‘They say you are desperately in love with Fred Scully.’

‘Supposing I were; is there any very great harm in that?’

’I only want to put you on your guard, May dear; and since I have come here for the purpose of speaking out, I had better do so, however unpleasant it may be; and I must say that you often forget yourself when he is in the room, and by your whole manner betray your feelings.  You look at him—­’

’You needn’t talk.  Now that Harding has left town, these moral reflections come very easy to you!’

Alice blushed a little; she trembled, and pursuing her advantage, May said: 

’Oh, yes; I have watched you in the Castle sitting out dances; and when girls like you butter!  ‘Pon my word, it was painful to look at you.’

‘Mr. Harding and I talked merely of books and pictures.’

’If you come here to insinuate that Fred and I are in the habit of indulging in improper conversation. . . .  I didn’t expect this from you.  I shan’t stop another moment.  I shan’t speak to you again.’

Picking up her novel, and deaf to all explanations, May walked haughtily out of the room.  Alice would have given much to help; and, her heart filled with gentle disappointment, she returned home.  The evening was spent in packing; and next morning at dawn, looking tired, their eyes still heavy with sleep, the Bartons breakfasted for the last time in Mount Street.

At the Broadstone they met Lord Dungory.  Then, their feet and knees cosily wrapped up in furs, with copies of the Freeman’s Journal lying on the top, they deplored the ineffectiveness of Mr. Forster’s Coercion Act.  Eight hundred people were in prison, and still the red shadow of murder pointed across the land.  Milord read from the newspaper: 

’A dastardly outrage was committed last night in the neighbourhood of Mullingar.  A woman named Mary ——­ had some differences with her sister Bridget ——.  One day, after some angry words, it appears that she left the house, and seeing a man working in a potato-field, she asked him if he could do anything to help her.  He scratched his head, and, after a moment’s reflection, he said he was going to meet a “party,” and he would see what could be done.  On the following day he suggested that Bridget might be removed for the sum of one pound.  Mary ——­ could not, however, procure more than fifteen shillings, and a bargain was struck.  On the night arranged for the assassination Mary wished to leave the house, not caring to see her sister shot in her presence, but Pat declared that her absence would excite suspicion.  In the words of one of the murderers, the deed was accomplished “nately and without unnecessary fuss."’

‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Barton, ’what those wretches will have to do before the Government will consent to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and place the country in the hands of the military.  Do they never think of how wickedly they are behaving, and of how God will punish them when they die?  Do they never think of their immortal souls?’