could, fled, resolving not to return till
the law restored the power that the Land League had so rudely shaken.
Some went to England, others to France. Mr. Barton accepted two hundred
pounds from his wife and proceeded to study gargoyles and pictures in
Bruges; and, striving to forget the murders and rumours of murders that
filled the papers, the girls and their mammas talked of beaux, partners,
and trains, in spite of the irritating presence of the Land League
agitators who stood on the platforms of the different stations. The
train was full of girls. Besides the Bartons, there were the Brennans:
Gladys and Zoe--Emily remained at home to look after the place. Three of
the Miss Duffys were coming to the Drawing-Room, and four of the
Honourable Miss Gores; the Goulds and Scullys made one party, and to
avoid Mrs. Barton, the Ladies Cullen had pleaded important duties. They
were to follow in a day or so.

Lord Dungory's advice to Mrs. Barton was to take a house, and he warned
her against spending the whole season in an hotel, but apparently
without avail, for when the train stopped a laughing voice was heard:
'Milord, _vous n'etes qu'un vilain misanthrope_; we shall be very
comfortable at the Shelbourne; we shall meet all the people in Dublin
there, and we can have private rooms to give dinner-parties.'

Hearing this, Alice congratulated herself, for in an hotel she would be
freer than she would be in a house let for the season. She would hear
something, and see a little over the horizon of her family in an hotel.
She had spent a week in the Shelbourne on her way home from school, and
remembered the little winter-garden on the first landing, and the
fountain splashing amid ferns and stone frogs. The ladies' drawing-room
she knew was on the right, and when she had taken off her hat and
jacket, leaving her mother and sister talking of Mrs. Symond and Lord
Kilcarney, she went there hoping to find some of the people whom she had
met there before.

The usually skirt-filled ottoman stood vacantly gaping, the little
chairs seemed lonely about the hearthrug, even the sofa where the
invalid ladies sat was unoccupied, and the perforated blinds gave the
crowds that passed up and down the street a shadow-like appearance. The
prospect was not inspiriting, but not knowing what else to do, Alice sat
down by the fire, and fell to thinking who the man might be that sat
reading on the other side of the fireplace. He didn't seem as if he k