The soft Irish summer is pleasant after the glare of foreign towns, and the country, the rickety stone walls and the herds of cattle, the deep curved lines of the plantations of the domain lands, the long streaks of brown bog, the flashing tarns of bog-water, and the ruined cottage, lay dozing in beautiful silvery haze.  There was much charm for Alice in these familiar signs; and, although she did not approve of—­although she would not care ever to meet them again—­the people she had met at Ostend and Dieppe had interested her.  She had picked up ideas and had received impressions, and with these germinating in her, a time of quiet, a time for reading and thinking, came as a welcome change after the noise of casinos and the glitter of fireworks.  The liberty she had enjoyed, the sense it had brought with it that she was neither a doll nor a victim, had rendered her singularly happy.  The plot of a new story was singing in her head, the characters flitted before her eyes, and to think of them or to tell Cecilia of them was a pleasure sufficient for all her daily desire.  Olive, too, was glad.  The sunlight has gone into her blood, and she romps with her mother and Milord amid the hay, or, stretched at length, she listens to the green air of the lawn, her dreams ripple like water along a vessel’s side, the white wake of the past in bubble behind her; and when the life of the landscape is burnt out, and the day in dying seems to have left its soul behind, she stands watching, her thoughts curdling gently, the elliptical flight of the swallows through the gloom, and the flutter of the bats upon the dead sky.

But the thoughtless brain, fed for many weeks upon noise and glitter, soon began to miss its accustomed stimulants, and Mrs. Barton was quick to comprehend sudden twitchings of the face and abrupt movements of the limbs.  And, keenly alive to what was passing in her daughter’s mind, she insisted on Olive’s accompanying her to the tennis-parties with which the county teemed.  Sir Charles, Mr. Adair, and even poor Sir Richard were put forward as the most eligible of men.

’It is impossible to say when the big fish will be caught; it is often the last try that brings him to land,’ murmured Mrs. Barton.  But Olive had lost courage, and could fix her thoughts on no one.  And, often when they returned home, she would retire to her room to have a good cry.

’Leave me alone, Alice; oh, go away.  Don’t tease me, don’t tease me!  I only want to be left alone.’

‘But listen, dear; can I do anything for you?’

’You! no, no, indeed you can’t.  I only want to be left alone.  I am so miserable, so unhappy; I wish I were dead!’

‘Dead?’