then she sent me L25; and it was
lucky she did, for the doctor's bill was something tremendous. And I
bought this dress and bonnet with what was left . . . I ought to have
repaid you first thing, but I forgot it until I had ordered the dress.'

'I assure you it does not matter, May; I shall never take the money from
you. If I did, it would take away all the pleasure I have had in serving
you.'

'Oh, but I will insist, Alice dear; I could not think of such a thing.
But there's no use in discussing that point until I get the money. . . .
Tell me, what do you think of my bonnet?'

'I think it very nice indeed, and I never saw you looking better.'

And thus ended May Gould's Dublin adventure. It was scarcely spoken of
again, and when they met at a ball given by the officers stationed in
Galway, Alice was astonished to find that she experienced no antipathy
whatever towards this rich-blooded young person. 'My dear guardian
angel, come and sit with me in this corner; I'd sooner talk to you than
anyone--we won't go down yet a while--we'll make the men wait;' and when
she put her arms round Alice's waist and told her the last news of
Violet and her Marquis, Alice abandoned herself to the caress and heard
that thirty years ago the late Marquis had entered a grocer's shop in
Galway to buy a pound of tea for an importuning beggar: 'And what do you
think, my dear?--It was Mrs. Scully who served it out to him; and do you
know what they are saying?--that it is all your fault that Olive did not
marry Kilcarney.'

'My fault?'

'Your fault, because you gave the part of the beggar-maid to Violet, and
if Olive had played the beggar-maid and hadn't married Kilcarney, the
fault would have been laid at your door just the same.'

The pale cheeks of Lord Rosshill's seven daughters waxed a hectic red;
the Ladies Cullen grew more angular, and smiled and cawed more cruelly;
Mrs. Barton, the Brennans, and Duffys cackled more warmly and
continuously; and Bertha, the terror of the _debutantes_, beat the big
drum more furiously than ever. The postscripts to her letters were
particularly terrible: 'And to think that the grocer's daughter should
come in for all this honour. It is she who will turn up her nose at us
at the Castle next year.' 'Ah, had I known what was going to happen it
is I who would have pulled the fine feathers out of her.' Day after day,
week after week, the agony was protracted, until every heart grew weary
of the strain put