all, let alone that he thought you a poor
girl."

"Master Richard?"

"Master Richard Dawson. 'Twas him came in to-day with some of the
quality ladies they have stopping at Damerstown. He didn't mean any
harm, Miss Bawn."

So it was Richard Dawson, the only son of the rich money-lender, on whom
we of the older, more exclusive gentry turn our backs. He had been wild
in his boyhood, and had quarrelled with his father and flung himself off
to America. We had not heard of his return.

I noticed half consciously the pleading look of Nora's blue eyes under
their black lashes. Why was the child so much concerned at what had
offended me? But I hardly thought of her.

I was thinking with an unreasonable wave of repulsion that I should
doubtless meet Richard Dawson, if not in the drawing-rooms of our
friends at least about our quiet lanes and roads, where hitherto there
had been nothing to fear. I wished he had stayed in America; and on one
subject I made up my mind. That was that if I must meet Richard Dawson I
should certainly be as cold to him as was compatible with civility to
those in whose houses I might meet him.

For we were not all a century behind our times. Some of us had a Dublin
season every year and had been presented at Court, and some of us even
went to London for the season.

Lady Ardaragh was one of those. She used to quiz us openly for our
old-fashioned ways, but so sweetly that even my grandmother laughed with
her. And she used to say that if one were too particular about one's
visiting-list so as to exclude the newly rich people, one would have to
mark off half Park Lane and that wonderful district which she would have
us believe lay all about it. One met the oddest people in her
drawing-room, where she fluttered about among them like a gay little
butterfly while Sir Arthur, her serious husband, locked himself away
among his books.

"If I hadn't such oddities I should bore myself to extinction, dear Lady
St. Leger," she said to my grandmother once. "Arthur will keep me here
nine months of the year. What is one to do?"

"Why, I am sure there is plenty to do," my grandmother replied simply.
"Bawn is busy from morning to night, what with her garden and her birds
and her dogs and her reading and music, and now with the Creamery. So
should I be if Lord St. Leger did not claim so much of my attention. I
neglect things sadly nowadays because my husband leans on me as a staff,
although I am nearly as old a