dreadful things to me . . . I don't remember what; that she had more right to Edward than I—'

'Never mind, dear; don't agitate yourself thinking of what she said.'

'And then, as I tried to pass her, she pushed me and I fell, and hurt my ankle so badly that I could not get up; and she taunted me, and she said she could not help me home because we were not on visiting terms. And I lay in that dreadful wood all night. But I can't speak any more, I feel too ill; and I never wish to see Edward again. . . . The pain of my ankle is something terrible.'

Mrs. Barton looked at Alice expressively, and she whispered in her ear:

'This is all Barnes's doing, but we cannot send her away. . . . We must put a bold face on it, and brave it out.'

Dr. Reed was announced.

'Oh, how do you do, doctor? . . . It is so good of you to come at once. . . . We were afraid Mr. Barton would not find you at home. I am afraid that Olive has sprained her foot badly. Last night she went out for a walk rather late in the evening, and, in endeavouring to cross a stile, she slipped and hurt herself so badly that she was unable to return home, and lay exposed for several hours to the heavy night dews. I am afraid she has caught a severe cold. . . . She has been shivering.'

'Can I see her foot?'

'Certainly. Olive, dear, will you allow Dr. Reed to see your ankle?'

'Oh, take care, mamma; you are hurting me!' shrieked the girl, as Mrs. Barton removed the bedclothes. At this moment a knock was heard at the door.

'Who on earth is this?' cried Mrs. Barton. 'Alice, will you go and see?
Say that I am engaged, and can attend to nothing now.'

When Alice returned to the bedside she drew her mother imperatively towards the window. 'Captain Hibbert is waiting in the drawing-room. He says he must see you.'

At the mention of Captain Hibbert's name Mrs. Barton's admirably governed temper showed signs of yielding: her face contracted and she bit her lips.

'You must go down and see him. Tell him that Olive is very ill and that the doctor is with her. And mind you, you must not answer any questions. Say that I cannot see him, but that I am greatly surprised at his forcing his way into my house after what has passed between us; that I hope he will never intrude himself upon us again; that I cannot have my daughter's life endangered, and that, if he insists on persecuting us, I shall have to write to his Colonel.'

'Do you not think that father would be the person to make such explanations?'

'You know your father could not be trusted to talk sensibly for five minutes—at least,' she said, correcting herself, 'on anything that did not concern painting or singing. . . . But,' she continued, following her daughter to the door, 'on second thoughts I do not think it would be advisible to bring matters to a crisis. . . . I do not know how this affair will affect Olive's chances, and if he is anxious to marry her I do not see why he should not; . . . she may not be able to get any better. So you had better, I think, put him off—pretend that we are very angry, and get him to promise not to try to see or to write to Olive until, let us say, the end of the year. It will only make him more keen on her.'

When Alice opened the drawing-room door Captain Hibbert rushed forward; his soft eyes were bright with excitement, and his tall figure was thrown into a beautiful pose when he stopped.

'Oh, I beg your pardon. Miss Barton. I had expected your sister.'

'My sister is very ill in bed, and the doctor is with her.'

'Ill in bed!'

'Yes, she sprained her ankle last night in attempting to cross the stile in the wood at the end of our lawn.'

'Oh, that was the reason . . . then . . . Can I see your sister for a few minutes?'

'It is quite impossible; and my mother desires me to say that she is very much surprised that you should come here. . . . We know all about your attempt to induce Olive to leave her home.'

'Then she has told you? But if you knew how I love her, you would not blame me. What else could I do? Your mother would not let me see her, and she was very unhappy at home; you did not know this, but I did, and if luck hadn't been against me—Ah! but what's the use in talking of luck; luck was against me, or she would have been my wife now. And what a little thing suffices to blight a man's happiness in life; what a little, oh, what a little!' he said, speaking in a voice full of bitterness; and he buried his face in his hands.

Alice's eyes as she looked at him were expressive of her thoughts—they beamed at once with pity and admiration. He was but the ordinary handsome young man that in England nature seems to reproduce in everlasting stereotype. Long graceful legs, clad in tight-fitting trousers, slender hips rising architecturally to square wide shoulders, a thin strong neck and a tiny head—yes, a head so small that an artist would at once mark off eight on his sheet of double elephant. And now he lay over the back of a chair weeping like a child; in the intensity of his grief he was no longer commonplace; and as Alice looked at this superb animal thrown back in a superb abandonment of pose, her heart filled with the natural pity that the female feels always for the male in distress, and the impulse within her was to put her arms about him and console him; and then she understood her sister's passion for him, and her mind formulated it thus: 'How handsome he is! Any girl would like a man like that.' And as Alice surrendered herself to those sensuous, or rather romantic feelings, her nature quickened to a sense of pleasure, and she grew gentler with him, and was glad to listen while he sobbed out his sorrows to her.

