’Oh, how do you do—­it is really too kind of you to give yourself all this trouble to come and see us.’

Immediately after Zoe put out her hand.  Her manner was more jocose: 

’How d’ye do?  We are, I am sure, delighted to see you.  Will you have a cup of tea?  I know you will.’

Emily, being considered too shy and silent, did not often come down to receive company.  On her devolved the entire management of the house and servants; the two elder sisters killed time in the way they thought would give least offence to their neighbours.

Being all St. Leonard’s girls, the conversation immediately turned on convent-life.  ‘Was Madam this there?  Had Madam that left?’ Garden chapel, school, hall, dormitory, refectory were visited; every nun was passed in review, and, in the lightness and gaiety of the memories invoked, even these maiden ladies flushed and looked fresh again, the conversation came to a pause, and then allusion was made to the disturbed state of the country, and to a gentleman who, it was reported, was going to be married.  But, as Alice did not know the person whose antecedents were being called into question, she took an early opportunity of asking Gladys if she cared for riding?  ’No, they never went to ride now:  they used to, but they came in so fatigued that they could not talk to Emily; so they had given up riding.’  Did they care for driving?  ’Yes, pretty well; but there was no place to drive to except into Gort, and as people had been unjust enough to say that they were always to be seen in Gort, they had given up driving—­unless, of course, they went to call on friends.’  Then tea was brought in; and, apropos of a casual reference to conventual buttered toast, the five girls talked, until nearly six o’clock, of their girlhood—­of things that would never have any further influence in their lives, of happiness they would never experience again.  At last Alice and Cecilia pleaded that they must be going home.

As they walked across the fields the girls only spoke occasionally.  Alice strove to see clear, but her thoughts were clouded, scattered, diffused.  Force herself as she would, still no conclusion seemed possible; all was vague and contradictory.  She had talked to these Brennans, seen how they lived, could guess what their past was, what their future must be.  In that neat little house their uneventful life dribbled away in maiden idleness; neither hope nor despair broke the triviality of their days—­and yet, was it their fault?  No; for what could they do if no one would marry them?—­a woman could do nothing without a husband.

There is a reason for the existence of a pack-horse, but none for that of an unmarried woman.  She can achieve nothing—­she has no duty but, by blotting herself out, to shield herself from the attacks of ever-slandering friends.  Alice had looked forward to a husband and a home as the certain accomplishment of years; now she saw that a woman, independently of her own will, may remain single.