nour was in question. I told her how she would run about,
talking in her mild unmeaning way of "poor May and that shameful Mr.
Scully;" and, at last, the Rev. Mother, as you prophesied she would, saw
the matter in its proper light, and she has consented to receive all my
letters, and if mother writes, to give her to understand that I am safe
within the convent walls. It is very good of her, for I know the awful
risk she is wilfully incurring so as to help me out of my trouble.

'The house I am staying in is nice enough, and the landlady seems a kind
woman. The name I go by is Mrs. Brandon (you will not forget to direct
your letters so), and I said that my husband was an officer, and had
gone out to join his regiment in India. I have a comfortable bedroom on
the third floor. There are two windows, and they look out on the street.
The time seems as if it would never pass; the twelve hours of the day
seem like twelve centuries. I have not even a book to read, and I never
go out for fear of being seen. In the evening I put on a thick veil and
go for a walk in the back streets. But I cannot go out before nine; it
is not dark till then, and I cannot stop out later than ten on account
of the men who speak to you. My coloured hair makes me look fast, and I
am so afraid of meeting someone I know, that this short hour is as full
of misery as those that preceded it. Every passer-by seems to know me,
to recognize me, and I cannot help imagining that he or she will be
telling my unfortunate story half an hour after in the pitiless
drawing-rooms of Merrion Square. Oh, Alice darling, you are the only
friend I have in the world. If it were not for you, I believe I should
drown myself in the Liffey. No girl was ever so miserable as I. I cannot
tell you how I feel, and you cannot imagine how forlorn it all is; and I
am so ill. I am always hungry, and always sick, and always longing. Oh,
these longings; you may think they are nothing, but they are dreadful.
You remember how active I used to be, how I used to run about the
tennis-court; now I can scarcely crawl. And the strange sickening
fancies: I see things in the shops that tempt me, sometimes it is a dry
biscuit, sometimes a basket of strawberries; but whatever it is, I stand
and look at it, long for it, until weary of longing and standing with a
sort of weight weighing me down, and my stays all rucking up to my neck,
I crawl home. There I am all alone; and I sit in the dark, on a wretch