'Oh, why,' he exclaimed, 'did she fall over that thrice-accursed stile! In five minutes more we would have been in each other's arms, and for ever. I had a couple of the best post-horses in Gort; they'd have taken us to Athenry in a couple of hours, and then—Oh! what luck, what luck!'

'But do you not know that Olive met Mrs. Lawler in the wood, and that it was she who—'

'What do you say? You don't mean to tell me that it was Mrs. Lawler who prevented Olive from meeting me? Oh, what beasts, what devils women are,' he said; 'and the worst of it is that one cannot be even with them, and they know it. If you only knew,' he said, turning almost fiercely upon Alice, 'how I loved your sister, you would pity me; but I suppose it is all over now. Is she very ill?'

'We don't know yet. She has sprained her ankle very badly, and is shivering terribly; she was lying out all night in the wet wood.'

He did not answer at once. He walked once or twice up and down the room, and then he said, taking Alice's hand in his, 'Will you be a friend to me, Miss Barton?' He could get no further, for tears were rolling down his cheeks.

Alice looked at him tenderly; she was much touched by the manifestation of his love, and at the end of a long silence she said:

'Now, Captain Hibbert, I want you to listen to me. Don't cry any more, but listen.'

'I dare say I look a great fool.'

'No, indeed you do not,' she answered; and then in kindly worded phrases she told him that, at least for the present, he must not attempt to correspond with Olive. 'Give me your word of honour that you will neither write nor speak to her for, let us say, six months, and I will promise to be your friend.'

'I will do anything you ask me to do, but will you in return promise to write and tell me how she is getting on, and if she is in any danger?'

'I think I can promise to do that; I will write and tell you how Olive is in a few days. Now we must say good-bye; and you will not forget your promise to me, as I shall not forget mine to you.'

When Alice went upstairs, Dr. Reed and Mrs. Barton were talking on the landing.

'And what do you think, doctor?' asked the anxious mother.

'It is impossible to say. She has evidently received a severe nervous shock, and this and the exposure to which she was subjected may develop into something serious. You will give her that Dover's powder to-night, and you will see that she has absolute quiet and rest. Have you got a reliable nurse?'

'Yes, the young ladies have a maid; I think Barnes can be trusted to carry out your orders, doctor.'

'Oh, mamma, I hope you will allow me to nurse my sister; I should not like to leave her in charge of a servant.'

'I am afraid you are not strong enough, dear.'

'Oh, yes, I am; am I not strong enough, doctor?'

Dr. Reed looked for a moment steadily at Alice. 'Your sister will,' he said, 'require a good deal of looking after. But if you will not overdo it, I think you seem quite strong enough to nurse her. But you must not sit up at night with her too regularly; you must share the labour with someone.'

'She will do that with me,' said Mrs. Barton, speaking more kindly,
Alice thought, than she had ever heard her speak before.

Then a wailing voice was heard calling to Alice.

'Go in and see what she wants, dear, but you will not encourage her to talk much; the doctor does not wish it.'

The room did not look the same to Alice as it had ever looked before. Her eyes fell on the Persian rugs laid between the two white beds and the tall glass in the wardrobe where Olive wasted half-an-hour every evening, examining her beauty. Would she ever do so again? Now a broken reflection of feverish eyes and blonde hair was what remained. The white curtains of the chimneypiece had been drawn aside, a bright fire was burning, and Barnes was removing a foot-pan of hot water.

'Sit down here by me, Alice; I want to talk to you.'

'The doctor has forbidden you to talk, dear; he says you must have perfect rest and quiet.'

'I must talk a little to you; if I didn't I should go mad.'

'Well, what is it, dear?'

'I will tell you presently,' said the sick girl, glancing at Barnes.

'You can tidy up the room afterwards, Barnes; Miss Olive wants to talk to me now.'

'Oh, Alice, tell me,' cried the girl, when the servant had left the room, 'I don't want to ask mamma—she won't tell me the exact truth; but you will. Tell me what the doctor said. . . . Did he say I was going to die?'

'Going to die? Olive, who ever heard of such a thing? You really must not give way to such fancies.'

'Well, tell me what he said.'

'He said that you had received a severe nervous shock, that you had been subjected to several hours' exposure, that you must take great care of yourself, and, above all, have perfect rest and quiet, and not excite yourself, and not talk.'

