opes is watched with eagerness. These envelopes are the
balm of Gilead; and the Land League and the hopelessness of matchmaking
are merged and lost for a moment in an exquisite thrill of triumph or
despair. An invitation to the Castle means much. The greyheaded official
who takes you down to dinner may bore you, and, at the dance, you may
find yourself without a partner; but the delight of asking your friends
if you may expect to meet them on such a night, of telling them
afterwards of your successes, are the joys of Dublin. And, armed with
their invitation, the Bartons scored heavily over the Scullys and the
Goulds, who were only asked to the dance.

'And what will the dinner be like, mamma?' asked Olive.

'It will be very grand. Lord Cowper does things in very good style
indeed; and our names will be given in the papers. But I don't think it
will amuse you, dear. All the officials have to be asked--judges,
police-officers, etc. You will probably go down with some old fellow of
sixty: but that can't be helped. At the dance, after, we'll see the
Marquis.'

'I told you, mamma, didn't I, that Barnes wrote that everybody in Galway
said he was in love with me, and had proposed?'

'You did, dear; and it does no harm for the report to have got about,
for if a thing gets very much spoken of, it forces a man to come to the
point. You will wear your red tulle. I don't know that you look better
in anything else.'

Whatever Mrs. Barton's faults may have been, she did her duty, as she
conceived it, by her daughter; and during the long dinner, through the
leaves of the flowering-plants, she watched her Olive anxiously. A
hundred and twenty people were present. Mothers and eligible daughters,
judges, lords, police-officers, earls, poor-law inspectors, countesses,
and Castle officials. Around the great white-painted, gold-listed walls
the table, in the form of a horseshoe, was spread. In the soothing light
of the shaded lamps the white glitter of the piled-up silver danced over
the talking faces, and descended in silvery waves into the bosoms of the
women. Salmon and purple-coloured liveries passed quickly; and in the
fragrance of soup and the flavours of sherry, in the lascivious pleasing
of the waltz tunes that Liddell's band poured from a top gallery, the
goodly company of time-servers, panders, and others forgot their fears
of the Land League and the doom that was now waxing to fulness.

To the girls the dinner seemed interm