’What a charming man Captain Hibbert is!  No wonder you young ladies like the military.  He is so good-looking—­and such good manners.  Don’t you think so, Alice dear?’

’I think the Captain a very handsome man—­indeed, I believe that there are not two opinions on the subject.’

’And Olive—­I do not remember that I ever saw a more beautiful girl.  Such hair! and her figure so sylph-like!  I do not know what the young ladies will do—­she will cut everybody out at the Castle!’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said May jauntily; ’what one man will turn his nose up at, another will go wild after.’

Mrs. Gould did not answer; but her lips twitched, and Alice guessed she was annoyed that May could not express herself less emphatically.  In a few moments the conversation was continued: 

’At any rate, Captain Hibbert seems to think there is no one like Olive; and they’d make a handsome couple.  What do you think, Alice?  Is there any chance of there being a match?’

’I really can’t tell you, Mrs. Gould.  Olive, as you say, is a very beautiful girl, and I suppose Captain Hibbert admires her; but I don’t think that either has, up to the present, thought of the matter more seriously.’

‘You must admit, Alice, that he seems a bit gone on her,’ said May, with a direct determination to annoy her mother.

’May, dear, you shouldn’t talk in that slangy way; you never used to; you have picked it up from Mr. Scully.  Do you know Mr. Scully, Alice?  Violet’s brother.’

‘Yes, I met him the night we dined at Lord Dungory’s.’

’Oh, of course you did.  Well, I admit I don’t like him; but May does.  They go out training horses together.  I don’t mind that; but I wish she wouldn’t imitate his way of talking.  He has been a very wild young man.’

’Now, mother dear, I wish you would leave off abusing Fred. I have repeatedly told you that I don’t like it.’

The acerbity of this remark was softened by May’s manner, and, throwing her arms on her mother’s shoulders, she commenced to coax and cajole her.

The Goulds were of an excellent county family.  They had for certainly three generations lived in comfortable idleness, watching from their big square house the different collections of hamlets toiling and moiling, and paying their rents every gale day.  It was said that some ancestor, whose portrait still existed, had gone to India and come back with the money that had purchased the greater part of the property.  But, be this as it may, in Galway three generations of landlordism are considered sufficient repentance for shopkeeping in Gort, not to speak of Calcutta.  Since then the family history had been stainless.  Father and son had in turn put their horses out to grass in April, had begun to train them again in August, had boasted at the Dublin horse-show of having been out cub-hunting, had ridden and drunk hard from the age of twenty to seventy.  But, by dying at fifty-five, the late squire had deviated slightly from the regular line, and the son and heir being only twelve, a pause had come in the hereditary life of the Goulds.  In the interim, however, May had apparently resolved to keep up the traditions so far as her sex was supposed to allow her.