to contain; and laughing vacantly—­for laughter with Olive took the place of conversation—­she fled through the rooms, encouraging him to pursue her.  During dinner attempts were made to exchange a few words, but without much success.  Nor was it until Olive pelted him with flowers, and he replied by destroying another bouquet and applying it to the same purpose, that much progress was made towards intimacy.  But this little scene was exceptional, and on all other occasions Lord Kilcarney maintained an attitude of reserve.

Mrs. Barton was at her wits’ end.  Three days ago she had met him walking in Grafton Street with Violet; yesterday she had caught sight of him driving towards Fitzwilliam Place in a four-wheeler.  She had fortunately a visit to pay in that neighbourhood, and was rewarded by seeing the Marquis’s cab draw up before the Scullys’ door.  The mere fact that he should use a cab instead of an outside car was a point to consider, but when she noticed that one of the blinds was partially drawn down, her heart sank.  Nor did the secret of this suspicious visit long remain her exclusive property.  As if revealed by those mysteriously subtle oral and visual faculties observed in savage tribes, by which they divine the approach of their enemies or their prey, two days had not elapsed before the tongue of every chaperon was tipped with the story of the four-wheeler and the half-drawn blind, but it was a distinctly latter-day instinct that had led these ladies to speak of there having been luggage piled upon the roof of this celebrated cab.  Henceforth eye, ear, and nostril were open, and in the quivering ardour of the chase they scattered through the covers of Cork Hill and Merrion Square, passing from one to the other, by means of sharp yelps and barkings, every indication of the trail that came across their way.  Sometimes hearkening to a voice they had confidence in, they rallied at a single point, and then an old bitch, her nose in the air, her capstrings hanging lugubriously on either side of her weatherbeaten cheeks, would utter a deep and prolonged baying; a little farther on the scent was recovered, and, with sterns wagging and bristles erect, they hunted the quarry vigorously.  Every moment he was expected to break—­fear was even expressed that he might end by being chopped.

The Shelbourne Hotel was a favourite meet, and in the ladies’ drawing-room each fresh piece of news was torn with avidity.  The consumption of notepaper was extraordinary.  Two, three, four, and even five sheets of paper were often filled with what these scavengeresses could rake out of the gutters of gossip.  ’Ah! me arm aches, and the sleeve of me little coat is wore; I am so eager to write it all off to me ant, that I am too impatient to wait to take it off,’ was the verbal form in which the girl in red explained her feelings on the subject.  Bertha Duffy declared she would write no more; that she was ruining herself in stamps.  Nor were the