o deserved no quarter; the
man had been dismissed, the whole business was done with and over, and
now, looking back in cool blood, she was utterly unable to reconstruct and
put together the reasons for the outburst of anger that had severed her
from the one kinsman who had put out his hand to help her.

She could no longer conjure up the feeling that Pinckney was an interloper
come to break up Kilgobbin and spoil the home she had known from
childhood.

Fate had done that. Kilgobbin was gone--let to strangers; Hennessey had
taken over her guardianship _pro tem_, and it was entirely owing to
herself that she was in her present position. She had no right to
criticise the friends of the Hennesseys; she had deliberately walked into
that circle from which she felt she never could escape now.

Just as Pinckney had discovered that guardianship was showing him traits
in his character hitherto unknown to him, Phyl was discovering her woman's
instinct as regards social matters.

She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set,
her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was
branded.

The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them. The
relatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor,
rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise
marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is the
dry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, but
no one was proud of them.

If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst his
own class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter's rescue
now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, an
easy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and
cottage folk, caring little for the _convenances_ and with no taste for
women's society.

Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which were only half understood,
filled the mind of the girl as she lay awake with the noise of that
raucous party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it was only
to awake with a sense of despondency weighing upon her and the odious
Farrel incident waiting to follow her through the day.

About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found a
letter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address,
Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, wr