Her vision was not precise, but there were flashes of sun in it, and her thoughts loomed and floated away.  She thought of herself, of Harding, of their first meeting.  The first time she had seen him he was sitting in the same place and in the same chair as she was sitting in now.  She remembered the first words that had been spoken:  the scene was as clear to her as if it were etched upon her brain; and as she mused she thought of the importance of that event.  Harding was to her what a mountain is to the level plain.  From him she now looked forward and back.  ’So people say that I am in love with him! well, supposing I were, I do not know that I should feel ashamed of myself.’

The reflection was an agreeable one, and in it her thoughts floated away like red-sailed barges into the white mists that veil with dreamy enchantment the wharves and the walls of an ancient town.  What did she know of him?  Nothing!  He was to her as much, but no more, than the author of a book in which she was deeply interested:  with this difference:—­she could hear him reply to her questions; but his answers were only like other books, and revealed nothing of his personality.  She would have liked to have known the individual man surrounded with his individual hopes and sufferings, but of these she knew nothing.  They had talked of all things, but it seemed to her that of the real man she had never had a glimpse.  Never did he unbend, never did he lift the mask he wore.  He was interesting, but very unhuman, and he paraded his ideas and his sneers as the lay figures did the mail-armour on the castle stairway.  She did not know if he were a good or a bad man; she fancied he was not very good, and then she grew angry with herself for suspecting him.  But honest or dishonest, she was sure he could love no one; and she strove to recall his face.  She could remember nothing but the cold merciless eyes—­eyes that were like the palest blue porcelain:  ‘But how ungrateful I am,’ thought the girl, and she checked the bitter flow of reproaches that rose in her mind.

Two old ladies sat on the sofa under the window, their white hair and white caps coming out very white upon the grey Irish day; and around the ottoman the young ladies, Gladys and Zoe Brennan, one of the Miss Duffys, and the girl in red, yawned over circulating novels, longing that a man might come in—­not with hope that he would interest them, but because they were accustomed to think of all time as wasted that was not spent in talking to a man.

Nor were they awakened from their languid hopes until Olive came rushing into the room with a large envelope in her hand.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, ’you have got a letter from Cecilia.  What does she say?  I got one this morning from Barnes;’ and, bending her head, Olive whispered in Alice’s ear:  ’She says that everyone is talking in Galway of when I shall be a marchioness!’

‘Is that the letter?’ asked Alice innocently.