‘Good-morning, Captain Hibbert;’ and Mrs. Barton smiled winningly as she rang the bell for the servant to show him out.  When she returned to the window the tenants were following Mr. Scully into the rent-office, and, with a feeling of real satisfaction she murmured to herself: 

‘Well, after all, nothing ever turns out as badly as we expect it.’

XIV

But, although Mrs. Barton had bidden the captain away, Olive’s sorrowful looks haunted the house.

A white weary profile was seen on the staircase, a sigh was heard when she left the room; and when, after hours of absence, she was sought for, she was found lying at full length, crying upon her bed.

’My dear, it distresses me to see you in this state.  You really must get up; I cannot allow it.  There’s nothing that spoils one’s good looks like unhappiness.  Instead of being the belle of the season, you’ll be a complete wreck.  I must insist on your getting up, and trying to interest yourself in something.’

‘Oh! mamma, don’t, don’t!  I wish I were dead; I am sick of everything!’

‘Sick of everything?’ said Mrs. Barton, laughing.  ’Why, my dear child, you have tasted nothing yet.  Wait until we get to the Castle; you’ll see what a lot of Captain Hibberts there will be after this pretty face; that’s to say if you don’t spoil it in the meantime with fretting.’

‘But, mamma,’ she said, ’how can I help thinking of him?—­there’s nothing to do here, one never hears of anything but that horrid Land League—­whether the Government will or will not help the landlords, whether Paddy So-and-so will or will not pay his rent.  I am sick of it.  Milord comes to see you, and Alice likes reading-books, and papa has his painting; but I have nothing since you sent Captain Hibbert away.’

’Yes, yes, my beautiful Olive flower, it is a little dull for you at present, and to think that this wicked agitation should have begun the very season you were coming out!  Who could have foreseen such a thing?  But come, my pet, I cannot allow you to ruin your beautiful complexion with foolish tears; you must get up; unfortunately I can’t have you in the drawing-room, I have to talk business with Milord, but you can go out for a walk with Alice—­it isn’t raining to-day.’

’Oh! no; I couldn’t go out to walk with Alice, it would bore me to death.  She never talks about anything that interests me.’

Vanished the sweet pastel-like expression of Mrs. Barton’s features, lost in a foreseeing of the trouble this plain girl would be.  Partners would have to be found, and to have her dragging after her all through the Castle season would be intolerable.  And all these airs of virtue, and injured innocence, how insupportable they were!  Alice, as far as Mrs. Barton could see, was fit for nothing.  Even now, instead of helping to console her sister, and win her thoughts away from Captain Hibbert, she shut