’Oh! so you have all come up to the Castle and are going to be presented.  Well, you’ll find the rooms very grand, and the suppers very good, and if you know a lot of people—­particularly the officers quartered here—­you will find the Castle balls very amusing.  The best way is to come to town a month before the Drawing-Room, and give a ball; and in that way you get to know all the men.  If you haven’t done that, I am afraid you won’t get many partners.  Even if you do get introduced, they’ll only ask you to dance, and you’ll never see them again.  Dublin is like a racecourse, men come and speak to you and pass on.  ’Tis pleasant enough if you know people, but as for marriages, there aren’t any.  I assure you I know lots of girls—­and very pretty girls, too—­who have been going out these six or seven seasons, and who have not been able to pull it off.’

‘And the worst of it is,’ said a girl, ’every year we are growing more and more numerous, and the men seem to be getting fewer.  Nowadays a man won’t look at you unless you have at least two thousand a year.’

Mrs. Barton, who did not wish her daughters to be discouraged from the first, settled her skirts with a movement of disdain.  Mrs. Gould pathetically declared she did not believe love to be dead in the world yet, and maintained her opinion that a nice girl could always marry.  But Bertha was not easily silenced, and, being perfectly conversant with her subject, she disposed of Dublin’s claims as a marriage-mart, and she continued to comment on the disappointments of girls until the appearance of Lord Dungory and Mr. Harding brought the conversation to a sudden close.

’Une causerie de femme! que dites-vous?—­je le suis—­l’amour n’existe plus, et l’ame de l’homme est plus pres des sens que l’ame de la femme,’ said Milord.  Everyone laughed; and, with a charming movement of her skirts, Mrs. Barton made room for him to sit beside her.

Harding withdrew to the other end of the room to resume his reading, and Alice did not dare to hope that he would lay aside his book and come to talk to her.  If he did, her mother would ask her to introduce him to her, and she would have to enter into explanations that he and she had merely exchanged a few words before dinner.

She withstood the conversation of the charmed circle as long as she could, and then boldly crossed the room for a newspaper.  Harding rose to help her to find one, and they talked together till Milord took him away to the billiard-room.

May, who had been vainly expecting Fred the whole evening, said: 

‘Well, Alice, I hope you have had a nice flirtation?’

’And did you notice, May, how she left us to look for a newspaper.  Our Alice is fond of reading, but it was not of reading she was thinking this evening.  She kept him all to herself at the other end of the room.’  Mrs. Barton laughed merrily, and Alice began to understand that her mother was approving her flirtation.  That is the name that her mother would give her talk with Mr. Harding.