met Lady Jane's. The glance exchanged was tempered in the hate
of years; it was vindictive, cruel, terrible; it shone as menacingly as
if the women had drawn daggers from their skirts, and Jane, obeying a
sudden impulse, broke away from her sister, and called to Captain
Hibbert. Fortunately he did not hear her, and, before she could speak
again, Lord Dungory said:

'Jane, now, Jane, I beg of you--'

Mrs. Barton smiled a sweet smile of reply, and whispered to herself:

'Do that again, my lady, and you won't have a penny to spend this year.'

'And now, dear, tell me, I want to hear all about it,' said Mrs. Barton,
as the carriage left the steps of Dungory Castle. 'What did he say?'

'Oh! mamma, mamma, I am afraid I have broken his heart,' replied Olive
dolorously.

'It doesn't do a girl any harm even if it does leak out that she jilted
a man; it makes the others more eager after her. But tell me, dear, I
hope there was no misunderstanding; did you really tell him that it was
no use, that he must think of you no more?'

'Mamma dear, don't make me go over it again, I can't, I can't; Alice
heard all I said--she'll tell you,'

'No, no, don't appeal to me; it's no affair of mine,' exclaimed the girl
more impetuously than she had intended.

'I am surprised at you, Alice; you shouldn't give way to temper like
that. Come, tell me at once what happened.'

The thin, grey, moral eyes of the daughter and the brown, soft, merry
eyes of the mother exchanged a long deep gaze of inquiry, and then Alice
burst into an uncontrollable fit of tears. She trembled from too much
grief, and could not answer; and when she heard her mother say to Olive,
'Now that the coast is clear, we can go in heart and soul for the
marquess,' she shuddered inwardly and wished she might stay at home in
Galway and be spared the disgrace of the marriage-market.

XV

It rained incessantly. Sheets of water, blown by winds that had
travelled the Atlantic, deluged the county; grey mists trailed mournful
and shapeless along the edges of the domain woods, over the ridges of
the tenants' holdings. 'Never more shall we be driven forth to die in
the bogs and ditches,' was the cry that rang through the mist; and,
guarded by policemen, in their stately houses, the landlords listened,
waiting for the sword of a new coercion to fall and release them from
their bondage. The meeting of Parliament in the spring would bring them
this; in the meantime, all who