It rained incessantly.  Sheets of water, blown by winds that had travelled the Atlantic, deluged the county; grey mists trailed mournful and shapeless along the edges of the domain woods, over the ridges of the tenants’ holdings.  ’Never more shall we be driven forth to die in the bogs and ditches,’ was the cry that rang through the mist; and, guarded by policemen, in their stately houses, the landlords listened, waiting for the sword of a new coercion to fall and release them from their bondage.  The meeting of Parliament in the spring would bring them this; in the meantime, all who could, fled, resolving not to return till the law restored the power that the Land League had so rudely shaken.  Some went to England, others to France.  Mr. Barton accepted two hundred pounds from his wife and proceeded to study gargoyles and pictures in Bruges; and, striving to forget the murders and rumours of murders that filled the papers, the girls and their mammas talked of beaux, partners, and trains, in spite of the irritating presence of the Land League agitators who stood on the platforms of the different stations.  The train was full of girls.  Besides the Bartons, there were the Brennans:  Gladys and Zoe—­Emily remained at home to look after the place.  Three of the Miss Duffys were coming to the Drawing-Room, and four of the Honourable Miss Gores; the Goulds and Scullys made one party, and to avoid Mrs. Barton, the Ladies Cullen had pleaded important duties.  They were to follow in a day or so.

Lord Dungory’s advice to Mrs. Barton was to take a house, and he warned her against spending the whole season in an hotel, but apparently without avail, for when the train stopped a laughing voice was heard:  ’Milord, vous n’etes qu’un vilain misanthrope; we shall be very comfortable at the Shelbourne; we shall meet all the people in Dublin there, and we can have private rooms to give dinner-parties.’

Hearing this, Alice congratulated herself, for in an hotel she would be freer than she would be in a house let for the season.  She would hear something, and see a little over the horizon of her family in an hotel.  She had spent a week in the Shelbourne on her way home from school, and remembered the little winter-garden on the first landing, and the fountain splashing amid ferns and stone frogs.  The ladies’ drawing-room she knew was on the right, and when she had taken off her hat and jacket, leaving her mother and sister talking of Mrs. Symond and Lord Kilcarney, she went there hoping to find some of the people whom she had met there before.

The usually skirt-filled ottoman stood vacantly gaping, the little chairs seemed lonely about the hearthrug, even the sofa where the invalid ladies sat was unoccupied, and the perforated blinds gave the crowds that passed up and down the street a shadow-like appearance.  The prospect was not inspiriting, but not knowing what else to do, Alice sat down by the fire, and fell to thinking who the man might be that sat reading on the other side of the fireplace.  He didn’t seem as if he knew much about horses, and as he read intently, she could watch him unobserved.  At last their eyes met, and when Alice turned away her face she felt that he was looking at her, and, perhaps getting nervous under his examination, she made a movement to stir the fire.