'Is that all he said? Then he cannot know how ill I feel; perhaps I ought to see another doctor. But I don't believe anyone could do me much good. Oh, I feel wretchedly ill, and somehow I seem to know I am going to die! It would be very horrible to die; but young girls no older than I have died—have been cut off in the beginning of their life. And we have seen nothing of life, only a few balls and parties. It would be terrible to die so soon. When Violet carried off the Marquis I felt so bitterly ashamed that I thought I would have liked to die; but not now—now I know that Edward loves me I would not care to die; it would be terrible to die before I was married. Wouldn't it, Alice? . . . But you don't answer me; did you never think about death?'

Then, as the thin wailing voice sank into her ears, Alice started from her dreams, and she strove to submit her attention to her sister.

'Yes, dear, of course I have. Death is, no doubt, a very terrible thing, but we can do no good by thinking of it.'

'Oh yes, we should, Alice, for this is not the only world—there is another and a better one; and, as mamma says, and as religion says, we are only here to try and get a good place in it. You are surprised to hear me speak like this; you think I never think of anything but the colour of a bonnet-string, but I do.'

'I am sure you do, Olive; I never doubted it; but I wish you would now do what the doctor orders, and refrain from talking and exciting yourself, and try and get well. You may then think of death and other gloomy things as much as you like.'

'You don't understand, Alice; one can't think of death, then—one has so much else to think of; one is so taken up with other ideas. It is only when one is ill that one really begins to see what life is. You have never been ill, and you don't know how terribly near death seems to have come—very near. Perhaps I ought to see the priest; it would be just as well, just in case I should die. Don't you think so?'

'I don't think there is any more danger of your dying now than there was a month ago, dear, and I am sure you can have nothing on your mind that demands immediate confession,' she said, her voice trembling a little.

'Oh yes, I have, Alice, and a very great deal; I have been very wicked.'

'Very wicked!'

'Well, I know you aren't pious, Alice, and perhaps you don't believe there is harm in such things, but I do; and I know it was very wrong, and perhaps a mortal sin, to try to run away with Edward. But I loved him so very dearly, and I was so tired of staying at home and being taken out to parties. And when you are in love with a man you forget everything. At least I did; and when he asked to kiss me I couldn't refuse. You won't tell anyone, Alice dear, that I told you this.' Alice shook her head, and Olive continued, in spite of all that the doctor had said:

'But you don't know how lonely I feel at home; you never feel lonely, I dare say, for you only think of your books and papers, and don't realize what a disgrace it would be if I didn't marry, and after all the trouble that mamma has taken. But I don't know what will become of me now. I'm going to be dreadfully ill, and when I get well I shall be pretty no longer; I am sure I am looking wretchedly. I must see myself—fetch the glass, Alice, Alice.'

Olive lay whining and calling for her sister, and when Dr. Reed came he ordered several inches of the pale silky hair to be cut away and a cold lotion to be applied to the forehead, and some sliced lemons were given to her to suck.

The clear blue eyes were dull, the breathing quick, the skin dry and hot; and on the following day four leeches had to be applied to her ankle. They relieved her somewhat, and, when she had taken her draught, she sank to sleep. But as the night grew denser, Alice was suddenly awakened by someone speaking wildly in her ear: 'Take me away, dear! I am sick of home; I want to get away from all these spiteful girls. I know they are laughing at me because Violet cut me out with the Marquis. We shall be married, shan't we, the moment we arrive in Dublin? It's horrible to be married at the registrar's, but it's better than not being married at all. But do you think they will catch us up? It would be dreadful to be taken back home, I couldn't bear it. Oh, do drive on; we don't seem to be moving. You see that strange tree on the right, we haven't passed it yet; I don't think we ever shall. Whip up that bay horse; don't you see he is turning round, wants to go back? I am sure that this isn't the road; that man at the corner told you a lie. I know he was mocking at us—I saw it in his eye. . . . Look, look, Edward! Oh, look—it is papa, or Lord Dungory, I can't tell which, he won't lift his cloak.' And then the vision would fade, and she would fancy herself in the wood, arguing once again with Mrs. Lawler. 'No, what you say isn't true; he never loved you. How could he? You are an old woman. Let me pass—let me pass. Why do you speak to me? We don't visit, we never did visit you. No; it was not at our house you met Edward. You were on the streets; and Edward shall not, he could not, think of running away with you—will you, darling? Oh, help me, help me out of this dreadful wood. I want to go home, but I can't walk. That terrible bird is still watching me, and I dare not pass that tree till you drive it away.'

