‘And what about the poor baby?’ said Alice.

’The poor little thing died, as I wrote you, about ten days after it was born.  I nursed it, and I was sorry for it.  I really was; but of course . . . well, it seems a hard thing to say, but I don’t know what I should have done with it if it had lived.  Life isn’t so happy, is it, even under the best of circumstances?’

The conversation came to a sudden close.  At last the nervous silence that intervened was broken by May: 

’We were speaking about money.  I will repay you all I owe you some day, Alice dear.  I will save up all the money I can get out of mother.  She is such a dear old thing, but I cannot understand her.  Not a penny did she send me for the first six weeks, and then she sent me L25; and it was lucky she did, for the doctor’s bill was something tremendous.  And I bought this dress and bonnet with what was left . . .  I ought to have repaid you first thing, but I forgot it until I had ordered the dress.’

’I assure you it does not matter, May; I shall never take the money from you.  If I did, it would take away all the pleasure I have had in serving you.’

’Oh, but I will insist, Alice dear; I could not think of such a thing.  But there’s no use in discussing that point until I get the money. . . .  Tell me, what do you think of my bonnet?’

‘I think it very nice indeed, and I never saw you looking better.’

And thus ended May Gould’s Dublin adventure.  It was scarcely spoken of again, and when they met at a ball given by the officers stationed in Galway, Alice was astonished to find that she experienced no antipathy whatever towards this rich-blooded young person.  ’My dear guardian angel, come and sit with me in this corner; I’d sooner talk to you than anyone—­we won’t go down yet a while—­we’ll make the men wait;’ and when she put her arms round Alice’s waist and told her the last news of Violet and her Marquis, Alice abandoned herself to the caress and heard that thirty years ago the late Marquis had entered a grocer’s shop in Galway to buy a pound of tea for an importuning beggar:  ’And what do you think, my dear?—­It was Mrs. Scully who served it out to him; and do you know what they are saying?—­that it is all your fault that Olive did not marry Kilcarney.’

‘My fault?’

’Your fault, because you gave the part of the beggar-maid to Violet, and if Olive had played the beggar-maid and hadn’t married Kilcarney, the fault would have been laid at your door just the same.’

The pale cheeks of Lord Rosshill’s seven daughters waxed a hectic red; the Ladies Cullen grew more angular, and smiled and cawed more cruelly; Mrs. Barton, the Brennans, and Duffys cackled more warmly and continuously; and Bertha, the terror of the debutantes, beat the big drum more furiously than ever.  The postscripts to her letters were particularly terrible:  ’And to think that the grocer’s daughter should come