, Milord and Mrs. Barton walked in front, talking and laughing
gracefully. Olive chose him who flattered her the most outrageously; and
Alice strove hard to talk to the least objectionable of the men she was
brought in contact with. Amid these specious talkers there were a few
who reminded her of Mr. Harding, and she hoped later on to be able to
turn her present experiences to account. There was, of course, much
dining at cafes and dining at the casinos, and evening walks along the
dark shore. Alice often feared for her sister, but the girl's vanity and
lightheadedness were her safeguards, and she returned to Galway only a
little wearied by the long chase after amusement.

The soft Irish summer is pleasant after the glare of foreign towns, and
the country, the rickety stone walls and the herds of cattle, the deep
curved lines of the plantations of the domain lands, the long streaks of
brown bog, the flashing tarns of bog-water, and the ruined cottage, lay
dozing in beautiful silvery haze. There was much charm for Alice in
these familiar signs; and, although she did not approve of--although she
would not care ever to meet them again--the people she had met at Ostend
and Dieppe had interested her. She had picked up ideas and had received
impressions, and with these germinating in her, a time of quiet, a time
for reading and thinking, came as a welcome change after the noise of
casinos and the glitter of fireworks. The liberty she had enjoyed, the
sense it had brought with it that she was neither a doll nor a victim,
had rendered her singularly happy. The plot of a new story was singing
in her head, the characters flitted before her eyes, and to think of
them or to tell Cecilia of them was a pleasure sufficient for all her
daily desire. Olive, too, was glad. The sunlight has gone into her
blood, and she romps with her mother and Milord amid the hay, or,
stretched at length, she listens to the green air of the lawn, her
dreams ripple like water along a vessel's side, the white wake of the
past in bubble behind her; and when the life of the landscape is burnt
out, and the day in dying seems to have left its soul behind, she stands
watching, her thoughts curdling gently, the elliptical flight of the
swallows through the gloom, and the flutter of the bats upon the dead
sky.

But the thoughtless brain, fed for many weeks upon noise and glitter,
soon began to miss its accustomed stimulants, and Mrs. Barton was quick
to comprehe