“My poor child, I am sorry you hadn’t strength to resist temptation; your trial is a dreadful one.”  She was very, very kind.  Her face lighted up when I spoke of you, and she said:  “Sweet girl; she was always an angel; one of these days she will come back to us.  She is too good for the world.”  Then I insisted that it was your idea that I should seek help from the convent, but she said that it was my duty to go to my mother and tell her the whole truth.  Oh, my darling Alice, I cannot tell you what a terrible time I went through.  We were talking for at least two hours, and it was only with immense difficulty that I at last succeeded in making her understand what kind of person poor mamma is, and how hopeless it would be to expect her to keep any secret, even if her daughter’s honour was in question.  I told her how she would run about, talking in her mild unmeaning way of “poor May and that shameful Mr. Scully;” and, at last, the Rev. Mother, as you prophesied she would, saw the matter in its proper light, and she has consented to receive all my letters, and if mother writes, to give her to understand that I am safe within the convent walls.  It is very good of her, for I know the awful risk she is wilfully incurring so as to help me out of my trouble.

’The house I am staying in is nice enough, and the landlady seems a kind woman.  The name I go by is Mrs. Brandon (you will not forget to direct your letters so), and I said that my husband was an officer, and had gone out to join his regiment in India.  I have a comfortable bedroom on the third floor.  There are two windows, and they look out on the street.  The time seems as if it would never pass; the twelve hours of the day seem like twelve centuries.  I have not even a book to read, and I never go out for fear of being seen.  In the evening I put on a thick veil and go for a walk in the back streets.  But I cannot go out before nine; it is not dark till then, and I cannot stop out later than ten on account of the men who speak to you.  My coloured hair makes me look fast, and I am so afraid of meeting someone I know, that this short hour is as full of misery as those that preceded it.  Every passer-by seems to know me, to recognize me, and I cannot help imagining that he or she will be telling my unfortunate story half an hour after in the pitiless drawing-rooms of Merrion Square.  Oh, Alice darling, you are the only friend I have in the world.  If it were not for you, I believe I should drown myself in the Liffey.  No girl was ever so miserable as I. I cannot tell you how I feel, and you cannot imagine how forlorn it all is; and I am so ill.  I am always hungry, and always sick, and always longing.  Oh, these longings; you may think they are nothing, but they are dreadful.  You remember how active I used to be, how I used to run about the tennis-court; now I can scarcely crawl.  And the strange sickening fancies:  I see things in the shops that tempt me, sometimes it is a dry biscuit, sometimes a basket of strawberries; but whatever