Mrs. Barton, who could have talked to twenty men, and have kept them amused, was severely handicapped by the presence of her daughters.  Olive, at the best of times, could do little more than laugh; and as Alice never had anything to say to the people she met at her mother’s house, the silences that hung over the Mount Street dinner-table were funereal in intensity and length.  From time to time questions were asked relating to the Castle, the weather, and the theatre.

Therefore, beyond the fact that neither Lord Kilcarney nor Mr. Harding was present, the girls passed their second season in the same manner as their first. Les deux pieces de resistance at Mount Street were a dissipated young English lord and a gouty old Irish distiller, and Mrs. Barton was making every effort to secure one of these.  A pianist was ordered to attend regularly at four o’clock.  And now if Alice was relieved of the duty of spelling through the doleful strains of ’Dream Faces,’ she was forced to go round and round with the distiller until an extra glass of port forced the old gentleman to beg mercy of Mrs. Barton.  At one o’clock in the morning the young lord used to enter the Kildare Street Club weary.  But not much way was made with either, and when one returned to London and the other to a sick-bed, Olive abandoned herself to a series of flirtations.  At the Castle she danced with all who asked her, and she sat out dances in the darkest corners of the most distant rooms with every officer stationed in Dublin.  Mrs. Barton never refused an invitation to any dance, no matter how low, and in all the obscure ‘afternoons’ in Mount Street and Pembroke Street Olive’s blonde cameo-like face was seen laughing with every official of Cork Hill and the gig-men of Kildare Street.

In May the Bartons went abroad, and Olive flirted with foreign titles—­French Counts, Spanish Dukes, Russian Princes, Swedish noblemen of all kinds, and a goodly number of English refugees with irreproachable neckties and a taste for baccarat.  In the balmy gardens of Ostend and Boulogne, jubilant with June and the overture of Masaniello, Milord and Mrs. Barton walked in front, talking and laughing gracefully.  Olive chose him who flattered her the most outrageously; and Alice strove hard to talk to the least objectionable of the men she was brought in contact with.  Amid these specious talkers there were a few who reminded her of Mr. Harding, and she hoped later on to be able to turn her present experiences to account.  There was, of course, much dining at cafes and dining at the casinos, and evening walks along the dark shore.  Alice often feared for her sister, but the girl’s vanity and lightheadedness were her safeguards, and she returned to Galway only a little wearied by the long chase after amusement.