’Of course—­of course, my dear Alice; no one shall ever know what has passed between us.  You can depend upon me.  I will not speak to Olive till I get a favourable opportunity.  And now I have to go and see after the servants.  Are you going upstairs?’

On Alice, tense with the importance of the explanation, this dismissal fell not a little chillingly; but she was glad that she had been able to induce her mother to consider the matter seriously.

A few minutes passed dreamily, almost unconsciously; Mrs. Barton threw two sods of turf on the fire, and resumed her thinking.  Her first feeling of resentment against her eldest daughter had vanished; and she now thought solely of the difficulty she was in, and how she could best extricate herself from it.  ’So Olive was foolish enough to allow Captain Hibbert to kiss her in the conservatory!’ Mrs. Barton murmured to herself.  The morality of the question interested her profoundly.  She had never allowed anyone to kiss her before she was married; and she was full of pity and presentiment for the future of a young girl who could thus compromise herself.  But in Olive’s love for Captain Hibbert Mrs. Barton was concerned only so far as it affected the labour and time that would have to be expended in persuading her to cease to care for him.  That this was the right thing to do Mrs. Barton did not for a moment doubt.  Her daughter was a beautiful girl, would probably be the belle of the season; therefore to allow her, at nineteen, to marry a thousand-a-year captain would be, Mrs. Barton thought, to prove herself incapable, if not criminal, in the performance of the most important duty of her life.  Mrs. Barton trembled when she thought of the sending of the letter:  if the story were to get wind in Dublin, it might wreck her hopes of the marquis.  Therefore, to tell Barnes to leave the house would be fatal.  Things must be managed gently, very gently.  Olive must be talked to, how far her heart was engaged in the matter must be found out, and she must be made to see the folly, the madness of risking her chance of winning a coronet for the sake of a beggarly thousand-a-year captain.  And, good heavens! the chaperons:  what would they say of her, Mrs. Barton, were such a thing to occur?  Mrs. Barton turned from the thought in horror; and then, out of the soul of the old coquette arose, full-fledged, the chaperon, the satellite whose light and glory is dependent on that of the fixed star around which she revolves.

At this moment Olive, her hands filled with ferns, bounced into the room.

’Oh! here you are, mamma!  Alice told me you wanted a few ferns and flowers to brighten up the room.’

’I hope you haven’t got your feet wet, my dear; if you have, you had better go up at once and change.’

Olive was now more than ever like her father.  Her shoulders had grown wider, and the blonde head and scarlet lips had gained a summer brilliance and beauty.