The two beds, with their white curtains and brass crowns, showed through the pale obscurity, broken only by the red-glowing basin where a night-light burnt, and the long tongues of flame that the blazing peat scattered from time to time across the darkened ceiling. The solitude of the sleeping house grew momentarily more intense in Alice's brain, and she trembled as she strove to soothe her sister, and covered the hot feverish arms over with the bedclothes.

'What sort of night has Olive had?' Mrs. Barton asked when she came in about eight.

'Not a very quiet one; I am afraid she's a little delirious.'

'Dr. Reed promised to be here early. How do you feel, dear?' Mrs. Barton asked, leaning over the bed.

'Oh, very ill; I can scarcely breathe, and I have such a pain in my side.'

'Your lips look very sore, dear; do they hurt you?'—Olive only moaned dismally—and, looking anxiously at her elder daughter, she said:

'And you, too, Alice, are not looking well. You are tired, and mustn't sit up another night with your sister. To-night I'll take your place.'

'Oh, mother, no! I assure you it is a pleasure to me to nurse Olive. I am very well indeed; do not think about me.'

'Indeed, I will think about you, and you must do as I tell you. I'll look after Olive, and you must try and get a good night's rest We will take it in turns to nurse her. And now come down to breakfast. Barnes, you'll not think of leaving Miss Olive until we come back; and, if any change occurs, ring for me immediately.'

When Dr. Reed arrived, Alice was again sitting by the bedside.

'And how is our patient to-day?'

'I cannot say she is any better; she has a distressing cough, and last night I am afraid she was a little delirious.'

'Ah, you say the cough is distressing?'

'I am afraid I must call it distressing; is that a very bad sign?'

'Probably there is not much wrong, but it would be better to ascertain the condition of the patient, and then we may be able to do something to relieve her.'

The doctor drew a stethoscope from his pocket, and they lifted the patient into a sitting position.

'I should like to examine her chest;' and his fingers moved to unfasten her night-gown.

'Don't expose me,' she murmured feebly.

'Now, Olive dear, remember it is only the doctor; let him examine you.'

Olive's eyes were a dull filmy blue, the lips were covered with sores, and there was a redness over the cheekbones—not the hectic flush of phthisis, but a dusky redness. And the patient was so weak that during the stethoscopic examination her head fell from side to side as she was moved, and when the doctor pressed her right side her moans were pregnant with pain.

'Now let me see the tongue. Dry and parched.'

'Shall I die, doctor?' the girl asked feebly and plaintively as she sank amidst the pillows.

'Die! no, not if you take care of yourself and do what you are told.'

'But tell me, Dr. Reed,' Alice asked. 'You can tell me the truth.'

'She'll get well if she takes care of herself. It is impossible to say.
No one can predict the turn pneumonia will take.'

'Pneumonia! What is that?'

'Congestion of the lungs, or rather an advanced stage of it. It is more common in men than in women, and it is the consequence of long exposure to wet and cold.'

'Is it very dangerous?'

'Very; and now let me tell you that it is all-important that the temperature of the room should not be allowed to vary. I attended a case of it some three or four miles from here, but the damp of the cabin was so great that it was impossible to combat the disease. The cottage, or rather hovel, was built on the edge of a soft spongy bog, and so wet was it that the woman had to sweep the water every morning from the floor, where it collected in great pools. I am now going to visit an evicted family, who are living in a partially roofed shed fenced up by the roadside. The father is down with fever, and lies shivering, with nothing to drink but cold water. His wife told me that last week it rained so heavily that she had to get up three times in the night to wring the sheets out.'

'And why were they evicted?'

'Oh, that is a long story; but it is a singularly characteristic one. In the first place, he was an idle fellow; he got into difficulties and owed his landlord three years' rent. Then he got into bad hands, and was prevented from coming to terms with his landlord. There was a lot of jobbing going on between the priest and the village grocer, and finally it was arranged that the latter should pay off the existing debt if the landlord could be forced into letting him the farm at a "fair rent," that is to say, thirty per cent reduction on the old rent. In recognition of his protecting influence, the priest was to take a third of the farm off the grocer's hands, and the two were then to conjointly rack-rent poor Murphy for the remaining third portion, which he would be allowed to retain for a third of the original rent; but the National League heard of their little tricks, and now the farm is boycotted, and Murphy is dying in the ditch for the good of his counthry.'

'I thought boycotting was ended, that the League had lost all power.'

