se we are very sorry you are leaving--we should like you to stop
a little longer with us. Is it impossible for you. . . ?'

'I am afraid so, Mrs. Barton; it is very kind of you, but--'

'It is a great pity,' she answered; 'but before we part I should like to
know if you have come to any conclusion about what I spoke to you of in
Dublin. If it is not to be, I should like to know, that I might tell the
girl, so that she might not think anything more about--'

'What am I to say, what am I to do?' thought the Marquis. 'Oh! why does
this woman worry me? How can I tell her that I wouldn't marry her
daughter for tens of thousands of pounds?' 'I think, Mrs. Barton--I
mean, I think you will agree with me that until affairs in Ireland grow
more settled, it would be impossible for anyone to enter into any
engagements whatever. We are all on the brink of ruin.'

'But twenty thousand pounds would settle a great deal.'

The little Marquis was conscious of annihilation, and he sought to
escape Mrs. Barton as he might a piece of falling rock. With a desperate
effort he said:

'Yes, Mrs. Barton--yes, I agree with you, twenty thousand pounds is a
great deal of money; but I think we had better wait until the Lords have
passed the new Coercion Bill--say nothing more about this--leave it an
open question.'

And on this eminently unsatisfactory answer the matter ended; even Mrs.
Barton saw she could not, at least for the present, continue to press
it. Still she did not give up hope. 'Try on to the end; we never know
that it is not the last little effort that will win the game,' was the
aphorism with which she consoled her daughter, and induced her to write
to Lord Kilcarney. And almost daily he received from her flowers,
supposed to be emblematical of the feeling she entertained for him; and
for these Alice was sometimes ordered to compose verses and suitable
mottoes.

XXIII

But Lord Kilcarney's replies to these letters seldom consisted of more
than a few well-chosen words, and he often allowed a week, and sometimes
a fortnight, to elapse before answering at all. Olive--too vain and
silly to understand the indifference with which she was treated--whined
and fretted less than might have been expected. She spent a great deal
of her time with Barnes, who fed her with scandal and flattery. But a
storm was about to break, and in August it was known, without any
possibility of a doubt, that the Marquis was engaged to Violet Scul