’If the weather clears up I think we might all go for a drive; there is really no danger.  The Land League never has women fired at.  We might go and see the Brennans.  What do you think, Olive?’

‘I don’t care to go off there to see a pack of women,’ the girl replied, still drumming her fingers on the window-pane.

‘Now, Olive, don’t answer so crossly, but come and sit down here by me;’ and, to make room for her, Mrs. Barton moved nearer to Alice.  ’So my beautiful Olive doesn’t care for a pack of women,’ said Mrs. Barton—­’Olive does not like a pack of women; she would prefer a handsome young lord, or a duke, or an earl.’

Olive turned up her lips contemptuously, for she guessed her mother’s meaning.

’What curious lives those girls do lead, cooped up there by themselves, with their little periodical trip up to the Shelbourne Hotel.  Of course the two young ones never could have done much; they never open their lips, but Gladys is a nice girl in her way, and she has some money of her own, I wonder she wasn’t picked up.’

‘I should like to know who would care for her?’

’She had a very good chance once; but she wouldn’t say yes, and she wouldn’t say no, and she kept him hanging after her until at last off he went and married someone else.  A Mr. Blake, I think.’

‘Yes, that was his name; and why wouldn’t she marry him?’

’Well, I don’t know—­folly, I suppose.  He was, of course, not so young as Harry Renley, but he had two thousand a year, and he would have made her an excellent husband; kept a carriage for her, and a house in London:  whereas you see she has remained Miss Brennan, goes up every year to the Shelbourne Hotel to buy dresses, and gets older and more withered every day.’

’I know they lead a stupid life down here, but mightn’t they go abroad and travel?’ asked Alice; ‘they are no longer so very young.’

‘A woman can do nothing until she is married,’ Mrs. Barton answered decisively.

’But some husbands treat their wives infamously; isn’t no husband better than a bad husband?’

‘I don’t think so,’ returned Mrs. Barton, and she glanced sharply at her daughter.  ’I would sooner have the worst husband in the world than no husband.’  Then settling herself like a pleader who has come to the incisive point of his argument, she continued:  ’A woman is absolutely nothing without a husband; if she doesn’t wish to pass for a failure she must get a husband, and upon this all her ideas should be set.  I have always found that in this life we can only hope to succeed in what we undertake by keeping our minds fixed on it and never letting it out of sight until it is attained.  Keep on trying, that is my advice to all young ladies:  try to make yourselves agreeable, try to learn how to amuse men.  Flatter them; that is the great secret; nineteen out of twenty will believe you, and the one that doesn’t can’t but think it delightful.  Don’t waste your