'It has and it hasn't. Sometimes a man takes a farm and keeps it in defiance of his neighbours; sometimes they hunt him out of it. It is hard to come to a conclusion, for when in one district you hear of rents being paid and boycotted farms letting freely, in another, only a few miles away, the landlords are giving reductions, and there are farms lying waste that no one dare look at. In my opinion the fire is only smouldering, and when the Coercion Act expires the old organization will rise up as strong and as triumphant as before. This is a time of respite for both parties.'

The conversation then came to a sudden pause. Alice felt it would be out of place for her to speak her sympathies for the Nationalistic cause, and she knew it would be unfair to lead the doctor to express his. So at the end of a long silence, during which each divined the other's thoughts, she said:

'I suppose you see a great deal of the poor and the miseries they endure?'

'I have had good opportunities of studying them. Before I came here I spent ten years in the poorest district in Donegal. I am sure there wasn't a gentleman's house within fifteen miles of me.'

'And didn't you feel very lonely?'

'Yes, I did, but one gets so used to solitude that to return to the world, after having lived long in the atmosphere of one's own thoughts, is painful. The repugnance that grows on those who live alone to hearing their fellow-creatures express their ideas is very remarkable. It must be felt to be understood; and I have often wondered how it was that I never met it in a novel.'

'It would be very difficult to write. Do you ever read fiction?'

'Yes, and enjoy it. In my little home amid the northern bogs, I used to look forward when I had finished writing, to reading a story.'

'What were you writing?'

'A book.'

'A book!' exclaimed Alice, looking suddenly pleased and astonished.

'Yes, but not a work of fiction—I am afraid I am too prosaic an individual for that—a medical work.'

'And have you finished your book?'

'Yes, it is finished, and I am glad to say it is in the hands of a London publisher. We have not yet agreed about the price, but I hope and believe that, directly and indirectly, it will lead to putting me into a small London practice.'

'And then you will leave us?'

'I am afraid so. There are many friends I shall miss—that I shall be very sorry to leave, but—'

'Oh, of course it would not do to miss such a chance.'

They fell to discussing the patient, and when the doctor left, Alice proceeded to carry out his instructions concerning the patient, and, these being done, she sat down by the bedside and continued her thoughts of him with a sense of pleasure. She remembered that she had always liked him. Yes, it was a liking that dated as far back as the spinsters' ball at Ballinasloe. He was the only man there in whom she had taken the slightest interest. They were sitting together on the stairs when that poor fellow was thrown down and had his leg broken. She remembered how she had enjoyed meeting him at tennis-parties, and how often she had walked away with him from the players through the shrubberies; and above all she could not forget—it was a long sweet souvenir—the beautiful afternoon she had spent with him, sitting on the rock, the day of the picnic at Kinvarra Castle. She had forgotten, or rather she had never noticed, that he was a short, thick-set, middle-aged man, that he wore mutton-chop whiskers, and that his lips were overhung by a long dark moustache. His manners were those of an unpolished and somewhat commonplace man. But while she thought of his grey eyes her heart was thrilled with gladness, and as she dreamed of his lonely life of labour and his ultimate hopes of success, all her old sorrows and fears seemed to have evaporated. Then suddenly and with the unexpectedness of an apparition the question presented itself: Did she like him better than Harding? Alice shrank from the unpleasantness of the thought, and did not force herself to answer it, but busied herself with attending to her sister's wants.

While the dawn of Alice's happiness, Olive lay suffering in all the dire humility of the flesh. Hourly her breathing grew shorter and more hurried, her cough more frequent, and the expectoration that accompanied it darker and thicker in colour. The beautiful eyes were now turgid and dull, the lids hung heavily over a line of filmy blue, and a thick scaly layer of bloody tenacious mucus persistently accumulated and covered the tiny and once almost jewel-like teeth. For three or four days these symptoms knew no abatement; and it was over this prostrated body, weakened and humiliated by illness, that Alice and Dr. Reed read love in each other's eyes, and it was about this poor flesh that their hands were joined as they lifted Olive out of the recumbent position she had slipped into, and built up the bowed-in pillows. And as it had once been all Olive in Brookfield, it was now all Alice; the veil seemed suddenly to have slipped from all eyes, and the exceeding worth of this plain girl was at last recognized. Mrs. Barton's presence at the bedside did not soothe the sufferer; she grew restless and demanded her sister. And the illness continued, her life in the balance till the eighth day. It was then that she took a turn for the better; the doctor pronounced her out of danger, and two days after she lay watching Alice and Dr. Reed talking in the window. 'Were they talking about her?' she asked herself. She did not think they were. It seemed to her that each was interested in the other. 'Laying plans,' the sick girl said to herself, 'for themselves.' At these words her senses dimmed, and when she awoke she had some difficulty in remembering what she had seen.